The Armenian Legionnaires: Sacrifice and Betrayal in World War I by Pattie Susan Paul (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 181 appears as a backdrop for the symbolic and material deprivation of both the working class and local urban policy-makers, and for the concurrent victory of market capitalism and the factory owner, who had returned from the age of iron and steam in full glory. It looked like history had come full circle. I would have hoped for a wider discussion of the facets of modernity in terms of structural crisis, with more topographic and historical examples of its development — for example, the city’s living conditions, urban planning and economy. The case studies here seem dominated by a concept of modernity epitomized by politics and social turmoil, which is also at odds with the data presented in one of the figures (p. 268). I also wonder how, and if, the structural crisis of ‘heavy modernity’, which led to the demise of industrial jobs and the gradual disappearance of a modernizing aspiration, was conceptualized at ground level in homogenous socialist hubs. Such questions do not, however, undermine the numerous merits of this book, such as its persuasive argumentation, carefully chosen caesura and citations and, last but not least, the exceptional history of the city itself. Department of History P. Perkowski University of Gdańsk Pattie, Susan Paul. The Armenian Legionnaires: Sacrifice and Betrayal in World War I. With a chapter by Varak Ketsemanian. I. B. Tauris, London and New York, 2018. xxii + 266 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Timeline. Notes. Bibliography. Glossary. Index. £25.00. Between 2014 and 2018, there was an avalanche of publications and commemorative events surrounding participants in the First World War and its bloody aftermath. This book is part history, part collection of documents, part celebration of the heroism of the men who joined the Armenian legion, loosely tied to both British and French forces during the war. The men of this unit fought in Palestine, helping to break the last elements of Ottoman resistance in September 1918. Some of them wound up attached to French occupying forces in Cilicia after the Armistice. There they helped Armenians who tried to rebuild their communities and their lives after the genocide of 1915–16. The tragedy of this story is that by siding with the British and the French, the Armenian Legionnaires took the brunt of Turkish hostility to the imperial carve up of their country. The Treaty of Sèvres, signed in August 1920, created the Republic of Armenia in the north and placed Cilicia under French control. For Armenians, linking the two, possibly under a League of Nations mandate, would ensure the protection of the survivors of the genocide. SEER, 98, 1, JANUARY 2020 182 That was not to be, for a host of reasons. The most important was the resurrection of the Turkish army after defeat by Mustafa Kemal, and the military successes his forces registered in Cilicia in January–February 1920, and in Western Anatolia, where they routed the Greek army heading towards Ankara. On 18 September 1922 the Greek army had been pushed into the sea. Nearly one million Greek Orthodox residents of Anatolia fled with them. Ataturk’s victory enabled him to tear up the Treaty of Sèvres and to dare the French and the British to contest his sovereignty over all of Anatolia. At Lausanne, on 24 July 1923, they signed the Treaty of Lausanne, and the Republic of Armenia formally disappeared. By then it had been turned into a Soviet Socialist Republic. Armenia was devoured by a nationalist lion and a socialist tiger. Those who had fought with Britain and France paid the price for the realignment of imperial realities following the Turkish victory in the war against Greece. Who knows what would have happened had not the Greek government launched the insane and totally ill-prepared attempt to resurrect Byzantium at a time when, they believed, the Turkish nation was prostrate in defeat? Would the Armenian Republic have stood a chance? Probably not, for the simple reason that none of the Allies, including the United States was prepared to pay the price, politically and financially, to act as a mandatory power of the League of Nations in Armenia. Though this book does not say so, there were three...