"They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else": A History of the Armenian Genocide (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity)

With the 2015 official centenary of the Armenian Genocide (dated from specific events in Istanbul in 1915), new, accessible scholarship on those events is welcome. Aa the grandson of Armenians who were deported during the Genocide, Ronald Grigor Suny writes with personal interest in the period but, as a scholar, he also writes with a non-partisan agenda and with an easy command of sources in Turkish, Armenian, Armeno-Turkish (Turkish written in the Armenian alphabet), German, French, and English. Without that range of primary sources, a credible history would not be possible.Modern Turkey can only deny the term "genocide" if the standard for using it is the Holocaust, since while the Ottoman agenda was not a world free of Armenians, it was an Ottoman Empire free of visible Armenians--meaning Armenian communities and Armenian political activity and economic influence. So, in contrast to what happened in Germany and Eastern Europe in the 1940's, the Ottomans did not murder everyone of Armenian heritage, but there was a government-ordered and government-sponsored campaign to murder Armenian men (and many women and children) and to dissolve the remaining women and children into Turkish society as servants or slaves.The story, as told here, is gripping and abundantly footnoted. Kindle technology makes it easy to toggle back and forth between a citation and its source. (Was a particular massacre ordered by Talat Pasha, or was it observed by the German ambassador, or was it reported as hearsay in a French newspaper? The difference is important, and with Suny's footnotes, you can tell.)As with most current books, better editing would make a better impression and make the text easier to read.

Without any doubt this is the best book I have read about the Armenian Genocide. I am a writer myself and can appreciate the long road it must have taken to put this book together. Not only is the subject hard-edged, and cruel but it is complicated. It must have been hard to continue when the writing is relentlessly sad. You have unraveled the research and presented the result in the most well understood version I have seen. Personally as a second generation Armenian woman I appreciate your wisdom and perseverance. I thank you and your colleagues. Today everyone knows that a million perhaps as many as two million Armenians were massacred by the Turkish people during the First World War. But in the forties and the fifty's it was not general knowledge, it was heavily denied by the Turkish population. The Armenian people were not talking about it. These people, my honored relatives, who I grew up with, were all immigrants. They had lived through the genocide and one way or another had escaped. In our house we were not allowed to talk about it or even listen to the stories. Books started to appear written by the lucky few who had escaped. I didn’t understand why I was not allowed to read them. I didn’t understand what they had gone through. Or that it was so terrible, the mental photographs they lived with so appalling, that they had to slam the door firmly shut on its grotesque memories. That was all way above my understanding.But no longer. Linda McKay (Daviton)

Every person of Armenian heritage should read this extremely well researched exposition that focuses on the reasons for the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks in power in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dr Suny provides a brief, dense, but very engaging and readable scholarly review of the people and history of the Caucasus region, of course focusing on the Armenians. This is followed by an By explaining the different cultures, political views, histories, religions, and probable genetic and behavior characteristics of the peoples of this region he clarifies the reasons for conflict and eventual slaughter and deportation of the Christian Armenians. Dr. Suny speaks several languages, has for years been professor of both Russian and Armenian Studies, is an exceptional writer and speaker and therefore is uniquely qualified to research and write about this subject. For me it has been a privilege to read this book, likely to be treasured by many.

This is a very insightful and accessible synthesis by a scholar who for over a decade has been one of the organizers of international workshops which brought together leading Armenian Genocide researchers. This book draws on their work, as well as a large body of other literature on Armenian and Ottoman history. You can learn a good deal about those topics from it. The book is markedly different in nature from an earlier work about the Armenian Genocide written for a general audience, "The Burning Tigris". While Balakian's work is -- to quote Mark Mazower's review -- "understandably enough, a work of denunciation", Suny's book sets out to provide historical insight, and he succeeds admirably in that regard.

The book is definitely meant for a general audience, but it includes many testimonies and details that someone familiar with the area would not know either. i recommend it for people inclined to history, as this book assumes a good comprehension of the Ottoman, Persian and European powers

This is an exceptionally good book, written by Dr. Suny an academic and talented author, who has dealt with the history of all the Caucasian peoples and is especially qualified to deal with the Genocide of the Armenian people. As a text it is both informative and enjoyable to read.

After Pope Francis visited Armenia, I wanted to know more about this country and their history. I am not Armenian, but I am amazed at the courage these people have. I never knew this history before.

Took forever to get. Good book, though

Ronald Grigor Suny in his book "They can live in the desert but nowhere ... " gives a lucid, balanced, extremely well documented, account on how what was left of the Ottoman empire, the muslim Turks, during the First World War, after several centuries of increasing "intolerance" toward the christian comunities (Armenian, Assyrian, Greek), decided to proceed to the final solution, making them disappear, with the help of some/many muslim Kurds. The national obsession (the dominating, pure, superior race), the inability to live together the different (and the related fear and envy), the essential need of scapegoat, and the conflicting interests of European powers, among others, made the deed. The human modern history is full of these terrible events. The first fundamental step is to recognize and to remember them, at open-eyed.

