Demographic Engineering, Collective Vengeance, and Genocide: Comparing the Ottoman and Russian Empires

• In Event: 297 - Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04. Land, Politics and Group Identity

Abstract

This paper synthesizes recent historiographic work on the Armenian genocide before proceeding to a discussion of recent trends in this field in wake of the Cold War. Since this period, studies of violence against Armenians in Anatolia have evolved into broader studies of violence against varied victim groups across Ottoman lands. As this field traditionally dominated by history and regional studies came into conversation with scholars of genocide studies, conceptual shifts have given scholars broader frameworks with which to approach issues of demographic engineering and collective vengeance at the end of empire. Following from these works that describe mass violence and the unmixing of peoples, this paper suggests a fruitful avenue of study in the Russian-controlled South Caucasus during and after World War I. Following the mass movement of traumatized Balkan Muslims into Anatolia has provided new insights on political elite radicalization and collective vengeance at the level of ordinary perpetrators of violence. Preliminary research suggests that following the mass movement of traumatized Armenians and others from the Ottoman Empire to the Russian Empire could be similarly useful. That is, by examining sources written by political elites and low-level perpetrators of violence in the Caucasus, we can gather sources to further our understandings of demographic engineering, collective vengeance, and more broadly, mechanisms that drove the unmixing of peoples at the end of empire.

Author

• Matthew Ghazarian, Columbia University