‘Piecing Together Threads of Refuge: Methodological Quandaries in the writing of Armenians’ refuge (1890s)’: A Conversation avec Katherine Mackinnon (University of Glasgow) - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2022

‘Piecing Together Threads of Refuge: Methodological Quandaries in the writing of Armenians’ refuge (1890s)’: A Conversation avec Katherine Mackinnon (University of Glasgow)

Résumé

The idea for this paper originated in the encounter with a ‘small piece of Armenian embroidery’ kept in the London Library of Friends. Housed folded in the envelope that once took it to Lancashire in 1897, it now sits in the Friends’ Armenian Mission records which contain no element about the piece whatsoever. Nowadays, it is but one of the rare testimonies of Anglo-American industrial relief to Ottoman Armenians in the context of the 1890s Hamidian massacres, which eventually took the lives of c. 250,000 and caused many (c. 100,000) to seek refuge. Far from being anecdotic, the piece can stand as a symbol of the difficulty of writing this history, as resettlement (to Cyprus, Bulgaria, etc.) was carried out by European diplomatic staff in their private capacity (which left few traces in official archives), as access to some archives remains difficult for political reasons, as countries have long been overlooked as spaces of refuge (Bulgaria) and as the Armenian Genocide has practically erased documentation, especially of how Armenians helped themselves. From a brief analysis of this piece, the paper discussed methodological qualms when attempting to recover that history from a variety of sources, including orphaned objects, and approaches (like oral history/anthropology).
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Dates et versions

hal-03993174 , version 1 (16-02-2023)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-03993174 , version 1

Citer

Stéphanie Prévost. ‘Piecing Together Threads of Refuge: Methodological Quandaries in the writing of Armenians’ refuge (1890s)’: A Conversation avec Katherine Mackinnon (University of Glasgow). “Doing Refugee History” Online Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, 2022, London, United Kingdom. ⟨hal-03993174⟩
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