Networking against Genocide during the First World War: the international network behind the British Parliamentary report on the Armenian Genocide

Abstract

In 1916, Lord Bryce and Arnold Toynbee produced a report to the British Parliament which became the first large-scale collection of evidence of the Armenian Genocide. The book was the product of a remarkable international collaborative network involving British, US, Swiss, German, Armenian and other contributors. This article provides a deep analysis of the network and its motivations, arguing that the collaborators mutually stimulated each other’s actions to go further than was possible through the resources of one part of the network alone, and assesses the book’s effectiveness as a tool of fundraising. Further, it argues that the transatlantic and transnational collaboration occurred at a point of wider transition, brought about by the First World War, in which presumed international leadership of opinion shifted from Britain to the United States.

Keywords:

• Armenian Genocide
• First World War
• humanitarianism
• international networks
• public opinion

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this article were presented to the University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Humanities Seminar, and to the ‘Globalising and Localising the Great War’ Research Seminar at the University of Oxford during 2017, and I am grateful to the participants in those events for their comments. Thanks are also due to the College of Arts, University of Canterbury, for sabbatical funding which enabled research in Boston and London, and to the University of Canterbury and University of Oxford for approving a Visiting Oxford Fellowship which enabled research in Oxford. Quotations from the papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions are reproduced by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University, and used by permission, United Church of Christ Wider Church Ministries, and I thank these organisations for their permissions. I am also grateful to Mrs Jean Toynbee for her permission to quote from Arnold J. Toynbee’s uncatalogued papers at the Bodleian Library, and to the Bodleian Library for permission to quote from the Bryce Papers.

Notes on contributor

David Monger is Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Canterbury, where he has worked since 2010. He has written extensively on First World War topics including, most frequently, British propaganda. He is author of Patriotism and Propaganda in First World War Britain: the National War Aims Committee and Civilian Morale (2012) and co-editor (with Sarah Murray and Katie Pickles) of Endurance and the First World War: Experiences and Legacies in New Zealand and Australia (2014), and has published several articles on related topics.

Notes

1. For the best short account, see Donald Bloxham, ‘The Armenian Genocide of 1915–1916: Cumulative Radicalization and the Development of a Destruction Policy’, Past and Present 181 (2003); for the development of scholarship on the subject, see Ronald Grigor Suny, ‘Writing Genocide: the Fate of the Armenians’, in A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire, ed. Fatma Müge Göçek Suny and Norman M. Naimark (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

2. Ugur Ümit Üngör, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), ch. 2.

3. Joint declaration, cited in Geoffrey Robertson, An Inconvenient Genocide (Sydney: Vintage Books, 2014), 30.

4. James Bryce and Arnold J. Toynbee, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon by Viscount Bryce (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916). A modern, revised edition, with many of the anonymised names reinstated, may be found in Ara Sarafian (ed.), The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon by Viscount Bryce, Uncensored Edition, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Gomidas Institute, 2005).

5. For useful extended discussions of denial of the Armenian Genocide, see, e.g., Fatma Müge Göçek, Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789–2009 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Robertson, Inconvenient Genocide. For a comment on the need to conduct research into topics related to the genocide without permitting ‘deniers and obfuscators  …  to set the agenda’, see Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 20.

6. Previous scholarly works addressing the book and its construction at some length include Ara Sarafian, ‘The Archival Trail: Authentication of The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–16’, in Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998); Sarafian, ‘Introduction’, Uncensored Edition; David Miller, ‘The treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: A History of the Blue Book’, RUSI Journal 150, no. 4 (2005); Michelle Tusan, Smyrna’s Ashes: Humanitarianism, Genocide, and the Birth of the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012); Tusan, ‘“Crimes against Humanity”: Human Rights, the British Empire, and the Origins of the Response to the Armenian Genocide’, American Historical Review 119, no. 1 (2014); Tusan, ‘James Bryce’s Blue Book as Evidence’, Journal of Levantine Studies 5, no. 2 (2015).

