Justin McCarthy (American historian)

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Justin A. McCarthy
File:JustinMcCarthyxBig.gif
Prof. McCarthy
Born(1945-10-19)October 19, 1945
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of California
AwardsThe Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Research, and Creative Activity, UofL, (1996)
Order of Merit of Turkey (1998)
Scientific career
FieldsHistories of the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans
InstitutionsUniversity of Louisville

Justin A. McCarthy (born October 19, 1945) is an American demographer, professor of history at the University of Louisville, in Louisville, Kentucky. He holds an honorary doctorate from Boğaziçi University, Turkey, and is a board member of the Institute of Turkish Studies.[1][2] His area of expertise is the history of the late Ottoman Empire.[3][4]

While he has written on various topics, McCarthy has attracted most attention for his unorthodox view of the events known as the Armenian Genocide, occurring during the waning years of the Ottoman Empire. Most genocide scholars label these massacres as genocide, but McCarthy views them as part of a civil war, triggered by World War I, in which equally large numbers of Armenians and non-Armenians died. Because his work denies the genocidal nature of the Armenian Genocide, he has often faced harsh criticism by other scholars who have characterized his views as genocide denial.[5][6][7][8] He has been described as a "scholar on the Turkish side of the debate".[9]

Background

McCarthy served in the Peace Corps in Turkey, from 1967–1969, where he taught at Middle East Technical University and Ankara University.[10] He earned his Ph.D. at University of California, Los Angeles in 1978.[11] He later received an honorary doctorate from Boğaziçi University.[10] McCarthy is also a board member of the Institute of Turkish Studies.[1][2]

Studies

On Ottoman Empire

McCarthy's studies concentrate on the period in which the Ottoman Empire crumbled and eventually fell apart. McCarthy believes that orthodox Western histories of the declining Ottoman Empire are biased, since they are based on the testimonies of biased observers: Christian missionaries, and officials of (Christian) nations who were at war with the Ottomans during World War I.[12][13][14] Able to read Ottoman Turkish, he focuses on changes in the ethnic composition of local populations. Thus, he has written about the ethnic cleansing of Muslims from the Balkans and the Caucasus, as well as the Armenian massacres in Anatolia.[12] Even his critics acknowledge that McCarthy has brought forth a valuable perspective, previously neglected in the Christian West: that millions of Muslims and Jews also suffered and died during these years.[15] His current concentration is on the factors that caused the Ottoman loss in the East in World War I.[12] According to him, the milestone events are the Battle of Sarikamish and what he terms the "Armenian Revolt" at Van.[16]

Armenians

McCarthy does not deny that hundreds of thousands of Armenians died, but claims that millions of Muslims [17] in the region were also massacred in this period and many in the hands Armenian insurgents and milita.[18] He has contended that all of those deaths during World War One were the product of intercommunal warfare between Muslims and Armenians, famine and disease, and did not involve an intent or a policy to commit genocide by the Ottoman Empire. McCarthy has been active in disseminating the results of his work and analysis, that Ottomans never had a policy of genocide, through books, articles, conferences, and interviews.[19] This has made him a target of much criticism from mainly strong Armenian diaspora organizations and historians. He was one of four scholars who participated in a controversial debate hosted by PBS about the Armenian Genocide in 2006.[20]

Criticism

McCarthy's work has been the subject of criticism from book reviewers and genocide scholars.[8][21][22][23] According to Israeli historian Yair Auron, McCarthy, "with Heath Lowry, Lewis' successor in Princeton, leads the list of deniers of the Armenian Genocide."[5] Among other criticisms, he has been accused by Colin Imber of following a Turkish nationalistic agenda.[24] McCarthy is a member of, and has received grants from, the Institute of Turkish Studies.[25] According to Richard G. Hovannisian, Stanford Shaw, Heath Lowry and Justin McCarthy all use arguments similar to those found in Holocaust denial.[26]

Donald Bloxham

Donald Bloxham, a University of Edinburgh historian specializing in genocide studies, acknowledges that "McCarthy's work has something to offer in drawing attention to the oft-unheeded history of Muslim suffering and embattlement... It also shows that vicious nationalism was by no means the sole preserve" of the Ottoman ruling elite.[15] Nevertheless, he identifies McCarthy's work in this field as part of a wider project of undermining scholarship affirming the Armenian Genocide, by reducing it to something analogous to a population exchange.[15] Bloxham writes that McCarthy's work "[serves] to muddy the waters for external observers, conflating war and one-sided murder with various discrete episodes of ethnic conflict... [A] series of easy get-out clauses for Western politicians and non-specialist historians keen not to offend Turkish opinion."[15]

Guenter Lewy

Guenter Lewy, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts, writes that Armenians caused the deaths of many Muslims, and that the numbers of deaths may be equal on both sides. He nevertheless maintains that atrocities committed by Armenians were qualitatively different from those committed by Turks and Kurds. Arguing that most Armenian deaths occurred during forcible deportations, he finds these deaths inconsistent with McCarthy's civil war view because few Muslim deaths occurred in such contexts.[27]

