The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–16
The British parliamentary Blue Book of 1916, containing about 150 statements by missionaries, travellers and survivors on the deportation and killing of Armenians and of Nestorian (Assyrian) Christians, with a historical summary by its editor.
The collection was put together by Arnold J. Toynbee for Lord Bryce and laid before Parliament while Britain was at war with the Ottoman Empire. The editor’s memorandum says that most of the witnesses were foreign residents who were citizens of neutral countries, chiefly American and Swiss, that a few were Germans, and that some were Armenian or Nestorian inhabitants. Many names of witnesses and places are replaced by letters. The documents are arranged by region, and one section covers the Christians of Urmia and Hakkari, whom it calls Nestorians, Syrians or Assyrians. Toynbee’s historical summary at the end is his own reconstruction from the documents.
It is a wartime publication by a belligerent government, and it was meant to be read by the public in Britain and in neutral countries. The documents themselves are for the most part first-hand accounts written at the time. It is cited in the Destruction of the Armenian and Assyrian Christians for what those witnesses reported.
Cited in
- 1915 to 1916, firm date