7. For recent discussions of Barton’s work during the war, see Karine V. Walther, Sacred Interests: The United States and the Islamic World, 1821–1921 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), esp. ch. 8; Walther, ‘For God and Country: James Barton, the Ottoman Empire and missionary diplomacy during World War I’, First World War Studies 7, no. 1 (2016).

8. Place-names in the text follow those used in Bryce and Toynbee’s report, rather than modern versions.

9. American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions Archives, 1810–1961, Houghton Library, Harvard University (henceforth ABCFMA, HLHU), ABC 16.9.3, vol. 48, Henry H. Riggs to W.W. Peet, 9 July 1915; Peet to James L. Barton, 17 August 1915 (stamped received, via Washington, 2 October 1915). These and all subsequent references to ABCFM papers reproduced by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University, and used by permission, United Church of Christ Wider Church Ministries.

10. ABCFMA, HLHU, ABC 16.9.3, vol. 48, Peet to Barton, 19 September 1914.

11. ABCFMA, HLHU, ABC 16.9.3, vol. 48, Peet to Barton, 2 February 1915.

12. ABCFMA, HLHU, ABC 16.9.3, vol. 48, Peet to Barton, 9 April 1915.

13. Holy Bible, King James Version, Hebrews 11: 36–37, from: https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Hebrews-Chapter-11/ (accessed November 27, 2017).

14. ABCFMA, HLHU, ABC 16.9.3, vol. 48, Peet to Barton, 12 July 1915.

15. ABCFMA, HLHU, ABC 16.9.3, vol. 48, Peet to Barton, 14 December 1915.

16. See, e.g. Justin McCarthy, The Turk in America: Creation of an Enduring Prejudice (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2010), p. 172 on ‘anonymous sources’, used by Barton and his co-campaigners, ‘who made the most damning claims of Turkish misdeeds’.

17. ‘The Doyen of Armenia’s British Champions’, Ararat 3, no. 25 (July 1915): 16–20.

18. Barton sent Bryce a letter, mostly regarding Armenia, regretting Bryce’s departure as Ambassador in April 1913: Bodleian Library, Oxford (henceforth BLO), Bryce Papers, MS Bryce USA 3, James Barton to Bryce, 17 April 1913.

19. BLO Bryce Papers, MS Bryce 199, George E. White to Bryce, 19 September 1903; Alice Stone Blackwell to Bryce, 13 October 1903. Like many other members of the network, Blackwell was celebrated in Ararat as ‘A Devoted Friend of Armenians’, Ararat 4, no. 46 (April 1917): 443–8.

20. For the pro-Armenian circles in Britain, see Akaby Nassibian, Britain and the Armenian Question, 1915–1923 (London: Croom Helm, 1984); Laycock, Imagining Armenia: Orientalism, Ambiguity and Intervention (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009).

21. BLO, A.J. Toynbee uncatalogued Papers, Box 80, ‘Individuals described by Veronica Toynbee (D)’, Robert Selby Darbishire to Toynbee, 12 June 1915.

22. For criticisms, see Arthur Ponsonby, Falsehood in Wartime: Containing an Assortment of Lies Circulated Throughout the Nations during the Great War (London: Allen & Unwin, 1928); J.M. Read, Atrocity Propaganda, 1914–1919 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941); Trevor Wilson, ‘Lord Bryce’s Investigation into Alleged German Outrages in Belgium, 1914–1915’, Journal of Contemporary History 14, no. 3 (1979).; for revision, see John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), esp. 232–7; Taner Akçam, ‘Anatomy of Genocide Denial: Academics, Politicians and the “Remaking” of History’, University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies Occasional Paper, 2005: http://chgs.umn.edu/histories/occasional/Akcam_Anatomy_of_Denial.pdf (accessed October 16, 2013).

23. See esp. McCarthy, Turk in America, ch. 10.

24. ABCFMA, HLHU, ABC 11.4, Box 2, Barton to G. Bie Ravndal (US Consul-General, Constantinople), 12 April 1911; for an earlier example, see Barton to Herbert Pierce (State Department), 18 June 1903.

