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Special Collections of the John Vigen Der Manuelian Research Library, Genocide Oral History and Photo Archives, and Digital Collections of the Center for Armenian Research and Publication

The University of Michigan-Dearborn

Introduction

For the purposes of this introductory booklet to our holdings, the following collections within our library have been identified (additional collections can no doubt also be identified, but the collections below were identified on the basis of current trends of scholarly research):

We have a small but valuable collection of travel books or memoirs written by odar (foreign, non-Armenian) travelers to Armenia. The gem of our collection is John Macdonald Kinneir's Journey through Asia Minor, Armenia, and Koordistan in the Years 1813 and 1814; with remarks on the Marches of Alexander and the Retreat of the Ten Thousand (London: John Murray, 1818), a very valuable traveler's account worth $7,000 and donated to us by John Vigen Der Manuelian. Other volumes of travelers' accounts that we possess include: Eli Smith's Researches of the Rev. E. Smith and Rev. H.G.O. Dwight in Armenia (2 vols.) (Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1833); Robert Curzon's Armenia: A Year at Erzeroom, and on the Frontiers of Russia, Turkey, and Persia (London: John Murray, 1854); and Baron August von Haxthausen's Transcaucasia: Sketches of the Nations and Races between the Black Sea and the Caspian, trans. by J.E. Taylor (London: Chapman and Hall). Eli Smith and H.G.O. Dwight were two of the earliest American missionaries to go among the Armenians; Robert Curzon was no relation to the famous British Viceroy of India and Foreign Minister Lord Curzon but he did also write a book about the monasteries of the Ottoman Middle East; and August von Haxthausen was one of the first modern scholars to record Armenian folklore. We have many more such accounts, which can be classified according to the following timeperiods: from the 1870s to the mid-1890s (before the Hamidian massacres, such as James Bryce's Transcaucasia and Ararat [London: Macmillan and Co., 1877]), to the late 1890s (Hamidian massacres and aftermath [such as George H. Hepworth's Through Armenia on Horseback {New York: E.P. Dutton, 1898}), the 1910s (the final years of Turkish Armenia, such as Noel and Harold Buxton's Travel and Politics in Armenia [London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1914]), the 1920s and 1930s (the early years of Soviet Armenia, such as Bosworth Goldman's Red Road through Asia: A Journey by the Arctic Circle to Siberia, Central Asia and Armenia [London: Methuen and Company, 1934]), the 1950s and 1960s (mature Soviet Armenia, such as J. Promptow's Durch das Armenische Hochland [Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus Verlag, 1955]) (a book which no other U.S. library owns), and the 1980s and 1990s (the final years of Soviet Armenia and the first years of azad, angakh Hayastan [free and independent Armenia], such as Stephen Brook's Claws of the Crab: Georgia and Armenia in Crisis [London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992]). Researchers interested in travelers' accounts for earlier periods should consult Jack Vartoogian's The Image of Armenia in European Travel Accounts of the Seventeenth Century (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1974), which we also have.

Austria-Hungary was an ally of Germany during World War I and had diplomatic representatives in the Ottoman Empire at the time of the Armenian Genocide. We own the twelve-volume facsimile diplomatic records series Österreich-Armenien, 1872-1936: Faksimilesammlung Diplomatischer Aktenstücke, edited by Artem Ohandjanian. Among the public and university libraries in this country only the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum owns this. We also have a microfilm roll on Austrian records entitled Haus-, Hof- & Staatsarchiv Wien aus: PA XII/467 Turkei, and four issues of Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs, the register of documents of the Austrian archives. Finally, it should be mentioned that we have recently purchased Die K.U.K. Streitkräfte im Ersten Weltkriege 1914-1918 (issue 2 of Österreichische Militärgeschichte [1995]), which includes a study of all Austrian military units that served in the Ottoman Empire in World War I, as well as Joseph Pomiankowski's Der Zusammenbruch des Ottomanischen Reiches (Vienna: Amalthea-Verlag, 1928), which is an account of his time at the Ottoman Army's General Headquarters during World War I. He was the Austro-Hungarian Empire's plenipotentiary military representative to the Ottoman Empire during World War I and supreme commander of all Austro-Hungarian forces within the Ottoman Empire.

