Outcasting Armenians, Talin Suciyan (softcover)

The history of Tanzimat in the Ottoman Empire has largely been narrated as a unique period of equality, reform, and progress that granted rights to all peoples of the empire, often framing it as the backdrop to modern Turkey. Inspired by Walter Benjamin’s exhortation to study the oppressed to understand the rule and the ruler, Talin Suciyan reexamines this era in the mid-nineteenth century from the perspective of the Armenians. In exploring the temporal and territorial differences between Constantinople and the provinces, Suciyan brings the unheard voices of Armenians into the present, showing that the Tanzimat era set the mold for policies of oppression, which pushed Armenians out of their native lands and would be reutilized time and again. Drawing upon the rich archival materials in both the archives of the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Ottoman archives, Suciyan uses these to show the integral role Armenians played in all aspects of Ottoman life and argues that accounts of their lives are vital to achieve an accurate representation of the Tanzimat era.