25. ABCFMA, HLHU, ABC 3.2, vol. 327, ABCFM Foreign Department Letter Book, Dec 18 1916–Feb 8 1917: Barton to William Walker Rockwell, 25 Jan. 1917. See also similar letters to Frederick Dixon and William T. Ellis, 24 January 1917 in the same volume.

26. For scholarly discussion of Barton’s political influence, see Joseph L. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: Missionary Influence on America Policy, 1810–1927 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971); Walther, Sacred Interests, esp. ch. 8; Walther, ‘For God and Country’.

27. James Barton, ‘Reminiscences of James L. Barton. XI. I’ll Tell the World’, Missionary Herald, November 1927, clipping in ABCFMA HLHU, ABC 11.4, Box 12.1. See also Barton’s comments in his unpublished ‘Autobiographical notes’, c. 1934–36, pp. 172–8, in ABC 11.4, Box 12.2.

28. ‘Report of Committee on Armenian Atrocities’, marked ‘Release for publication in Papers of Monday, Oct. 4, 1915’. A copy is held in the British Library: American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, ‘[Reports, Appeals etc.]’ (New York, 1915–16), shelfmark General Reference Collection 10077.h.3. For two post-war accounts of the Committee’s formation, see James L. Barton, Story of Near East Relief (1915–1930): An Interpretation (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1930), 9–18; Charles H. Levermore, Samuel Train Dutton: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1922), 158–63.

29. ABCMFA HLHU, ABC 2.1: Letters: foreign (Copy-book series), 1836–1916, vol. 289, Barton to Peet, 21 September 1915.

30. For examples of Barton supplying Bryce with information, see, e.g., ABCMFA HLHU, ABC 2.1: Letters: foreign (Copy-book series), 1836–1916, vol. 287, Barton to Bryce, 22 July 1915; vol. 288, Barton to Bryce, 5 August 1915. For Bryce’s help with introductions for Nubar, see BLO, Bryce Papers, MS Bryce 201, H.N. Mosditchian to Bryce, 12 July 1915; Nubar to Bryce, 7 August 1915. Further examples are in Boghos Nubar’s Papers and the Armenian Question, 1915–1918: Documents, ed. Vatche Ghazarian (Waltham, MA: Mayreni Publishing, 1996).

31. ABCMFA HLHU, ABC 2.1: Letters: foreign (Copy-book series), 1836–1916, vol. 289, Enoch F. Bell to F.W. Macallum (c/o Leopold Favre), 22 September 1915.

32. Arnold Toynbee, Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation, 2 eds., (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1915).

33. The National Archives: Public Record Office, Kew (henceforth TNA:PRO), FO 96/207, Toynbee Armenia papers, Bryce to Toynbee, 17 October 1915.

34. BLO, Bryce papers, MS Bryce 201, Tchobanian to Bryce, 24 September 1915.

35. See, e.g., BLO, Bryce Papers, MS Bryce 199, Tcobanian to Bryce, 16 May 1899, 23 May 1899, 10 September 1900, 11 August 1901, 2 June 1902.

36. See, e.g., BLO, Bryce papers, MS Bryce 201, Nubar to Bryce, 13 September 1915 (enclosing letter from Nubar to Williams of same date); Tchobanian to Bryce, 26 September 1915; A. Safrastian to Bryce, 7 October 1915; A. Hacopian to Bryce, 8 November 1915; Williams to Bryce, 12 November 1915.

37. For discussion of Toynbee’s role at Wellington House, see M.L. Sanders and Philip M. Taylor, British Propaganda during the First World War, 1914–1918 (London: Macmillan, 1982), 145–6; Stuart Wallace, War and the Image of Germany: British Academics, 1914–1918 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1988), 186–90.

38. BLO, Bryce papers, MS Bryce 201, Williams to Bryce, 12 November 1915; TNA:PRO, FO 96/205, Gregory to Toynbee 30 November 1915, Toynbee to Gregory, 16 December 1915.