Johannes Lepsius' Deutschland und Armenien, 1914-1918: Sammlung Diplomatischer Aktenstücke (Germany and Armenia, 1914-1918: A Collection of Diplomatic Documents) in its 1919 original and 1986 reprint is also a part of our collection. We also have memoirs of important Germans during the Genocide (such as those of Paul Leverkuehn, the adjutant to Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, German Vice Consul at Erzurum in 1915 and co-commander of an Ottoman guerilla force operating in the Caucasus; and Count Johann Bernstorff, Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1917 and 1918) and of those important in the period before (such as those of Alfred von Kiderlen-Wächter, German Foreign Minister 1910-1912; and Prince Bernhard von Bülow, German Chancellor from 1900 to 1909). Finally, we also have a microfilm copy of Ernst Jäckh's papers from 1908 to 1917, when he was deeply involved in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire. Not only are his own papers included in this microfilm roll, but the papers of the German naval attache to the Ottoman Empire during World War I, Hans Humann, as well as an unpublished autobiography of Talaat Pasha, one of the ruling triumvirs of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, are included as well.

Finally, we also have memoirs (such those of Major-General L.C. Dunsterville, the commander of a small British force in the Caucasus in 1919; and Viscount Grey of Fallodon, British Foreign Minister at the time of the Armenian Genocide) and biographies (such as that of Lord Curzon, British Foreign Minister at the time of the First Republic of Armenia) of influential Britons.

Previous to this, we have Ts.P. Agaian's Prisoedinenie vostochnoi Armenii k Rossii: Sbornik documentov, tom II: 1814-1830 (The Unification of Eastern Armenia to Russia: A Collection of Documents, Volume 2: 1814-1830) (Erevan: Izdatelstvo Akademii nauk Armianskoi SSR, 1978), a volume of Russian records on the Russian conquest of Eastern Armenia. Finally, we have recently acquired Dr. Bournoutian's translated volume on Armenians and Russia, 1626 to 1796: A Documentary Record (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2001), to accompany our two volumes of Ashot Ioannisian's (Ashot Hovhannisyan) Armiano-Russkie otnosheniia v pervoi treti XVIII veke; sbornik dokumentov (Armeno-Russian Relations in the 18th Century) (Erevan: Izdatelstvo Akademiia nauk Armianskoi SSR, 1964-1967), two volumes of eighteenth-century Russian records dealing with the Armenians, as well as A.N. Khachatrian's Armianskoe voisko v XVIII veke (The Armenian Army in the 18th Century) (Erevan: Izdatelstvo AN Armianskoi SSR, 1968), which contains Russian (and some Armenian) documentary records on Armenian soldiers in the eighteenth century.

The Armenians have had a special connection with France. The last king of Cilician Armenia died in France and was buried in Saint Denis along with members of French royalty (to whom he was related). France sought to be the protector of the Catholics in the Ottoman Empire, a category which included Armenian Catholics. France also intervened militarily in Cilicia after immediately after World War I, although French troops were abruptly and ignobly withdrawn in the face of Kemalist pressure. We have Arthur Beylerian's Les Grandes Puissances l'Empire Ottoman et les Arméniens dans les Archives Françaises, 1914-1918 (The Great Powers, the Ottoman Empire and the Armenians in the French Archives) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1983), a collection of 757 documents on the Armenian Genocide from various French archives. Finally, we have recently acquired the published correspondence of the French consul at Diyarbekir during the Hamidian massacres: Gustave Meyrier, Les massacres de Diarbékir: Correspondence diplomatique du Vice-Consul de France 1894-1896, ed. Claire Mouradian and Michael Durand-Meyrier (N.p: Éditions L'Inventaire, 2000).

We also have a collection of Turkish schoolbooks, for researchers interested in how the Turkish government's view of history is enforced in Turkish schools, and a complete run of the Turkological bibliographic serial Turkologischer Anzeiger. The sole issue of Györy Hazi and Barbara Kellner-Heinkele's Bibliographisches Handbuch der Turkologie: Eine Bibliographie der Bibliographien vom 18. Jahrhundert bis 1979 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1986) as well as Hasan Duman's two-volume Osmanli Sâlnâmeleri ve Nevsâlleri Bibliyografyasi ve Toplu Katalou / A Bibliography and Union Catalogue of Ottoman Year-Books (Ankara: Enformasyon ve Dokümantasyon Hizmetleri Vakfi, 2000) are also in our collection. Finally, we have collections of Beleten and Belgeler (the official periodicals of the Turkish Historical Association), Hayat Tarih Macmuas, New Perspectives on Turkey, Osmanli Araštirmalari/The Journal of Ottoman Studies, OTAM, Toplumsal Tarih, the Turkish Studies Association Bulletin, and Türk Dünyasi Araštirmalari.

