From Armenian Red Sunday to Irish Easter Rising: Incorporating Insurrectionary Politics into the History of the Great War’s Genocidal Turn, 1915-16

Abstract

The Ottoman Armenians is not in doubt. But historicizing these events within the context of diverse and segmented Armenian responses to the 1914-1918 war has proved more problematic, not least as acknowledging any element of separatist or even insurrectionary intentions might appear to give retrospective legitimacy to the claims that the Ittihadust regime was acting against a genuine security threat. In considering the origins, scope and outcome of the Ottoman-Armenian collision by comparative reference to a synchronous British-Irish dynamic, this essay seeks to more than simply illustrate how peoples across the globe were thrown through the maelstrom of war into unlikely, including sometimes murderous contact with one another. More importantly, its purpose is to probe how for all the singularity of the Medz Yeghern, the Armenian fate might be understood within a broader landscape of emergent European secessionist nationalism and imperial response both during and in the aftermath of the Great War.