39. TNA:PRO, FO96/207, Bryce to Toynbee, 19, 20 and 25 October, 8 and 11 December 1915.

40. TNA:PRO, FO 96/207, Bryce to Toynbee, 19 October 1915. See also Bryce to Toynbee, 6 November 1915. Despite this, some anti-German material did appear in the pamphlet: Armenian Atrocities, 106–16.

41. TNA:PRO FO 96/205, Robinson to Toynbee, 15 November 1915.

42. BLO, Bryce papers, MS Bryce 20, Barton to Bryce, 18 November 1915. ABCMFA HLHU, ABC 2.1, vol. 291, Barton to Robinson, 19 January 1916.

43. TNA:PRO FO 96/205, Rockwell to Toynbee, 15 May 1916.

44. TNA:PRO FO 96/207, Bryce to Toynbee, 21 December 1915 first indicates the book’s genesis. For Toynbee’s later account, see Arnold J. Toynbee, Acquaintances (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 149–52.

45. TNA:PRO FO 96/207, Bryce to Toynbee, 19 October 1915; see also his letters of 25 October and 25 November for similar care about secrecy.

46. ABCFMA HLHU, ABC 2.1, vol. 289, Barton to Thomas D. Christie, 24 September 1915.

47. Treatment of Armenians, Doc. 141, 552–3.

48. Rouben P. Adalian, ‘American Diplomatic Correspondence in the Age of Mass Murder: The Armenian Genocide in the US Archives’, in America and the Armenian Genocide, ed. Jay Winter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 180–1.

49. Re. Rohner’s work, see Hans-Lukas Kieser, ‘Beatrice Rohner (1876–1947) and the Armenian Genocide’, in A Quest for Belonging: Anatolia Beyond Empire and Nation (19th-21st Centuries) (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2007).

50. ABCMFA HLHU, ABC 16.9.3, vol. 48, Peet to Barton, 12 January 1916.

51. Re. Wolff-Metternich’s role, see, e.g., Eric D. Weitz, ‘Germany and the Young Turks: Revolutionaries into statesmen’, in Suny et al., Question of Genocide, 194–5; Ronald Grigor Suny, ‘They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else’: A History of the Armenian Genocide (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 301–2; Stefan Ihrig, Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 127–8. For the German diplomatic record, see The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915–1916, ed. Wolfgang Gust (New York: Berghahn Books, 2014).

52. BLO, Bryce Papers, MS Bryce USA 3, Barton to Bryce, 11 November 1915; ABCFMA HLHU, ABC 3.2, vol. 321, Barton to Toynbee, 25 April 1916.

53. ABCFMA HLHU, ABC 11.4, Box 12.2, James Barton, ‘Autobiographical notes, written 1934–36’, 255.

54. TNA:PRO FO96/205, letters to Barton, 1 February 1916; ‘Monsieur le Redacteur’, 1 Febuary 1916 (replied to by Léopold Favre of the Comité des Secours aux Arméniens, 15 February 1916). For further early contacts consulted in the UK, France and Egypt, see also Toynbee’s letters to Gregory, 15 February 1916; Herbert Adams Gibbons, 22 February 1916; I.N. Camp (American Red Cross), 20 March 1916.

55. Obituary by A. Krafft-Bonnard from the Semaine religieuse de Genève, 29 April 1922, reproduced in Léopold Favre, 1846–1922: Hommages Rendus a sa Mémoire; Ses Lettres écrites du Proche-Orient; La Bulle Pontificale, ed. Edouard Favre (Geneva: Imprimerie Albert Kundig, 1923), 19–22.

56. ‘A Distinguished Gentleman and Philanthropist’, Ararat 4, no. 47 (May 1917): 492–5.