American Missionary Records

Under the aegis of the ABCFM (American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions), American Protestant missionaries became very active in the Ottoman Empire among the Armenians. In fact, by 1914 its Turkish "field" was the largest single area of American missionary activity in the world. Besides the biographies and autobiographies of missionaries (such as E.D.G. Prime's Forty Years in the Turkish Empire; or, the Memoirs of Rev. William Goodell [New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1876] and Edwin W. Martin's The Hubbards of Sivas: A Chronicle of Love and Faith [Santa Barbara, CA: Fithian Press, 1991]) and hardcopy reports (such as James L. Barton, comp., "Turkish Atrocities": Statements of American Missionaries on the Destruction of Christian Communities in Ottoman Turkey [Ann Arbor, MI: Gomidas Institute, 1998]) that American missionaries wrote that shed light on the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire before and during the Armenian Genocide, we also have some duplicate rolls of the ABCFM microfilm records held at Harvard University. Our holdings consist of 7 rolls of missionary biographies and official histories of missions, plus the 219 rolls of microfilm of Unit 5 of the Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions correspondence series. The rolls of Unit 5 not only deal with the American missionaries and the Armenians, but they also deal with American missions in Syria, Palestine, and to the Assyrians and Nestorians. Also of note, researchers interested in the reaction of the missionaries to the Genocide and their relations with the successor state, Republican Turkey, should consult Suzanne Moranian's Ph.D. dissertation The American Missionaries and the Armenian Question: 1915-1927, a copy of which is in our library.

Supplementing the archival materials, we also have books such as Lawrence Gelfand's The Inquiry: American Preparations for Peace, 1917-1919 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963) and Harry N. Howard's The King-Crane Commission: An American Inquiry into the Middle East (Beirut: Khayats, 1963), which discuss official American researches into the conditions of the Armenians in the Middle East and in the Republic of Armenia.

No research center like ours could possibly overlook Armenian history in its library. One of our aims in this area is to acquire editions of Armenian chronicles in both classical and modern Armenian, as well in the available western languages. For example, we have two different English translations (by Robert Bedrosian and Nina Garsoïan) of the Epic Histories (a history of fourth-century A.D. Armenia attributed to P'awstos Buzand), the classical Armenian edition of 1883, and a translation into modern Eastern Armenian, but we do not have the 1879 German edition, the 1953 Russian edition, or the recently published Italian edition. We also have historical studies of chroniclers, such as Hrant Khatchadourian's The History of Historiography of Armenia (a Ph.D. dissertation not available from UMI) and G. Abgaryan's "Sebeosi Patmut'yun" ev ananuni areghtsvatsê (Erevan: Haykakan SSR Gitut'yunneri Akademiayi Hratarak'chut'yun, 1965). Our historical coverage continues to the present. Two recent acquisitions to our collection are Claire Mouradian's De Staline à Gorbatchev: Histoire d'une république soviétique: l'Arménie (Paris: Éditions Ramsay, 1990) and Joseph Masih and Robert O. Krikorian's Armenia: At the Crossroads (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1999). We are also obtaining for our collections Ph.D. dissertations on Armenian history, many of which can be purchased from UMI/Bell and Howell but for some we depend on the kindness of scholars.

Armenian Genocide Survivor Accounts

We have about 300 survivor's stories in various formats--books, articles, manuscripts, videotapes, and audiotapes, which includes transcripts and tapes of the Armenian Genocide Oral History Project conducted in the 1970s. Some were written by the survivor directly (such as Les Memoires de Mgr. Jean Naslian [Vienna: Imprimerie Mechithariste, 1951; Beirut: Editeur Mgr. Jean Naslian, 1951), some by their children or grandchildren (such as Virginia and Victoria Haroutunian's Orphan in the Sands [N.p., 1995]). Some were published immediately after the fact (such as Esther Mugerditchian's From Turkish Toils: The Narrative of an Armenian Family's Escape [New York: George H. Doran Company, 1919]), while others were published much later (such as Der Nerses Babayan's Pages From My Diary [Glendale, CA: Abril Printing, 2000]), and we also have some that have never been published, such as Hagop Kalayjian's Memoirs of Hagop K. Kalayjian. We have memoirs in English, French, Armenian (such as Gabriel Tagworean's Gorsh gaylê katgher ër, 1915: Vkayut'iwnner u tpaworut'iwnner [Cairo: Tparan "Husaber," 1953], and Italian (such as Raffaele Gianighian's Khodorciur: Viaggio di un pellegrino alla ricerca della sua Patria [Venice: Casa Editrice Armena, 1992]). These memoirs are not only important for researching the Armenian Genocide, but also for researching the historical and social conditions of Western Armenia, and, in many cases, for researching the immigrant experience to America.