I bought this book following a fascinating holiday to the Caucasus in July 2019 that included a visit to the Armenian Genocide museum in Yerevan, which sold few books in English on the “first holocaust of the 20th century”; and I chose it over other similar books because of its many five-star reviews on Amazon.One reads books to be entertained and/or informed, but Ronald Grigor Suny’s book does neither. His motives in writing it were to give a balanced and accurate description of the subjugation of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, which led to the Hamidian massacres in 1894-1896 (so-called because they occurred during the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid, although the book doesn’t explain this) and the terrible genocide of around 1.5 million Armenians in 1915. He wrote it also to honour his great-grandparents, who were victims of this horrific act.It is obvious that the author undertook a huge amount of research when writing the book, but sadly it is evident that he was incapable of analysing and synthesising the information he obtained to produce an understandable and readable narrative. It is also apparent that those people who reviewed and edited the book did not have the abilities to do so effectively.The book is an incoherent and frequently incomprehensible epistle, with some of the worst and most tortured writing I have encountered. The only people who could read it are dedicated historians who already understand the subject, who are tolerant of its academic style, and who are willing to ignore the appalling writing!The book’s manifold failings include:• After the initial chapters, an awkward structure that describes contemporaneous matters in different chapters and sub-chapters rather than chronologically, so one cannot comprehend the progression of events.• Partly as the result of the above, the fact that numerous terms are introduced without an explanation, therefore requiring prior knowledge of Turkish and Armenian history and culture to understand them. The numerous examples include the Armenian Question; Western Armenian [language]; the Young Turks; Kemalist Turkish nationalism; Dreyfusards.• The author never uses 30 words when 50 will do and inserts unfamiliar words when simpler words will suffice. For example, the word “delators” is used instead of informers, and “usufruct” instead of “the right to use it”.• The insertion of translations of English words and phrases into Turkish or Arabic, most of which are unnecessary.• The lack of a Glossary. This is a complicated book so backtracking to pages where a term is first used is tedious and time-consuming.• A lack of clarity and analysis. For example, on page 95 it says the Congress of Berlin, where the Treaty of Berlin was drafted, paid “no attention to the Armenians”; yet on page 150, it says that Armenians wanted implementation of Article 61 of this Treaty!• Confusing and contradictory text. One classic example relates to international empathy with the plight of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: on pages 126 and 127 it says that “in the aftermath of the Bank Ottoman seizure [in 1896] much of Europe lost sympathy for the Armenians as victims of the “Terrible Turks”, but just one paragraph later it says that “for most observers in the West and Russia the real author of the Armenian massacres was the sultan himself”, while on page 137 it says “sympathy for the plight of the Armenians [after 1894 to 1896] was widespread in the international public sphere”.• Inaccuracies. For example, on page 127 the book talks about the later [than 1896] memoirs of the Sultan Abdulhamid, yet the footnote refers to memoirs that were dictated in 1893! And on page 132 it says that Armenians did not constitute a large percentage of the population like the Kurds and Arabs, yet the 1906 Ottoman census shows that Armenians represented between 5.07% and 5.46% of the population compared to 1.59% for others.• Confusing chronology. As examples; on page 107, one paragraph mentions an action in 1894 by Ottoman officials, and the (implied) result of this was a demonstration in Istanbul in July 1890!; and the sub-chapter about the Bank Ottoman raid in 1896 reports on an article in the New York Times in 1895.• Lazy writing and editing. On page 152, it says Turkish nationalists clustered around the Ottoman Committee for Union and Progress in a paragraph that later contains text about the year 1904; on page 153 the acronym “CUP” is used in a sentence about its members meeting several times in the summer of 1906; while on page 154 it says the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress, or CUP, was formed in 1907!After page 155 I gave up, and a History of the Armenian Genocide became another book on a short infamous list of books that I have failed to finish. It sits alongside other books on Turkey such as a biography of Sinan, the chief Ottoman architect and civil engineer for the Sultans Suleiman the Magnificent, Selim II, and Murad III; and a novel by Orhan Pamuk.1 out of 10, and this is being generous.

I had read in the Financial Times that if one wanted to read one book on the Armenian Genocide, one should choose this book. Having read it, I must say, I agree. This is an excellent book that first establishes the historical background, the interactions between the various groups and provides extensive references to fully support the discussion. This is not the first book I have read on the subject. But, I think it is the best one I have read.

Bought this for a well received present.

Quite brilliant.