In the second book of his trilogy on the history of the non-dominant ethnic communities after the Young Turk Revolution, Bedross Der Matossian goes from where his first book, Shattered Dreams of Revolution, ends and fills a significant gap in the historiography of mass violence by focusing on the primarily sidelined yet significant Adana massacres of 1909. In Der Matossian’s macrocosmic understanding of the Adana massacres, the three factors, none of which are more privileged, are “the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, which shook the foundations of the ‘fragile equilibrium’ that had existed in the empire for decades; the emergence of resilient public spheres after three decades of despotic rule in which the public sphere was repressed; and the counterrevolution of April 13, 1909” (p. 4).
Der Matossian presents and explains the four interrelated themes through which he analyzes the incident as dominant and subaltern public spheres, rumors, emotions, and humanitarianism and humanitarian intervention (p. 10). Der Matossian argues that after the Young Turk Revolution, ethnoreligious tensions arose due to the invention of subaltern counter-publics and the circulation of counter-discourses that led to oppositional interpretations. The emergence of new public spheres represented a change in the status quo. One new subaltern public sphere was the Armenians’ socioeconomic and political activities, which led to the dominant groups’ lens of “the emotional spectrum of fear, hatred, resentment, and rage” (p. 230). Dissatisfied with the new order, local beneficiaries of the old regime had a unique role in creating fear and anxiety as they disseminated these rumors to all classes of society (p. 13). These rumors “played a critical role in the solidification of the ethnoreligious identity of the dominant group, giving it a sense of bonding and preparing the ground for a violent backlash against the perceived enemy” (p. 230).
The Horrors of Adana is told in eight chapters. The first three chapters provide the background of the massacres. Following the introduction, Chapter 1 presents a background to the transformation of Adana in the nineteenth century. There, Der Matossian shows how Adana became one of the most important economic centers in the region and argues that “the dramatically increased competition for resources in the region became the source of ethnoreligious conflict” (p. 49). In Chapter 2, Der Matossian focuses on Adana during the Hamidian period and analyzes how the tensions within the “weak public sphere” were restrained by the powerful Governor Bahri Paşa, who had pro-Armenian inclinations. Chapter 3 covers the months between the Revolution and the massacres. In this chapter, Der Matossian explains how the new post-revolutionary public sphere heightened the fear, anger, and distrust among the Muslim population of Adana by changing the status quo through new institutions and mediums.
After traversing the background, the axis of the book shifts to the series of events during the two waves of massacres in the following two chapters. In Chapter 4, Der Matossian explains the first wave of massacres. The post-revolutionary disruption of the power equilibrium in the city opened the way for the “imagined uprising” – that Armenians had a secret plan to revive the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia. Chapter 5 is about the second wave, which occurred under the “false protection” of the regular army troops that arrived from Dedeağaç, Gallipoli, and Beirut. Here, Der Matossian shows how the print media, as part of the unrestrained public sphere, “played a central role in ‘confirming’ the rumors circulating heretofore of the so-called Armenian uprising …” (p. 135).
After examining how the massacres occurred, the final three chapters unearth the aftermath. Chapter 6 is about humanitarian aid and the public uproar at national and international levels. Here the author is critical of the limits of humanitarianism and intervention: The possibility of destabilizing the international system seems to have prevented the representatives of European powers, except the British vice-consul (p. 153). Another two distinctive features of humanitarian aid were, first, the first-time tolerated involvement of Armenians and second, the European ignorance of the Muslim refugees, whose fate also could not be observed in the newspapers. Having sympathy toward the sufferings of the Armenians, on the other hand, the international newspapers covered them extensively (p. 182).
Chapter 7 is about the failure of the Young Turk government to render justice after the Adana massacres. According to Der Matossian, this justice was partially achieved “due to extensive Armenian lobbying in the capital, the active role of the press, the efforts of MP Hagop Babigian (a CUP [Committee of Union and Progress] member and one of the members of the investigation commission), and the efforts of the CUP to satisfy local and international pressure” (p. 185). Yet it was “partial” because “the most significant culprits of the massacres did not receive their deserved punishments” (p. 185). By using the metaphors “the bullet” and “the one who pulled the trigger,” Der Matossian argues that the ordinary people who took part in the massacres “were generally encouraged and sometimes instigated to perpetrate the killings and lootings by powerful individuals,” yet almost all of these individuals “received very light sentences, and most were pardoned eventually” (p. 205). The final chapter supplies examples from the court-martial trials and verdicts, and analyzes how the CUP achieved justice nominally by demonstrating its adherence to the Ottoman Penal Code. Here Der Matossian reminds the reader that imperial pardoning, which was “a tool to contain the pressure from the Muslim population of Adana,” was also part of this adherence (p. 208). In this chapter, the author also touches upon the Governorate of Cemal Bey –later, Paşa. In the conclusion of the chapter, Der Matossian returns to the Young Turks’ “lenient approach” to the key figures of the massacre again and shares the argument of Wood, the contemporary journalist, who claimed that the reason behind this approach was that the Young Turks were “afraid of the potential local and general repercussions of punishing these men in an adequate way” (p. 222).
