A Theoretical Inquiry into the Armenian Massacres of 1894–1896

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Abstract
In the period 1894–96, when the Ottoman Empire was ruled by Sultan Abdul Hamid II, tens of thousands of Armenians were massacred. Nineteen years later, when the empire was weakened by disintegration and war, some one million persons—half of the Armenian population—were killed with the active participation of the Committee of Union and Progress, the ruling party of the day. The massacres and the genocide—for that is what the second act of violence has come to be called—must rank among the most terrible catastrophes of our era. Two questions come to mind: why did these things happen, and what is there to be learned from the Armenian case? We shall attempt to answer these two questions, keeping in mind that for historical events of such complexity and magnitude there are no final answers, merely more or less credible, more or less convincing, formulations. And given the obvious limitations, this article will focus on the massacres alone.

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