The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response is a book written by Peter Balakian, and published in 2003. It details the Armenian genocide, the events leading up to it, and the events following it. In particular, Balakian focuses on the American response to the persecution and genocide of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire from 1894 to 1923.
Summary
The book begins with the state of the Ottoman Empire in the 1880s. Abdul Hamid II came to power in 1876, and there are many issues in the country that he is expected to solve. Specifically, the empire was losing money and land. Abdul Hamid II blamed these issues on non-Muslims in the country, and in particular, the Armenians. Over the course of the 1890s laws are passed limiting the rights of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. By the early 20th century, there was extreme overtaxing, robbery, and murder against Armenians, all going with no repercussion. The government began supporting these actions by creating the mostly Kurdish Hamidiye regiments, who largely made their living by robbing the Armenians.
Owing to the "Macedonian Question", a state of low-level civil war in Ottoman Macedonia and the empire's chronic failing finances, Abdul Hamid II lost popularity, leading to a popular revolution in August 1908, set off by an erroneous rumor that a summit between King Edward VII and the Emperor Nicholas II had led a secret Anglo-Russian agreement to partition the Ottoman Empire. The garrison in Salonika (modern Thessaloniki, Greece) declared itself against Abdul-Hamid and marched on Constantinople, only for Abdul-Hamid to proclaim he had been misled by his "evil" advisers and to announce that the constitution of 1876 he himself had suspended would be restored. A brief moment of joy swept across the Ottoman Empire and most Armenians supported the Young Turk revolution, believing that the restoration of the constitution would make them equal. Abdul Hamid II was overthrown in April 1909 by a revolutionary group called the Committee of Union and Progress, better known as the Young Turks, after he attempted a coup aimed at taking back the power he had lost in 1908. The new regime promised a fresh start, saying that henceforward all of the peoples of the Ottoman Empire would be equal.
The Armenians by and large welcomed the new government, thinking that they would be treated as equals once more. Instead, the new government ordered massacres' and death marches starting in 1915. Armenians were rounded up and killed. The ones lucky enough to escape the massacres were deported to the vilayet (province) of Ottoman Syria (modern Lebanon and Syria). The United States Red Cross was permitted into the country starting in 1915. The help they could provide was limited. The genocide received an immense account of media coverage in the United States, leading to the Near East Relief Committee being set up to save the Armenians in September 1915. The Near East Relief Committee commissioned the first film about the genocide Ravished Armenia (known as The Auction of Souls in Europe), a film telling the true story of Aurora Mardiganian. Ordinary Americans contributed about $100 million US dollars to the Near East Relief while over a 1, 000 Americans, most of them women, went to the Middle East to serve as aid workers.
The United States Government was also considering trying to help the Armenians by creating an independent Armenia after the First World War. Woodrow Wilson and some members of Congress supported this idea, but it never worked fully because the United States had oil interests in the Ottoman Empire and wanted to remain on good terms. What was left of Armenia instead became a state in the Soviet Union. The United States had ambitious plans for what to do with the Armenians, but economic issues prevented the United States from helping in any meaningful way. Other European powers at the time also did not do much. More than one hundred high-ranking government officials from the Ottoman Empire were put on trial for war crimes, fewer than 20 were convicted, and none of them served their full sentences.