page_title: Hamidian massacres
section_title: International reaction
hierarchical_section_title: Hamidian massacres / International reaction
caption_attribution_description: العربية: رسم لِلسُلطان عبد الحميد الثاني.
context_page_description: The Hamidian massacres, also referred to as the Armenian Massacres of 1894–1896 and Armenian genocide, were massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire that took place in the mid-1890s. It was estimated casualties ranged from 80,000 to 300,000, resulting in 50,000 orphaned children. The massacres are named after Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who, in his efforts to maintain the imperial domain of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, reasserted Pan-Islamism as a state ideology. Although the massacres were aimed mainly at the Armenians, they turned into indiscriminate anti-Christian pogroms in some cases, such as the Diyarbekir massacre, where, at least according to one contemporary source, up to 25,000 Assyrians were also killed.
  The massacres began in the Ottoman interior in 1894, before becoming more widespread in the following years. Between 1894 and 1896 was when the majority of the murders took place. The massacres began tapering off in 1897, following international condemnation of Abdul Hamid. The harshest measures were directed against the long persecuted Armenian community as calls for civil reform and better treatment from the government went ignored.
context_section_description: News of the Armenian massacres in the empire were widely reported in Europe and the United States and drew strong responses from foreign governments, humanitarian organizations, and the press alike. British print and illustrated newspapers regularly covered the massacres, with the popular weekly Punch publishing dozens of cartoons depicting the carnage. Further, historian Leslie Rogne Schumacher notes that the massacres "reflected and impacted the changing world of European international relations" in the years before the First World War, weakening Britain's relationship with the Ottoman Empire and bolstering British ties to Russia.
  The French ambassador described Turkey as "literally in flames," with "massacres everywhere" and all Christians being murdered "without distinction." A French vice consul declared that the Ottoman Empire was "gradually annihilating the Christian element" by "giving the Kurdish chieftains carte blanche to do whatever they please, to enrich themselves at the Christians' expense and to satisfy their men's whims."
  One headline in a September 1895 article by The New York Times ran "Armenian Holocaust," while the Catholic World declared, "Not all the perfume of Arabia can wash the hand of Turkey clean enough to be suffered any longer to hold the reins of power over one inch of Christian territory." The rest of the American press called for action to help the Armenians and to remove, "if not by political action than by resort to the knife... the fever spot of the Turkish Empire." King Leopold II of Belgium told British Prime Minister Salisbury that he was prepared to send his Congolese Force Publique to "invade and occupy" Armenia. The massacres were an important item on the agenda of the United States President Grover Cleveland, and in his presidential platform for 1896, Republican candidate William McKinley listed the saving of the Armenians as one of his top priorities in foreign policy. Americans in the Ottoman Empire, such as George Washburn, then-president of the Constantinople-based Robert College, pressured their government to take concrete action. In December 1900, the USS Kentucky called at the port of Smyrna, where its captain, "Red Bill" Kirkland, delivered the following warning, somewhat softened by his translator, to its governor: "If these massacres continue I'll be swuzzled if I won't someday forget my order… and find some pretext to hammer a few Turkish towns…  I'd keel-haul every blithering mother's son of a Turk that wears hair." Americans on the mainland, such as Julia Ward Howe, David Josiah Brewer, and John D. Rockefeller, donated and raised large amounts of money and organized relief aid that was channeled to the Armenians via the newly established American Red Cross. Other humanitarian groups and the Red Cross helped by sending aid to the remaining survivors who were dying of disease and hunger.
  At the height of the massacres, in 1896, Abdul Hamid tried to limit the flow of information coming out of Turkey (Harper's Weekly was banned by Ottoman censors for its extensive coverage of the massacres) and counteract the negative press by enlisting the help of sympathetic Western activists and journalists. The Zionist leader Theodor Herzl responded ecstatically to Abdul Hamid's personal request to harness "Jewish power" in order to undermine the widespread sympathy felt for Armenians in Europe. Through his contacts, favorable impressions of the empire were published in a number of European newspapers and magazines, while Herzl himself attempted unsuccessfully to mediate between the Sultan and Armenian party activists in France, Britain, Austria and elsewhere. Herzl acknowledged that the arrangement with the Abdul Hamid was temporary and his services were in exchange for bringing about a more favorable Ottoman attitude toward Zionism. "Under no circumstances," he wrote, "are the Armenians to learn that we want to use them in order to erect a Jewish state." Herzl's currying the Sultan's favor did not go without protest. Bernard Lazare published an open letter critical of Herzl and re
caption: Sultan Abdul Hamid II
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