The Burning Tigris
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| Author | Peter Balakian |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | History |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
Publication date | 2003 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Pages | 465 |
| ISBN | 978-0-06-019840-4 |
| OCLC | 51653350 |
| 956.6/2015 21 | |
| LC Class | DS195.5 .B353 2003 |
The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response is a book written by Peter Balakian, and published in 2003. It details the Armenian genocide, the events leading up to it, and the events following it. In particular, Balakian focuses on the American response to the persecution and genocide of the Armenians in the Ottoman empire from 1894 to 1923.
Summary
The book begins with the state of the Ottoman Empire in the 1880s. Abdul Hamid II came to power in 1876, and there are many issues in the country that he is expected to solve. Specifically, the empire was losing money and land. Abdul Hamid II blamed these issues on non-Muslims in the country, and in particular, the Armenians. Over the course of the 1890s laws are passed limiting the rights of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. By the early 20th century, there was extreme overtaxing, robbery, and murder against Armenians, all going with no repercussion. The government began supporting these actions by sending the military to help. Owning to the "Macedonian Question", a state of low-level civil war in the Ottoman Macedonia and the empire's chronic failing finances, Abdul Hamid II lost popularity, leading to a popular revolution in 1908. Abdul Hamid II was overthrown in April 1909 by a revolutionary group called the Committee of Union and Progress, better known as the Young Turks, after he attempted a coup at taking back the power he had lost in 1908. The new regime promised a fresh start, saying that henceforward all of the peoples of the Ottoman empire would be equal.
The Armenians by and large welcomed the new government, thinking that they would be treated as equals once more. Instead, the new government ordered massacres' and death marches. Armenians were rounded up and killed. The ones lucky enough to escape the massacres were deported to the vilayet (province) of Ottoman Syria (modern Lebanon and Syria). The United States Red Cross was permitted into the country starting in 1915. The help they could provide was limited. The United States Government was also considering trying to help the Armenians by creating an independent Armenia after the First World War. Woodrow Wilson and some members of Congress supported this idea, but it never worked fully because the United States had oil interests in the Ottoman Empire and wanted to remain on good terms. What was left of Armenia instead became a state in the Soviet Union. The United States had ambitious plans for what to do with the Armenians, but economic issues prevented the United States from helping in any meaningful way. Other European powers at the time also did not do much. More than one hundred high-ranking government officials from the Ottoman Empire were put on trial for war crimes, fewer than 20 were convicted, and none of them served their full sentences.
Reception
In a mixed review for the New York Times, Belinda Cooper writers that Balakian leaves some questions, such as the role of Turks who opposed the genocide unaddressed and as to why so many Armenians continued to declare their loyalty to the Ottoman empire, but states: "The Burning Tigris does succeed in resurrecting a little-known chapter of the American and as well as the Armenian history" .[1] Cooper wrote that Balakian provided an "unremitting depiction of irrational barbarism by sociopathic Turkish leaders and a fanatical population against a generally unresisting minority", but added he gave "only a superficial sense of the changes in the centuries-old relationship between Turks and Armenians that could unleash such violence".[2] Cooper praised Balakian for rescuing the "lost history" of America's response to the genocide as she noted that provided an excellent of the "enormous humanitarian response" the suffering of the Armenians generated in the United States..[3]
In a review in The Boston Globe, John Shattuck wrote: "The Burning Tigris has major weaknesses, including its cursory explanation of what drove the Turkish government to exterminate the Armenians and its limited account of how Turkey managed for so long to block all efforts to tell the truth. Nevertheless, by reintroducing the voices of Americans who spoke up for the Armenians a century ago, Balakian honors the international human rights tradition in the United States, pointing toward the need for international laws and institutions that are now so discredited by Washington. As one of these voices, early feminist writer and champion of the Armenian cause Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote in 1903, "National crimes demand international law, to restrain, prohibit, punish, best of all, to prevent.""[4]
In a review in The Minneapolis Star Tribune, Stephen Feinstein wrote: "Balakian makes it clear that the discourse about Armenia has not ended: Unlike the perpetrators of the Nazi Holocaust, no Turkish high official was brought to trial. And the systematic suppression and denial continues. Turkey, a NATO member and U.S. ally, has intervened in congressional attempts to label the genocide according to U.N. convention, and to this day prohibits discourse about its own history and prosecutes teachers who tell the story in their classrooms. Balakian's book should serve as a warning: Suppressed history has a way of returning with a vengeance. One can only hope that Americans, concerned with the Armenian cause in the past, will be receptive to it again, and that Turkey, long in denial of its past, will strengthen its own democratic system by dealing with it. Although Balakian's research is not based on original documents in Turkish or the languages of the region, he has succeeded in writing a lucid and engaging account that serves as a useful entry point for readers unfamiliar with a complex subject. The story of Armenia is a reminder that we live in an age of genocide, and that discourse about this history and establishment of early warning systems is perhaps the only way to prevent it from recurring."[5]
References
- ^ Cooper, Belinda (19 October 2003). "Human Rights Watch". The New York Times.
- ^ Cooper, Belinda (19 October 2003). "Human Rights Watch". The New York Times.
- ^ Cooper, Belinda (19 October 2003). "Human Rights Watch". The New York Times.
- ^ Shattuck, John (4 February 2004). "A limited but important look at the Armenian genocide". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 26 November 2021.
- ^ Feinstein, Stephen (5 October 2003). "'Burning Tigris' fans the flames of discourse". Minneapolis Star Tribunal. Retrieved 26 November 2021.