57. Re. Favre’s Armenian relief work, see Favre, Léopold Favre. Edmond Barde considered Favre the Armenians’ ‘most devoted and compassionate friend’ during the war (p. 11). Louis Debarge (pp. 13–16) stressed his connections with ‘influential’ supporters of the Armenian cause around the world, including Bryce, Lepsius and missionary and relief representatives William Peet and Charles Vickrey in the US. For Nubar’s opinion see Nubar to Catholicos Kevork V, 15 December 1916, in Ghazarian, Boghos Nubar’s Papers, p. 420. For Favre’s connections with the ABCFM, see, e.g. ABCFMA HLHU, ABC 2.1, vol. 288, Barton to Frederick W. McCallum, c/o Leopold Favre, Geneva, 2 September 1915; BA 16.9.3, vol. 48, Peet to Favre, 30 March 1917; Peet to Barton, 5 June 1917, and discussions of Peet’s further meetings with Favre in letters between July and September 1917.

58. Bryce to Nubar, 9 May 1915; Williams to Nubar, 10 May; Gregory to Nubar, 20 May; notes of Meeting between Nubar and Count Benckendorff, 12 July; Memorandum to the Foreign Office, 16 July; notes of Meeting between Nubar and Delcassé, 14 September; notes of meeting between Nubar and Count Izvolski, 22 September, in Ghazarian, Boghos Nubar’s Papers, 23, 25–6, 46, 152–4, 170–6, 282–3, 287. For Barton and Bryce’s discussion of Nubar see, e.g., ABCFMA HLHU, ABC 2.1, vol. 286, Barton to Bryce, 7 June 1915.

59. On Lepsius, see Margaret Lavinia Anderson, ‘Down in Turkey Far Away: Human Rights, the Armenian Massacres and Orientalism in Wilhelmine Germany’, Journal of Modern History 79, no. 1 (2007) and ‘Who Still Talked about the Extermination of the Armenians? German Talk and German Silences’, in Suny et al., Question of Genocide; Ihrig, Justifying Genocide.

60. BLO Bryce Papers, MS Bryce 199, Countess Elisabeth Groeben to Bryce, 5 April 1899; MS Bryce 200, Lepsius to Bryce, 17 May 1904.

61. TNA:PRO FO96/205, Paelian to Toynbee, 22 February 1916, answering questions addressed to Gregory, is the first of several letters from Paelian to Toynbee in his correspondence. For an example of Paelian’s guidance on a source’s value, see, e.g., the exchange between Paelian and Toynbee re. the value of an Armenian account of the defence of Jibal Mousa (Musa Dagh), 26–30 April 1916.

62. ABCMFA HLHU, ABC 2.1, vol. 288, Barton to Edward Woodley, 30 August 1915; vol. 289, Enoch Bell to F.W. Macallum, 22 September 1915; Barton to Bryce, 6 October 1915; vol. 290, Barton to Mrs. J. Kingsley Birge, 1 December 1915; Barton to Aneurin Williams, 4 December 1915; ABC 3.2, vol. 320, Barton to Lillian C. Sewny, 7 March 1916; vol. 324, Barton to Robert Lansing, 15 September 1916; Barton to Henry Kelsey and Joseph Tory, 15 September 1916.

63. On Woodrow Wilson’s formation and delivery of such perspectives, see Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), esp. chs. 1–2.

64. ABCFMA HLHU, ABC 11.4, Box 3, Bryce to Barton, 1 August 1916.

65. See, e.g., BLO, Bryce Papers, MS Bryce 204, Barton to Bryce, 25 January 1917; Frederick Dixon (Christian Science Monitor, Boston) to Bryce, 27 February 1917; MS Bryce 243, Toynbee to Bryce, 31 January 1917, re. request from Rockwell for prominent British writers, especially Bryce, to contribute to next ACASR publicity campaign; MS Bryce USA 3, Barton to Bryce, 18 May 1918.

66. BLO, Bryce Papers, MS Bryce 199, Blackwell to Bryce, 13 October 1903.

67. ABCFMA HLHU, ABC 2.1, vol. 288, Barton to Bryce, 5 August 1915; Barton to Macallum, 2 September 1915.

68. ABCFMA HLHU, ABC 2.1, vol. 289, Barton to Peet, 5 October 1915.

69. TNA:PRO FO 96/205, Toynbee to Rev. Harold Stevens, 12 February 1916. For a similar sentiment by another member of the network, see BLO, Bryce Papers, MS Bryce 201, Boghos Nubar to Bryce, 7 August 1915.

70. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy, pp. 33; See also David Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia During World War I (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2006), 15–17.

71. Karine V. Walther, Sacred Interests: The United States and the Islamic World, 1821–1921 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 244.

72. Laycock, Imagining Armenia, 30–6.

73. Nassibian, Armenian Question, 10–11.

74. For a clear evocation of Liberal sympathy for small nations, see Jonathan Parry, The Politics of Patriotism: English Liberalism, Nationalism, and Europe, 1830–1886 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), esp. chs. 5 and 7.

75. Laycock, Imagining Armenia, 48; John T. Seaman, A Citizen of the World: The Life of James Bryce (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 80–2, 94, 171–3.

76. Nassibian, Armenian Question, 38–48; see also Roy Douglas, ‘Britain and the Armenian Question, 1894–97’, Historical Journal, 19 (1976).

77. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy, 63–7, 46–9. Others go further, suggesting missionaries’ testimonies cannot be trusted because they actively sought to destroy the Ottoman Empire to enable greater conversion: McCarthy, Turk in America, 202.

78. See, E.g., ABCFMA HLHU ABC 16.9.3, vol. 48, Peet to Barton, 17 August 1915; ABC 2.1, vol. 291, Barton to Rev. Robert Christie 9 February 1916.

79. Hans-Lukas Kieser, ‘Missionary America and Ottoman Turkey. The Seminal Break of World War I’, in A Quest for Belonging, 34–48, at 45. On missionaries’ capacity to act, see Tusan, Smyrna’s Ashes, ch. 4.

80. Davide Rodogno, Against Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire, 1815–1914: The Emergence of a European Concept and International Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). See also Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy, 68–9.

81. Nassibian, Armenian Question, 52.

82. ABCFMA HLHU, ABC 3.3, vol. II, Bryce to Barton, 30 March 1915; ABC 2.1, vol. 286, Barton to Bryce, 16 April 1915; vol. 287, Barton to Bryce, 15 June 1915, 22 July 1915.

83. See, e.g., Bryce, ‘Preface’, Treatment of Armenians, xxviii; Toynbee, ‘A Summary of Armenian History up to and including the year 1915’, Treatment of Armenians, 653.

84. Toynbee, Acquaintances, 149–52.

85. On this topic, see Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 1914–1918: Understanding the Great War (London: Profile Books, 2002). For its application in the US, see esp. Jessica Bennett and Mark Hampton, ‘World War I and the Anglo-American Imagined Community: Civilization vs. Barbarism in British Propaganda and American Newspapers’, in Joel H. Wiener and Mark Hampton (eds.), Anglo-American Media Interactions, 1850–2000 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

86. Tusan, Smyrna’s Ashes, 124.

87. See, e.g. TNA:PRO, Press Bureau files, ‘D’ Notices, HO 139/43, D186, 16 March 1915, prohibiting discussion of a war between Christians and Muslims; HO 139/44, D363, 21 February 1916, explicitly prohibiting negative comments on the Ottoman Empire that might affect Indian Muslims; HO 139/45, D607, 15 November 1917, on avoiding discussion of a ‘holy war’ with the Ottoman Empire.

88. Nassibian, Armenian Question, 78–9; Seaman, Citizen of the World, 209–13; McCarthy, Turk in America, 223.

89. For an officially endorsed statement of this perspective, see the article by Justin McCarthy, ‘The Bryce Report: British propaganda and the Turks’, reproduced on the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website, from which the quotation is taken: http://www.mfa.gov.tr/the-bryce-report_-british-propaganda-and-the-turks.en.mfa (accessed January 24, 2014). By 30 January 2015, this page was no longer accessible and the web-link redirected to the Foreign Ministry homepage. However, a snapshot was captured on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine (archive.org) in 2012: http://web.archive.org/web/20120214212329/http://www.mfa.gov.tr/the-bryce-report_-britishpropaganda-and-the-turks.en.mfa (accessed November 28, 2017). For a very similar, but footnoted, version see McCarthy, Turk in America, ch. 10. For a less direct discussion which nonetheless seeks to invalidate the book, see Guenter Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005), 137–9.

