| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

"Starving Armenians": America and the Armenian Genocide, 1915–1930 and After. By Merrill D. Peterson. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004. xvi, 199 pp. $24.95, ISBN 0-8139-2267-4.)
The Armenian genocide ranks as one of the great tragedies of World War I. Merrill D. Peterson traces this event from its underlying causes to the continuing (and well-funded) denial by Turkish supporters. Peterson also offers an exploration of the reaction of the United States to the dying. American missionaries and diplomats served as witnesses and reporters to the genocide; later they became rescuers. American philanthropists, according to Peterson, were "principally responsible for saving the remnant of the genocide" (p. 12).	1
The discussion of American relief efforts represents this work's most important contribution to the literature. Curiously, the author has not discussed the conclusions drawn by Near East Relief (NER), the philanthropic agency that organized much of the relief in the area. This is a significant absence for two reasons. First, as the work purports to be a study of America and the Armenian genocide, one would expect a complete exploration of America's relief effort. Second, the NER publications cited by Peterson, such as James Barton's Story of Near East Relief, 1915–1930 (1930), repeatedly claim to have saved the lives of one million people and cared for 130,000 orphans. These are figures that simply need to be discussed.	. . .

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