In April 1909, two waves of massacres shook the province of Adana, located in the southern Anatolia region of modern-day Turkey, killing more than 20,000 Armenians and 2,000 Muslims. The central Ottoman government failed to prosecute the main culprits, a miscarriage of justice that would have repercussions for years to come. Despite the significance of these events and the extent of violence and destruction, the Adana Massacres are often left out of historical narratives. The Horrors of Adana offers one of the first close examinations of these events, analyzing sociopolitical and economic transformations that culminated in a cataclysm of violence.

Bedross Der Matossian provides voice and agency to all involved in the massacres—perpetrators, victims, and bystanders. Drawing on primary sources in a dozen languages, he develops an interdisciplinary approach to understand the rumors and emotions, public spheres and humanitarian interventions that together informed this complex event. Ultimately, through consideration of the Adana Massacres in micro-historical detail, this book offers an important macrocosmic understanding of ethnic violence, illuminating how and why ordinary people can become perpetrators.

Bedross Der Matossian is Associate Professor of History at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. He is the author of Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire (Stanford, 2014).

Reviews

"The Horrors of Adana is a truly groundbreaking and highly nuanced exploration of intercommunal, sectarian, and nationalist violence in the late Ottoman Empire. A must-read for scholars of the modern Middle East."

—Ussama Makdisi, Rice University, author of Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World

"The Horrors of Adana is an outstanding analysis of a massacre never before deeply studied. Bedross Der Matossian offers a thorough inquiry into the perpetrators, victims, bystanders, and social-political context, useful to all those interested in understanding processes of mass violence."

—Jacques Semelin, Sciences Po Paris, author of Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide

"With The Horrors of Adana, the Adana Massacres get their own story, a story that needs telling. Bedross Der Matossian's deeply researched and engagingly argued book situates Adana in a longer trajectory of 'forgotten' massacres and as part of Ottoman history more broadly."

—Michelle Tusan, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, author of The British Empire and the Armenian Genocide: Humanitarianism and Imperial Politics from Gladstone to Churchill