Christian Liberators or Jingoistic Racists?

I dug through Ottoman box, finding pamphlets that were American in origin and discussed the United States’ responsibility in the war in relation to the Ottoman Empire. At first, these pamphlets seemed straightforward: The United States had a responsibility to take down the “savage” Turks who threated modern civilization. But as I read on, I found that the issue was multi-faceted—because the Ottoman Empire was multi-ethnic and not just made up of those “savage Turks” the United States propaganda attacked. In relation to the Ottoman Empire, the United States took up the role of defender of the Christian faith and the Christian people, branding the fighting on Middle Eastern front as an opportunity to liberate Ottoman Armenians from Turkish rule (and, later, from Genocide).

In “The Murderous Tyranny of the Turks,” Arnold J. Toynbee outlines this opportunity for the United States to protect the faith. In stating that “the Armenians were the first people to make Christianity their national religion,” he appeals to American citizens’ sympathy toward fellow Christians. He describes the Armenian people as “intellectual,” “civilized,” and, in a sense, Western, before describing how the Muslim Turks “conquest[ed]” and “destroyed” their civilization, “repress[ing] all symptoms of Armenian revival.” What’s most interesting about his pamphlet is the way he describes Armenians like Christian neighbors, people that white Americans could sympathize with. And at the end of it all, Toynbee uses the Armenian Genocide as an opportunity to propel the United States into war, capitalizing on the suffering and deaths of millions of Armenians and framing the war in the Middle East as a battle between Christianity and Islam.

In “The ‘Clean Fighting Turk’: A Spurious Claim,” an unnamed author who is “a distinguished authority on Oriental affairs” and “the ways of the Turk” makes similar claims to those of Toynbee. But instead of painting Armenians as Western-like Christians, he paints Turks as ruthless, savage followers of “Mohammadism.” He discusses soldiers’ and generals’ claims that the Turks were “chivalr[ous]” and “good nature[d],” thwarting these claims by stating that Turks only act like gentlemen when they are in positions of inferiority, and when they rule, they turn into “merciless oppressor[s].” Of course, his argument is grounded in his belief that Turks feel inferior when they encounter Westerners, but in the era of race (pseudo-)science, this claim makes perfect sense.

In short, U.S. pamphlets used the Ottoman Empire’s interior ethnic and religious tensions as a call to arms—once again portraying the United States as the savior of Christianity.