90. Sarafian, ‘Introduction’; Miller, ‘The Treatment of Armenians’; Akçam, ‘Anatomy of Genocide denial’; Tusan, Smyrna’s Ashes, 121–29; Tusan, ‘James Bryce’s Blue Book’.

91. Propaganda scholarship largely does not address the book. For two examples of critical commentary by propaganda scholars, however, see Read, Atrocity Propaganda, 216–22; Wallace, War and the Image, 186–90.

92. Trevor Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War: Britain and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986), 733.

93. See, for example, TNA:PRO FO96/205, G.H. Fitzmaurice to Toynbee, 21 February 1916, discussing Toynbee’s ‘Armenian propaganda work’; FO96/207; Toynbee to Gregory, 3 February 1917, which notes Gregory’s knowledge of his employment in a ‘propaganda office’; and ABCFMA HLHU ABC 3.2 vol. 326, Barton to R.B. Boys (Melbourne Public Library), 24 November 1916, which encourages Boys to write to Toynbee at Wellington House for a copy of the book.

94. For Lepsius’s connections with other members of the network, see the references in TNA:PRO FO 96/205, Favre to Toynbee, 18 March 1916; FO96/206, Rockwell to Toynbee, 19 August 1916.

95. TNA:PRO FO96/206, Bryce to Toynbee, 23 September 1916; Bryce to Masterman, 28 September 1916. Bryce subsequently received another copy in October from Nubar, again illustrating the interconnected network assisting Bryce and Toynbee: BLO, Bryce Papers, MS Bryce 203, Nubar to Bryce, 6 October 1916.

96. BLO, Bryce Papers, MS Bryce 203, Johannes Lepsius to Bryce, 1 December 1916; Nubar to Bryce, 6 October 1916.

97. TNA:PRO FO96/206, Toynbee to Favre, 18 October 1916.

98. TNA:PRO FO96/207, Bryce to Toynbee, 18 July 1916; FO96/206, Bryce to Masterman, 20 September 1916; Toynbee to Stephen Gaselee, 20 September 1916; Masterman to Bryce, 21 September 1916; Bryce to Masterman, 21 September 1916.

99. Cf. the gleeful exploitation of the former German ambassador to London’s memoirs: Harry F. Young, Prince Lichnowsky and the Great War (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1977), 145–59.

100. TNA:PRO FO96/205, Toynbee to Barton, 1 February 1916; to ‘Monsieur le Redacteur’ [Favre], 1 February 1916; to the Editor of Ararat (London) [Gregory], 8 February 1916.

101. TNA:PRO FO96/205, Toynbee to Enoch Bell, 2 March 1916.

102. TNA:PRO FO96/205, Favre to Toynbee, 15 February 1916; Toynbee to Gregory, 24 February 1916; Toynbee to Barton, 24 February 1916. For references to Favre’s extensive Armenian relief work, see Favre, Léopold Favre, esp. 11, 13–16.

103. TNA:PRO FO96/205, W. Hornblower (Government Delegate for administration of refugees in Egypt, Alexandria) to Toynbee, 14 April 1916; reply by Toynbee, 6 May 1916. Jibal Mousa is more commonly labelled as Musa Dagh.

