Map Close  
Person info Close  
Information Close  
Source reference Close  
  Svenska
 
Index

Armenia

The Urartu Civilisation

Victory for Independence

Artashisian Dynasty on the Armenian Throne

Armenia caught between Rome and the Arsacids

The Acceptance of Christianity

Defending Christianity

Armenia Under the Bagratouni Dynasty

Cilicia - the New Armenia

Armenia Under Turanian Rule

The Renaissance or the Resurrection of Armenia

The Eastern Question

Russia in the Caucasus

The Armenian Question

Battle on Two Fronts

Tsarist Russia Against the Armenians

The Revolution of the Young Turks and the Armenian People on the Eve of World War I

The First World War

The Resurrection of Armenia

Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918

- Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918

Eastern Armenia

Western Armenia

"The Fateful Years" (1914-1917)

"Hopes and Emotions" (March-October, 1917)

The Bolshevik Revolution and Armenia

Transcaucasia Adrift (November, 1917

Dilemmas (March-April, 1918)

War and Independence (April-May, 1918)

The Republics of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia

The Suppliants (June-October, 1918)

In conclusion

Soviet Armenia

The Second Independent Republic of Armenia

Epilogue

Previous page Page 337 Next page Smaller font Larger font Print friednly version  
Statistical Controversies

Prior to discussing the modifications incorporated into the final agreement, it is apropos to define the term "Armenian vilayets" and to consider the racial-religious composition of their inhabitants. The battle of statistics is pertinent to the controversies preceding and following the World War. After Ottoman expansion onto the Armenian Plateau, administrative boundaries fluctuated considerably, but the term "Ermenistan" was used to refer to most of the region. In the last half of the nineteenth century, administrative revisions abolished the eyelet and instituted instead the vilayet. 48 By the end of the century, the borders of Erzurum, Van, Bitlis, Mamuret-ul-Aziz (Kharpout), Sivas, and Diyarbakir, vilayets had been stabilised. These were the provinces commonly referred to as Western Armenia (Turkish Armenia). Together, they encompassed all the Plateau included within the Empire and most of historic Lesser Armenia (Armenia Minor).

Armenian sources, with reasonable historical justification, stress that when the Plateau was annexed during the sixteenth century, much of it was placed within the Erzurum eyalet. This fact was recorded by the sixteenth century geographers, Nicholas du Daulphine and Pierre Belon. 49 Hammer-Purgstall, in his classic history of the Ottoman Empire, drew repeated attention to the importance of Erzurum, undoubtedly the largest province of the Plateau. 50 On the 1848 map of geographer Levasseur, the Erzurum eyelet continued to embrace most of the Plateau. 51 Consequently, it is that Ottoman rulers of the nineteenth century, alarmed by the encroachment of the European powers and the separation of the Balkans, reorganized the vilayets in the east so that the Armenians would constitute a minority in each province. From Erzurum were sheared several districts of Armenian concentration, while at the same time surrounding Moslem-populated regions were joined to the eastern provinces: Hekkiari to Van, Siirt to Bitlis, districts south of Malatya to Kharpout, and other lands in the west and south to Sivas and Diyarbakir. 52 An 1895 memorandum of the French, Russian, and British ambassadors at Constantinople drew attention to the frequent territorial reorganisations in the eastern provinces, and though the motivation for such action may be subject to debate, the Armenian charge that peripheral regions were incorporated into the provinces on the Plateau can be substantiated. 53

Armenians have also claimed that for many years the mouhajir ("emigrant") Moslems were resettled on the Plateau in a conscious effort to dilute the Armenian majority. Not only did these elements emigrate from Akhaltsikh, Kars, Ardahan, Batum, and the North Caucasus, but thousands of them were Balkan Moslems who, since 1878, had been streaming into Anatolia. In 1917, Hamdi Bey, chief of the Ottoman immigration bureau, reported that over 850,000 Moslems had found refuge in the Empire between 1878 and 1904. 54 A study of the several European reform projects that included provisions to end mouhajir settlement on the Plateau supports the contention that the Ottoman government directed many of the immigrants toward the Plateau.