Village Histories

We have a strong collection of holdings by and on William Saroyan and David Kherdian. We also have works by and on other Armenian-American writers, as well as over 1,000 volumes of Armenian literature, both in English and in Armenian. Our Armenian-language literary holdings have been greatly enhanced through a recent donation by an Armenian-American in upstate New York.

Armenian Art and Architecture

We have a relatively small (377), but growing collection of books and booklet offprints on various Armenian art and architecture We have holdings in English (such as Edouard Utudjian's Armenian Architecture, 4th to 17th Century [Paris: Editions Albert Morance, 1968], which is a translation from the French), French (such as J. Mourier's 4-part L'Art au Caucase [Paris: Librairie Orientale et Américaine de J. Maisonneuve, Éditeur, 1896]), Armenian (such as Tiran Marut'yan's Zvart'nots' ev Zvart'nots'atip tacharner: Chartarapetakan k'nnakan aknark [Erevan: Haypethrat, 1963]), Russian (such as O.Kh. Khalpakhchian's Grazhdanskoi Zodchestvo Armenii [Zhilie i Obshchestvennie Zdaniia] [Moscow: Izdatelstvo Literatur po Stroitelstvu, 1971]), and German (such as Josef Strzygowski's massive Asiens Bildende Kunst in Stichproben, ihr Wesen und ihre Entwicklung [Augsburg: Dr. Benno Filser Verlag, 1930]). We also have collections, such as the Ricerca Sull'Architettura Armena Fonti series published in Italy, as well as the Documents of Armenian Architecture series also published in Italy, which just finished its run with a volume on jmiatsin (under the older name of Vagharshapat), and the massive seven-volume Armenian Architecture microfilm series edited by Vasken Parsegian.

We have a few issues of Handës Amsorya (the journal of the Vienna Mekhitarists), Bazmavëp (the journal of the Venice Mekhitarists, Banber Matenadarani (the journal of the Matenadaran, the preeminent repository for Armenian manuscripts in the world, in Erevan), Shoghakat' (the journal of the Istanbul Patriarch), and Anahit (a 1930s Paris-based journal).

Current newsworthy events concerning Armenia and the world-wide Armenian diaspora are amply contained in the Armenian-American press (as well as the on-line services, several of which we receive). Thus, we maintain a collection of newspapers. We subscribe to the Armenian Reporter (Independent weekly), Armenian Mirror-Spectator (amkavar weekly), Armenian Weekly (Dashnak weekly), Armenian Life Weekly (Independent weekly), California Courier (Independent, Dashnak-leaning weekly), Asbarez (Dashnak daily), Nor Gyank (Dashnak weekly), Armenian Observer (Independent, Ramkavar-leaning weekly), and the Turkish Times (biweekly). We also receive Eritasard Hayastan (Hnch'ak monthly), Massis (Hnch'ak weekly), and the Institut Kurd de Paris Information Bulletin (a monthly press digest of newspaper articles on the Kurds). We have the last two years of each of the weekly and biweekly newspapers on file, the earlier issues having been microfilmed. We have also had various older issues of Hayrenik'i Dzayn (the newspaper of Soviet Armenia to diasporan Armenians), Eritasard Hayastan, Payk'ar (then a amkavar daily), and Nor Ashkhar microfilmed.

On a different note, we have recently acquired Official Military Historical Offices and Sources, Volume I: Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and India, which for our purposes is a guide to the military archives and official histories of the World War I combatants, and should prove useful for research on the roles of the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman armed forces in the Armenian Genocide.

An existing collection of interviews of 160 Genocide survivors has also been transferred into this archive from the general collection of the Armenian Research Center. These interviews are in the process of being digitized in order to make them available online to researchers and the public.

President's Weekend Address

September 29, 1995