In addition to the epilogue about the fate of the Armenians of Adana and a summary of his arguments, Der Matossian makes a seven-page comparison of the Adana Massacres with two other massacres, the Odessa pogroms of 1905 and the Sikh massacres of 1984 in his conclusion. It is an essential first step towards examining the Adana Massacres globally.
Writing a field-wise/discipline-wise book on the Adana massacres is not easy: In addition to the well-known hardships of working on the Armenian–Ottoman historiography, the peculiar political characteristics of the period – almost an interregnum – have confused both contemporaries and scholars since. Having employed sources from more than fifteen archives in a dozen languages (including Ottoman Turkish, Armenian, French, English, Arabic, German, Greek, Hebrew, Ladino, and Polish) and comparing with two other cases in Russia and India, Der Matossian accomplishes this job.
The comparisons of the Adana massacres with the Odessa and Sikh massacres are very important examinations that make the reader ask for more: maybe a separate chapter rather than a seven-page analysis in conclusion, or profiting from the narrative of more than one historian (Robert Weinberg) in the pages on Odessa.
At the start of his work, Der Matossian warns the reader that the book is not a definitive history of the Adana massacres. Instead, he notes, his aim is to reveal the full complexity of the incident (p. 2). This statement encourages the readers to engage with the text freely, allowing them to bear some questions in mind. The first one regards the difference between riots and massacres. No one can deny or disagree with Der Matossian’s analysis of the difference between riots and massacres when the Ottoman bureaucracy’s so-called “Armenian riots” discourse is considered (pp. 5–8). However, stories of some of the nearby towns – like Kayseri and Maraş – show that between the Revolution and the massacres, there were Muslim riots against some government officials on the grounds that they were collaborating with Christians, and the Muslim protests against Vali Cevad Bey in Adana at the pre-massacre phase resembled them, a fact that can force us to reconsider the relationship between the two concepts.
The second concerns the relationship between the rational local elites and the mob. In the book, the fair warning to keep in mind that Armenians were not passive objects who lacked agency (p. 4) is ignored when it comes to the Muslim mob, who are portrayed as not more than bullets that were triggered by some other hands (pp. 205, 231). On the other hand, the action of pulling the trigger is presented as “a rational act with its own internal logic and should be studied as such” (p. 7). This logic attributes the Muslim notables with an absolute power to control the mob, which seems extreme given the history-from-below tradition.
The third one regards the evolution of the CUP’s Armenian policy. The Horrors of Adana is also an attempt to address the problem of understanding the Adana massacres in relation to the Armenian Genocide. Rejecting the “continuum approach,” Der Matossian argues that while Adana massacres were “locally organized and implemented by various interest groups”, the Armenian Genocide was “centrally planned by the state through multiple mechanisms” (p. 227). In addition, unlike the Genocide during which “the CUP was motivated by a grandiose detrimental ideology of solving once and for all the Armenian Question,” during the massacres, “the CUP itself was more concerned with threats of its own existence as a result of the counterrevolution” (p. 227). Nevertheless, despite these obvious differences, the author’s argument about the massacres’ role in changing the CUP policy needs more explanation: “The failure to punish the true perpetrators of the massacres emboldened the inner clique of the CUP to commit a larger crime against the Armenians during World War I: the Armenian Genocide” (p. 223). How can the very failure of a group of agents encourage them to follow an opposing policy?
The last point is about the role of religion in the massacres. By reminding us of the Odessa pogroms and Sikh massacres, Der Matossian rightfully warns that certain religions are not predisposed to violence (p. 5). However, the role of religion may deserve more attention. For example, appearance of religion in the study as a language for articulating a variety of interests (p. 22), as an identity that was politicized by the reforms of the late nineteenth century (p. 8), or as an aspect that is assumed “due to underlying socioeconomic and political anxieties” (p. 235) seems to be the continuation of the scholarship’s already existing consensus on underestimating it as a “superstructural” instrumental factor that only covers the so-called “real” or “underlying” material motivations, and that disregards the fact that it was the very religious teachings that sanctioned the premodern forms of dominance.
Written by the pioneer historian who has worked on one of the most horrendous events that took place at the beginning of the twentieth century, The Horrors of Adana would surely be an insightful and commendable contribution to the vast literature on ethnoreligious conflict, massacres, genocide, and ethnic conflict. Also, due to its interdisciplinary approach, the book would be of interest to scholars of history, political science, sociology, and anthropology.
