Rockefeller Archive Center

Rockefeller Archive Center Research Reports are created by recipients of research travel stipends and by many others who have conducted research at the RAC. The reports demonstrate the breadth of the RAC's archival holdings, particularly in the study of philanthropy and its effects. Read more about the history of philanthropy at resource.rockarch.org. Also, see the RAC Bibliography of Scholarship, a comprehensive online database of publications citing RAC archival collections.

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Near East Relief and the Rescue of "Absorbed" Armenian Women, 1915-21

January 1, 2013

In the publicity campaigns, pamphlets, and monthly magazine of the American charity Near East Relief, one regular feature was the rescue of the Christian Armenian women and children who had been abducted or sold during the deportation marches into Turkish, Kurdish or Arab homes and forcibly converted to Islam: indeed, it became a rallying cry for American aid and action until at least 1923. One article, entitled "Those Who Turn to Us in Hope," in the Near East Relief's magazine The New Near East, described the situation in 1921: Hidden away in Mohammedan homes, varying from the palatial abodes of rich Turks to the tents of wandering Arabs, are Christian Armenian girls, numbering 63,800. Imagination pictures life in the harem as degrading in the extreme according to Western standards. The intolerance of Mohammedan towards Christians adds to the degradation of these girls the horrors of relentless persecution. It has been our imperative duty, as Christians, to effect their release wherever possible.

America's Sacred Duty: Near East Relief and the Armenian Crisis, 1915-1930

January 1, 2009

Throughout World War I and its aftermath, hundreds of thousands of refugees across Europe and Asia Minor were the recipients of humanitarian aid. But in the United States one ethnic group in particular, the Armenians, captured Americans' imaginations and prompted the nation to action. Americans worried that Armenians were targeted for extinction, so U.S. cultural and political elites took up this humanitarian cause in the name of their "Christian" citizenship. This was more than relief work in the name of modern goodwill -- it was a rescue mission undertaken with solemn vows of the American Christian's duty to protect the poor, starving Armenians. As one fundraising plea put it, "It's a big job and a holy one" to save the Armenians from the Turks. The battle lines were quickly drawn as a "degenerate" and Muslim civilization versus "progressive" and Christian civilization with the Armenians caught in the middle. This movement to save the Armenians did not operate at the edges of American society. As President Woodrow Wilson's ambassador to Germany and advisor claimed, it was the "sacred duty of Christian civilization to save Armenia."

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