“When the Cannons Talk, the Diplomats Must Be Silent”: A Danish Diplomat in Constantinople during the Armenian Genocide

The envoy Carl Ellis Wandel was the sole Danish diplomatic representative in Constantinople before, during, and after World War I, and between 1914 and 1925 he wrote hundreds of detailed reports on the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians, as well as on related subjects. This article analyzes and contextualizes some of his most important reports, showing how these hitherto unknown sources contribute to the understanding of vital aspects of the Armenian Genocide, not least concerning the ongoing scholarly debate between ‘‘intentionalist’’ and ‘‘structuralist’’ interpretations of the event and concerning the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians as a particularly radical part of a Young Turk project of Turkification

On mission in the cosmopolitan world Ethics of care in the Armenian refugee crisis, 1920-1947

The Swedish missionary, Alma Johansson, witnessed the 1915 Armenian Genocide. Like many foreign missionaries and diplomats, Johansson was caught in the middle of the violence and was then forced to take on wider tasks and develop skills other than what she had primarily been sent out for. After the war, she developed new aid work among Armenian refugees in Thessaloniki. In order to understand Alma Johansson's humanitarian endeavour, I will use the moral philosophical theory of ethics of care as an analytical tool and connect it to moral cosmopolitanism. Ethics of care is still a relatively unexplored field within cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism is rather discussed through abstract accounts of universal principles and of the significance of impartiality, individual rights and justice. The ethics of care emphasizes instead the importance of context, interdependence, relationships and responsibilities to concrete others. From the case of Alma Johansson, the author discusses and analyses the values and practices of interpersonal caring relationships in the specific transnational and humanitarian setting of the Armenian refugee crisis. How are cosmopolitan values expressed in the narratives of Alma Johansson? In what sense can she as a missionary be interpreted as a cosmopolitan caregiver and an intermediary of cosmopolitan values

The enemy within? : Armenians, Jews, the Military Crises of 1915 and the Genocidal Origins of the 'Minorities Question

This chapter identifies two simultaneous First World War military crises, the one Ottoman, the other Russian, with major consequences in the way post-war nation-states began “seeing” minorities and resorting to genocidal action against them. Russian Jews and Ottoman Armenians were largely held responsible for the near-military disasters of 1915 in each case leading to mass communal deportations. While genocide was avoided in the former case, realised in the latter, both sequences acted as “military” models for how “new” states might eliminate unwanted groups through ethnic cleansing. While an alarmed international community responded with a 1919 commitment to minorities’ protection this same community’s imprimatur to mass compulsory population exchange at the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne rather suggests a post-war acceptance of programmes of violent state homogenisation