Hye Sharzhoom Armenian Action
Photo: Andrew Hagopian
Arshak Abelyan
Staff Writer
For many Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during the mid-1880s, migration to the United States presented opportunities of political and economic prosperity and security. This was the case for one Armenian by the name of Ohannes Topalian, who like many Armenian men, immigrated to the United States in the early 1890s. He worked for several years in a factory in Providence, Rhode Island, and five years later was naturalized as a United States citizen. He also ended up enlisting in the United States Army, from where he would later be honorably discharged. Guest speaker Dr. David Gutman stated that in 1901, Ohannes Topalian received a communication from his father, asking him to return home and to get married.
Unfortunately, once Topalian returned to the Ottoman Empire, there was no possibility of returning to the United States. He went to Sivas to speak to the United States Consul so that he could get a passport to return, but was rejected, even though he was a naturalized United States citizen and had served in the Army. He ended up going to another American Consulate in Alexandria, but was also rejected there.
Topalian’s story served as a vehicle for many such examples that Dr. Gutman includes in his recently published book, The Politics of Armenian Migration to North America, 1885-1915: Sojourners, Smugglers and Dubious Citizens (Edinburgh Press, 2019). Dr. Gutman is Associate Professor of History at Manhattanville College, New York and received his Ph.D. in History from Binghamton University.
Dr. Gutman was a Tuesday, March 10 guest speaker for the Armenian Studies Program Spring Lecture Series and his talk, “Sojourners, Smugglers, and Dubious Citizens: The Politics of Armenian Migration to North America, 1885-1915,” was based on his recently published book.
Dr. Gutman’s research interests revolve around the politics of migration and migration control, the intersection of mobility and citizenship, the social and political history of Ottoman peripheries, and Ottoman Arm-enians in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire. He became interested in Armenian migration when he was doing research in consular records located in the United States archives. There he discovered the rich stories of migration to the United States, sparking his more specific interest in Armenian migration.
Dr. Gutman stated that approximately 75,000-80,000 Armenians, just like Ohannes Topalian, came to the United States during this thirty-year period. Dr. Gutman said that these estimates came from several sources which he believes are accurate. Surprisingly, “the majority came from the 50-kilometer radius in and around the city of Kharpert, which is a combined city of Kharpert and Mezre, a large administrative center. About 50-70% of the Armenians that came to the United States before the Armenian Genocide came from an area centered around these dual cities,” stated Dr. Gutman.
Dr. Gutman pointed out three converging factors that made large-scale migration of Armenians from specific cities such as Kharpert possible in 1885-1915. The first had to do with the missionary presence in the region. For example, there was a missionary institution, Euphrates College, which pro-duced many graduates who ended up migrating to the United States to further their education in American universities and to establish traditional rug bus-inesses in the United States.
The second factor had to do with the expansion of European steamship service that began to serve secondary ports in the 1890s. In turn, this made travel cheaper and allowed for Armenian men to continue their pre-existing tradition of temporary labor migrations outside the Ottoman Empire. The final factor was simply that Kharpert was much more of a politically and economically stable city in comparison to other majority Armenian cities in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Dr. Gutman explained that this made migration to the United States much easier and less of a risk.
As migration took place early in the mid-1880s, Sultan Abdul Hamid II became much more paranoid and imposed restrictive regulations. “In 1888, just as these migrations started to pick up, the Ottoman state officially outlawed Armenian migration to the United States and sought to prevent Armenians from leaving. Abdul Hamid II’s regime was convinced that the emergence of these large-scale Armenian migrations was the same phenomenon that caused the simultaneous emergence of Armenian political organizations,” said Dr. Gutman. “From the perspective of the Ottoman state, migration and the emergence of these political networks are one of the same, even when the evidence doesn’t sustain that.” In Ohannes Top-alian’s case, this policy was what kept him from returning to his new adopted home, however, he would eventually return to the United States.
Nonetheless, the outlawing of migration didn’t stop the Armenians, and instead, they created sophisticated smuggling networks. According to Dr. Gut-man, they were very successful, and often many Armenians would return to the Ottoman Empire to seek a bride, to tend to elderly parents, or because of feelings of homesickness. Dr. Gutman also stated that these smuggling networks were used until 1908 when Abdul Hamid II was deposed. The only thing that the new constitutional government considered illegal was when Ottoman citizens returned as naturalized citizens of a foreign state, without obtaining official permission from the Ottoman government.
Dr. Gutman gave a fascinating presentation explaining many little-known facts about the broad topic of Armenian migration to the United States.