Richard G. Hovannisian (*)
Sasun: The History of an 1890s Armenian Revolt. By Justin McCarthy, Ömer Turan, and Cemalettin Taşkiran. (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2014. Pp. 496. $32.00.)
The Sasun crisis in 1894 was a watershed in Ottoman-Armenian history,
as it marked the beginning of the process of elimination of the native
Armenian population, continuing with widespread massacres in 1895-1896
and in 1909 and culminating in the genocidal deportations and massacres
of 1915 to 1923. The historiography of more than a century has described
and analyzed in detail the tribulations of the Armenian peasantry in
the mountains of Sasun in the eastern reaches of the Ottoman Empire,
their being stirred up by revolutionaries to resist Kurdish predations,
and their victimization in 1894, reportedly with the involvement of
regular Turkish armed forces.
