Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922

Abstract

"Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922" by Justin McCarthy is reviewed.

Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, by Justin McCarthy. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1995. xv + 340 pages. Append. to p. 346. Bibl. to p. 357. Index to p. 368. $35.

Reviewed by Howard A. Reed

This book documents the hitherto inexcusably neglected fact that, in a wide arc around the Black Sea inhabited primarily by Ottoman Turks,

Between 1821 and 1922, more than five million Muslims were driven from their lands. Five and one-half million Muslims died, some of them killed in wars, others perishing as refugees from starvation and disease (p. 1).

They died mainly at the hands of Christians. This is original, powerful history. It fills a basic gap in the historiography of the region irresponsibly overlooked by previous historians. It hauntingly foreshadows contemporary tragedies in Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Chechnia, Iraq, Kurdistan, Palestine, the Sudan, and elsewhere.

McCarthy is Distinguished Professor of History, a demographer and former department chairperson at the University of Louisville. His work contains eight chapters, enriched by 8 maps and 32 tables, based on research in British, French, Ottoman, and US archives and other sources. Estimates of human and material losses, which were massive, and of the numbers of surviving refugees consistently depend on conservative figures to reduce risk of exaggeration. McCarthy is judicious when dealing with these heretofore almost totally ignored, but essential, factors in the history of the impacts of nationalism and imperialism-in Greece, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Crimea, Russia, Anatolia, and Armenia (in historical sequence)-on the shrinking Ottoman Empire between 1821 and 1922.

Chapter One, "The Land to be Lost," explains how a huge region bordering the Black Sea, most of which was within the Ottoman Empire around 1800 and inhabited by a large Muslim majority, was forcibly depopulated of most Muslims, who were replaced by Christians. This region was then lost by 1922, except for eastern Thrace and Anatolia, which became the Turkish Republic in 1923. McCarthy identifies three primary political causes of these fundamental changes: Ottoman economic and military weakness; nationalism among Ottoman Christians (notably Armenians, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbs); and Russian imperialist expansion. He adds that the 19th and early 20th century histories of Anatolia, the Balkans and the Caucasus cannot be interpreted correctly unless these previously forgotten Muslim refugees and dead are considered. He reports that first the Greeks, in their revolt in the Morea from 1821 onward, then Russia, in the Crimea and Caucasus, established brutal patterns of planned ethnic and religious eradication. Muslim-owned livestock, seed and land were stolen and pillaged. Muslims were subject to forcible conversion and expulsion or murder, which were implemented by Armenians, Bulgarians, Russians, and others periodically through the Greek retreat from Anatolia in 1922. McCarthy omits the 16th century prototype for such genocide against the majority Turco-Tatars, carried out by Ivan the Terrible (1533-84) after the Muscovite conquest of the Kazan Khanate on the upper Volga in 1552.

Succeeding chapters deal chronologically with conflicts in "Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus"; "Bulgaria" (1876-79); "The East," (1878-1914); "The Balkan Wars" (1912-13); "The Final War in the East" (1914-20); "The Final War in the West" (1919-22); and "The End of Muslim Land." Detailed notes document each chapter. McCarthy writes that:

The Anatolian War of 1919-22 (the Turkish War of Independence) between Turks and Greeks was the culmination of the process of de-Turkification begun by the Greeks in their War of Independence. The methods were the same as those used in earlier wars, especially in the Balkan Wars, to kill or drive out Muslims....The Ottoman Empire had suffered more than any other combatant nation during World War I (pp. 256-57).

In the main areas of conflict in the Ottoman east, Muslim mortality was estimated at 40 percent and in western Anatolia at 18 percent compared to a maximum of some 2 percent in wartime western Europe. McCarthy adds:

The depth and breadth of the suffering that such figures imply is beyond comprehension. The death rate is well beyond that of most of the great disasters in world history, such as the Thirty Years' War and the Black Death. Of course, Muslims were not the only ones to die. The Armenian death rate was at least as great, and Armenian losses cannot be ignored. But the world has long known of the suffering of the Armenians. It is time for the world to also consider the suffering of the Muslims....Like the Armenians, their deaths deserve remembrance (p. 230).

His sad conclusion states:

At the end of the Greco-Turkish War, much of western Anatolia was in ruins. Whether it was the Greeks or the Turks who suffered the greatest hardships...is immaterial....In terms of the long history of Muslim mortality and forced migration from the western Ottoman Empire, the war in western Anatolia was a climax.... the Turks had their backs to the wall-they could be pushed no further. Now, they defended themselves...and survived (pp. 305-6).

This reviewer found only 11 errors in this welledited work. The Turks retook Izmir on 9 September 1922, not 8 September, as on p. 259. (Cf. n. 147, p. 327, where a recondite personal report on Izmir's devastating fire merits notice.1)

This masterful analysis details sustained Christian prejudice and brutality to Muslims and revises drastically the historiography of the late Ottoman Empire, the Balkans, southern Russia, and modern Turkey. It is a major historical achievement.

Howard A. Reed, Professor of History, Emeritus, University of Connecticut, served behind enemy lines in Greece, Yugoslavia, Italy and France in World War II, then did relief work in postwar Greece.

Footnote

1. John Kingsley Birge, "The Smyrna (Izmir) Fire" (of September 1922), in The History of the Class of 1909 Yale College, Vol. lll. The Quindecennial Record. New Haven, CT: Yale University Class Secretaries Bureau (Henry Lippitt, Class Secretary), 1925, pp. 77-80.