© Manchester University Press, 2009 British policy and the Armenians in the early 20th century
[review: Jo Laycock, Imagining Armenia: Orientalism, Ambiguity and Intervention , Manchester: Manchester UP, 2009]
by Ronald Grigor Suny
The Armenian Mirror-Spectator , 12.02.2011
When the widely read historian Arnold Toynbee defined as Armenia " between East and West ", he disliked not a positive one area of cultural exchange, but the pathology of a "spiritual paralysis." And shared in that a European approach generalized abnormality, and even the unacceptability of a Christian people vulnerable, dominated by a despotic Muslim empire. Adopting Edward Said's Orientalist paradigm, Jo Laycock explores how the politics of Western domination was legitimized by the representation of the East (and West) in the West. What then is attached Armenia? At the East or West? How the British imagined they Armenians? And for what purpose?
Ottoman Christians are then, quite simply, presented as oppressed and civilizing potential, worthy, and those two titles on British support. But as the Armenians and others live in the East, they are the products, their healing required a British intervention. Support paternalistic London was required because of the absent voice of an East dumb. Paradoxically, the Armenian cause was championed by liberal critics of anti-imperialist Disraeli Victorian imperialism, but as emphasized by J. Laycock, " it imply approval of the British imperial domination, reaffirming the vision of the imperialist world. "(P. 28)
Armenia is not only Christian but also in the British imagination, a cradle of civilization against barbarism. However, like the Balkans by Maria Todorova studied (1), Armenia is an "internal other", claiming in Europe - a Europe more original, because of his insistence on being the first Christian nation . For the British, Armenians are not so "foreign Within Europe, "but" a kind of alien civilizations in the Eastern world, part of Europe which has been displaced "(p. 34). Because of his interest in the Armenians, Great Britain increased its self-appointed role of defender of civilization. Orientalist fantasy in the dichotomy of East and West, Armenia, as well as the Balkans and Eastern Europe more generally occupies an ambiguous middle position, which requires a study and a greater understanding of " what it means to be "civilized" and what signifie être « Européen » » (p. 37).
S’agissant de définir les Arméniens, religion et race rivalisent, mais à mesure que le discours de la nation domine de plus en plus la manière avec laquelle les peuples et la géographie sont catégorisés au 19ème siècle, les écrivains britanniques considèrent les Arméniens comme une nation dispersée ou démembrée – au moment même où les intellectuels arméniens reconsidéraient quant à eux leur peuple en tant que communauté d’ordre essentiellement national, et non simplement ethnico-religieuse. Or la nation, contrairement à la religion or even worse, requires a bounded and defined territory. See the Armenians as a nation and as members of the Indo-European relatives confirmed the English and their cousins the Eastern Christians, but, looking east, the British writers concluded that centuries of Turkish domination had corrupted the Armenians, whose degeneration was evident in all things, their talents as legendary as their health less misleading. The Armenians were in a sad situation, but were deserving and capable of redemption. Europeans true and intact such as the British, they had to protect and promote the Armenians. The atrocities of the massacres of Armenians by the Ottomans in 1894-96 galvanisèrent Armenophiles ancrèrent British and the images of innocent Christians and Turks wild, that the "Bulgarian atrocities" had previously contributed greatly to train. But this was tempered by compassion British ambiguity that is felt towards a distant and degenerate people.
J. Laycock continues his captivating analysis in the direction of the Armenian genocide of 1915. Event unique in many ways by its ferocity and determination to eliminate or reduce to impotence a constituent people of the empire, genocide is integrated on the discursive level in the wider debate about the atrocities of war, as in the "rape of Belgium", and an essentialized image of the "Turk" (often in the singular) as the perpetrator of mass murder. The Armenians benefited from this renewed concern with regard to the defense of small nations, itself built on the grounds to make war against the Huns and Turks. "Armenia was part of this category new "nations victims." "(P. 119)
Laycock's story is beautifully rendered. It dissects with finesse and sensitivity to conflicting and competing trends in British public opinion and thereby allows the reader to appreciate the limits of what was possible to imagine at the time. Its purpose is focused almost exclusively on opinion leaders in Britain and not the Armenians while simultaneously trying to invent and develop their own identity. That said, it shows the field is most revealing. Armenians as martyrs, their wives as victims par excellence heinous predators are portrayed in movies, posters and brochures as representatives of the rape of a nation. Their personal survival symbolizes a national continuity - and even civilization. After the First World War, the British did address the problem of refugees, repatriation and their own recovery and reconstruction. Their initial sympathy towards Armenians vanished as they confronted the contradiction between nation-states set and ethnically homogeneous with uprooted people, unable to return to the country where he had been expelled. The most negative stereotypes about Armenians - "greedy", their "passion for plot" - led to undermine British support for an independent Armenia (p. 193). Largely abandoned by the West, a rump Armenia lasted until the invasion of the Red Army in late 1920. The only Armenian who survived the war, genocide and revolution, was Soviet Armenia, protected, developed and mistreated by the Bolshevik regime in Moscow. A peripheral region of Armenia became the historical heart.
Laycock concludes by pointing out how insane the case of the Armenians "the binary opposition between colonizer and colonized, civilized and barbaric, that assumes Orientalism" (p. 220). Yet the richness of the paradigm of Said opens the possibility to understand the power of discourse, not only to make sense, but to influence and empower political actors. In this story, Armenians in general reacted more they act, taking advantage when they were seen as avatars of a civilization and suffering when were discarded as waste of geography and an unfortunate historical destiny.
[ Ronald Grigor Suny teaches history at the University of Michigan.]
NdT
1. Maria Todorova. Imagining the Balkans . New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. - Cf. the review by Gale Stokes, http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/reviewy3.htm
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Source: http://www.mirrorspectator.com / pdf / The%% 20Armenian 20Mirror-Spectator% 20February% 2012,% 202011.pdf
Translation: © George Festa - 02.2011
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