Armenian Assembly of America and Turkish American Associations

- The Armenian Assembly of America claims that McCarthy lent support to the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, which led an effort to defeat recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the U.S. House of Representatives in 1985.[24][25]

Works

  • McCarthy, Justin (1982). The Arab World, Turkey, and the Balkans (1878-1914). G.K. Hall. p. 309. ISBN 9780816181643.
  • McCarthy, Justin (1983). Muslims and Minorities: The Population of Ottoman Anatolia and the End of the Empire. New York University Press. p. 248. ISBN 9780814753903.
  • McCarthy, Justin (1990). The Population of Palestine: Population History and Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and the Mandate. Institute for Palestine Studies Series. Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231071109.
  • McCarthy, Justin (1996). Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922. Darwin Press, Incorporated. ISBN 0878500944.
  • McCarthy, Justin (1997). The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923. Longman. ISBN 9780582256569.
  • McCarthy, Justin (2001). The Ottoman Peoples and the End of Empire. A Hodder Arnold Publication. ISBN 0340706570.
  • McCarthy, Justin (2003). Who Are the Turks? A Manual for Teachers (PDF). American Forum for Global Education. p. 242. ISBN 9780944675717.
  • McCarthy, Justin (2006). The Armenian Rebellion at Van. University of Utah Press. ISBN 0874808707.

Awards

  • Şükrü Elekdağ Award of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations
  • Chairman's Education Award of the Turkish American Friendship Council
  • Order of Merit of Turkey (1998)[10]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b MacDonald, David B. Identity Politics in the Age of Genocide: the Holocaust and Historical Representation. London: Routledge, 2008, p. 121. ISBN 0-4154-3061-5.
  2. ^ a b "Board of Governors". Institute of Turkish Studies. 2008-11-04. Retrieved 2008-11-05.
  3. ^ Justin McCarthy. Home page of another academic with whom he served in the Peace Corps.
  4. ^ University of Louisville :: The Expert Source :: Expert Details
  5. ^ a b Auron, Yair. The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2003, p. 248.
  6. ^ Charny, Israel W. Encyclopedia of Genocide, Vol. 2. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1999, p. 163.
  7. ^ Dadrian, Vahakn N. "Ottoman Archives and the Armenian Genocide" in The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics. Richard G. Hovannisian (ed.) New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 1992, p. 284.
  8. ^ a b Hovannisian, Richard G. "Denial of the Armenian Genocide in Comparison with Holocaust Denial" in Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide. Richard G. Hovannisian (ed.) Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999, p. 210.
  9. ^ Michael Mann, The dark side of democracy: explaining ethnic cleansing, pp. 112-4, Cambridge, 2005 "... figures are derive[d] from McCarthy (1995: I 91, 162-4, 339), who is often viewed as a scholar on the Turkish side of the debate."
  10. ^ a b c Mustafa Aydin, Çağrı Erhan (2004) Turkish-American Relations: Past, Present, and Future, xii
  11. ^ Bloxham, Donald. The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 214.
  12. ^ a b c McCarthy 1995
  13. ^ McCarthy's 1995 testimony before the US Congress
  14. ^ McCarthy, Justin (March 24,). "Armenian-Turkish Conflict". Retrieved 19 November 2008. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
  15. ^ a b c d Bloxham. The Great Game of Genocide, p. 210-211.
  16. ^ McCarthy, Justin. The Armenian Rebellion at Van. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2006.
  17. ^ McCarthy, Justin Let the Historians Decide, Ermeni Arastirmalari, volume 1, Ankara 2001.
  18. ^ McCarthy, Justin Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922. Darwin Press, Incorporated, 1996, ISBN 0-87850-094-4
  19. ^ Jaschik, Scott (October 22, 2007). "Genocide Deniers".
  20. ^ Stanley, Alessandra (2006-04-17). "A PBS Documentary Makes Its Case for the Armenian Genocide, With or Without a Debate". New York Times. Retrieved 2006-09-02.
  21. ^ Churchill, Ward. A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997, p. 299 ISBN 0-8728-6323-9
  22. ^ Drobnicki, John A., and Richard Asaro, "Historical Fabrications on the Internet: Recognition, Evaluation, and Use in Bibliographic Instruction," in Di Su (ed.), Evolution in Reference and Information Services. Binghamton, New York: Haworth Press, 2001, ISBN 0789017237, p. 136
  23. ^ Totten, Samuel and Paul Robert Bartrop, Steven L. Jacobs. Dictionary of Genocide, Volume 2. 2008, p. 273
  24. ^ a b Imber, Colin. "Review of The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History." British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol 26, No. 2. Nov. 1999, pp. 307-310.
  25. ^ a b Edward Tabor Linenthal (2001) Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum. New York: Viking, 1995. Cite error: The named reference "Linenthal" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  26. ^ Hovannisian, Richard G. "Confronting the Armenian Genocide" in Pioneers of Genocide Studies. Samuel Totten and Steven L. Jacobs (eds.) New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2002, p. 34.
  27. ^ Lewy, Guenter. The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005, p. 122.

External links

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