104. Toynbee, ‘Summary’, 627–33.

105. TNA:PRO FO96/205, letters, Toynbee to Rockwell, Barton and Favre, 20 June 1916. For examples of Toynbee’s repeated requests for more information, see several letters to representatives of the ABCFM and ACASR: Toynbee to Barton, 1 February 1916; Toynbee to Bell, 2 March 1916; Toynbee to Barton, 6 March 1916; Toynbee to Barton, 23 March 1916; Toynbee to Barton, 5 April 1916; Toynbee to Barton, 12 April 1916; Barton to Toynbee, 1 April 1916; Bell to Toynbee, 3 April 1916; Toynbee to Barton, 18 April 1916; Barton to Toynbee, 17 April 1916; Barton to Toynbee, 25 April 1916; Barton to Toynbee, 1 May 1916; Toynbee to Barton, 15 June 1916. Letters are listed in the order they appear in the file; part of the difficulty over securing complete information seemed to be long delays between despatch and receipt of letters.

106. Bryce, ‘Preface’, and Toynbee, ‘Memorandum by the Editor of the Documents’, Treatment of Armenians, xxiv–xxv, xxxvi. Barton also talked dismissively about the value of Armenian testimony. See, e.g., his letter to Bryce indicating that he was avoiding using Armenian reports that were ‘liable to be much tinged with rumour’: ABCFMA HLHU, ABC 2.1, vol. 289 Barton to Bryce, 16 October 1915. Note, however, that Bryce also used the term ‘excitement’ in discussing Belgian testimony, suggesting this was not an idea confined to ‘orientals’. See Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages (London: HMSO, 1915), 7.

107. TNA:PRO FO96/207, Bryce to Toynbee, 18 July 1916; Toynbee to Bryce, 22 July 1916; Bryce to Toynbee, 22 July 1916; Toynbee to Bryce, 1 August 1916. Tusan, Smyrna’s Ashes, 124–5.

108. On strained charitable generosity, see Wilson, Myriad Faces, 774–6.

109. For observations on the difficulty and necessity of identifying elements discussed in propaganda material besides the most prominent topic, see David Monger, Patriotism and Propaganda in First World War Britain: the National War Aims Committee and Civilian Morale (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012), 7–9 and ch. 4.

110. Treatment of Armenians, Doc 139, 550.

111. Doc. 31, 150.

112. Doc. 9, 21. For the letter’s progress, see Sarafian, Uncensored Edition, 60.

113. Bloxham, Great Game of Genocide, esp. ch. 6; Manoug J. Somakian, Empires in Conflict: Armenia and the Great Powers, 1895–1920 (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 1995), esp. ch. 5.

114. For a series of letters relating to the conference and Barton’s increasing frustration, and eventual sense of resignation, see ABCFMA HLHU, ABC 11.4 Box 2, folder 9, letters from Barton, 15 November 1922–19 January 1923.

115. Daniel Steel, ‘Genocide on Fleet Street: The Armenian Genocide in the British Press, 1915–1918’ (Honours dissertation, University of Canterbury, 2016).

116. See the statistics reported by G.H. Paelian for the ACASR in his article ‘The Situation in Armenia’, and Harold Buxton’s report of the ‘Armenian Refugees (Lord Mayor’s) Fund’ in Ararat 5, no. 56 (February–March 1918): 345, 357.

117. Thanks to Adrian Gregory for this suggestion, based on his knowledge of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s papers.

118. Steel, ‘Genocide on Fleet Street’; Keith David Watenpaugh, Bread from Stones: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015); Laycock, Imagining Armenia.

119. ABCFMA HLHU, ABC 3.2, vol. 325, Barton to Samuel T. Dutton, 25 September 1916.

120. ABCFMA HLHU, ABC 3.2, vol. 325, Barton to Bryce, 9 October 1916.

121. For further examples of Barton’s publicity mobilisation, see, e.g., ABCFMA HLHU, ABC 3.2, vol. 324, Barton to Toynbee, 24 August 1916; Barton to Charles Vickrey, 8 September 1916; Barton to Bryce, 18 September 1916.

122. For extended discussion of the impact of Wilson’s rhetoric and actions on this point, see Manela, Wilsonian Moment.

123. TNA:PRO FO 96/206, Masterman to Bryce, 21 September 1916.

124. BLO, Bryce Papers, MS Bryce 207, Williams to Bryce, 15 May 1920.