Together, the chapters demonstrate how the war represented a radical break from the past for the Syrian lands, which underwent crucial political, economic, social and cultural transformations. Syria in World War I brings together leading scholars working with original Turkish, Arabic, Armenian and German sources, to present a comprehensive examination of this key period in Syria's history. However, for the Ottoman leaders their entry into the war was not just a response to a life-or-death struggle, but rather presented them with an opportunity to transform the empire into a new type of state. Over the wartime period, millions of people across the Empire died as a result of warfare, epidemics, famines and massacres. Its end signalled the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, which had controlled most of the Arab Middle East. The First World War quickly escalated from a European war into a global conflict that would cause fundamental changes in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Americas. By showing women's resistance to war mobilization, wartime work life and the everyday struggles which shaped state politics, Mahir Metinsoy allows readers to draw intriguing comparisons between the past and the current events of today's Middle East. Free from academic jargon, and supported by original illustrations and maps, it will appeal to researchers of gender history, Middle Eastern and social history. It questions the existing literature's excessive focus on the Ottoman middle-class, using new archive sources such as women's petitions to extend the scope of Ottoman-Turkish women's history. It reveals not only their wartime problems, but also those of everyday life on the Ottoman home front. In this pioneering study, Elif Mahir Metinsoy focuses on the lives of ordinary Muslim women living in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Through his eyes we relive the astonishing cruelty of the Genocide's perpetrators-but also rare, unexpected acts of humanity between victim and oppressor.ĭuring war time, the everyday experiences of ordinary people - and especially women - are frequently obscured by elite military and social analysis. This edition, translated from Alexanian's hand-written Armenian-language chronicle, includes never-before-seen documents and photos that the author preserved. No comparable account exists in the literature of the Armenian Genocide. His story continues after the war as we follow the trail of his journey through Europe and finally to America, where he found solace and was able to start anew with fellow survivors. From his singular position, Alexanian was able to document the tragedy of his people in his journals and diaries, but he also offers us a behind-the-scenes look into the motivations and actions of Turkish military officials as they committed the atrocities. His story of resourceful action and fateful turns is a suspenseful "insider's account" of a Genocide survivor. Alexanian was forced to become an onlooker while he watched the atrocities unfold. Alexanian was conscripted into the Turkish army-but unlike others so conscripted, he survived. Like other Armenians of his generation, he was an eyewitness to the massacre and dislocation of his family and fellow countrymen in Ottoman Turkey during World War I. This memoir recalls Yervant Alexanian's death-defying experiences in the center of the Armenian Genocide.
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