17.04.2024


Many British figures responded to the tragedy of the Armenian people from the very first days of the implementation of the plan to exterminate the Western Armenians by the Ottoman authorities, known as the Armenian Genocide.

Among them was the young scientist Arnold Joseph Toynbee, whose 135th birthday was celebrated on April 14 this year. Later becoming a professor at the University of London (1919-55), he was an outstanding historian and sociologist who received world-wide fame for his 12-volume “A Study of History” published between 1934-61. He was employed in the intelligence department of the British Foreign Office in 1915.

British government bodies began, at that time, to receive information from various sources about the atrocities committed against the Armenian people, with detailed eyewitness testimonies. Toynbee was tasked with solving the problem of how to make this information public.

The young scientist’s first work was “Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation”, published in 1915. Its chapter titles give an indication of the content of the 132-page monograph:

I. Armenia before the Massacres
II. The Plan of the Massacres
III. The Road to Death
IV. The Journey's End
V. False Excuses
VI. Murder Outright
VII. The Toll of Death
VIII. The Attitude of Germany

The book utilized the speech delivered by the pro-Armenian figure Lord James Bryce in Great Britain’s House of Lords, in defence of the Armenian people, as its preface.

A collection of documents was published in London under the co-authorship of J. Bryce and A. Toynbee in the summer of 1916 titled “The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915-1916” which contained many reports and testimonies provided by witnesses regarding the crimes committed against the Armenians (diplomats representing neutral countries, missionaries, etc.).

The collection, in one 742-page volume, contained 158 documents, through which we can learn about the implementation of the Armenian Genocide program in the Ottoman Empire and the neighbouring regions, province by province, county by county and even village by village.

Toynbee refers to the Armenian Question, the tragedy of the western Armenians in 1915-16 and the Young Turk government’s nationalist policy the during and after the First World War in his other works, articles and public speeches.

Toynbee, after the First World War, participated in the Paris Peace Conference (1919-20) as an expert in international relations, during which he defended Armenia's national independence which, according to him, was justified by at least three circumstances: (1) the ratification of the Berlin Treaty of 1878, (2) the misfortunes that have befallen Armenia and the ability of the Armenian people to preserve its dignity and (3) by its “amazing survival”.

References to the Armenian Genocide from different works by Toynbee (compiler: Vahakn N. Dadrian))

1. Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation (London, Hodder & Stougton, 1915). The intermittent sufferings of the Armenian race have culminated in an organized, cold-blooded attempt on the part of its Turkish rulers to exterminate it once and for all by methods of inconceivable barbarity and wickedness... (p. 17)

The evidence is indeed abundant and direct, and it is also appalling in the uniformity with which it unfolds its otherwise scarcely credible tale. (p. 23)

2. The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915-16 by Viscount Bryce. Compilation of the documents by Toynbee. (London, His Majesty's Stationary Office. Miscellaneous No. 31, 1916).

The fundamental uniformity of procedure is more sinister than the incidental aggravations of the crime by Kurds, peasants, gendarmes or local authorities. It is damning evidence that the procedure itself which set in motion all the other forces of evil, was conceived and organized by the Central Government at Constantinople. (p. 637).

... The Young Turk ministers and their associates are directly responsible from beginning to end for the great crime that devastated the Middle East in 1915. (p. 653)

3. Turkey: A Past and a Future (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1917)

...Turkey, the Ottoman State, is not a unity ...it is a pretension, enforced by bloodshed and violence whenever and wherever the Ottoman Government has power... (p. 8)

The Armenians were rounded up and deported by regular troops and gendarmes; they were massacred on the road by bands of çetes, consisting chiefly of criminals released from prison by the Government for this work... (p. 20)

4. The Western Question in Greece and Turkey (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1922).

...The attempt to exterminate the Armenians in 1915 ...hundreds of thousands of people were done to death and thousands turned into robbers and murderers by the administrative action of a few dozen criminals in control of the Ottoman Empire. (p. 265)

5. Acquaintances (London, Oxford University Press. 1967).

With reference to the Armenian genocide, Toynbee wrote:

I was not only haunted by the victim's sufferings and by the criminals' deeds... I was exercised by the question how it could be possible for human beings to do what those perpetrators of genocide had done ...the deportations were deliberately conducted with a brutality that was calculated to take the maximum toll of lives en route. (pp. 240-241)

6. Experiences (London, Oxford University Press, 1969).

I am old enough to remember the horror at the massacre of Armenian Ottoman subjects in the Ottoman Empire in 1896 at the instigation of infamous Sultan Abd-al-Hamid П... The massacre of Armenian subjects in the Ottoman Empire in 1896... was amateur and ineffective compared with the largely successful attempt to exterminate [them] during the First World War in 1915... [This] genocide ... was carried out... under the cloak of legality by cold-blooded governmental action. These were not mass-murders committed spontaneously by mobs of private people. (p. 241)

7. Mankind and Mother Earth: A Narrative History of the Earth (New York, Oxford Univ. Press. 1976).

The atrociousness of the two great 20th century wars was aggravated by genocide. In the First World War the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians; in the Second World War the Germans committed genocide against the Jews. (p. 585

Robert Tatoyan
AGMI Senior Researcher, Armenian Genocide Source Studies