Mehmet Polatel’s Armenians and Land Disputes in the Ottoman Empire, 1850–1914 investigates the dispossession of large numbers of Armenian individuals and families of their land and property. Polatel approaches the massive scale of dispossession as a material and political problem that constituted the core of what has been termed “the Armenian Question” at the end of the Ottoman Empire. Polatel’s book is not only a welcome contribution to the historiography on Ottoman Armenians and the Armenian question. Its focus on land disputes makes it an important addition to the literature on property and dispossession the Late Ottoman period. Through a mastery of Ottoman archival materials, Armenian sources, and foreign diplomatic records, Polatel provides a well-documented narrative of the transformation of land disputes involving Armenians into the Armenian land question during the last quarter of the nineteenth century – particularly in the Empire’s heavily Kurdish- and Armenian-populated Eastern provinces. He shows that the Armenian question was not the outcome of preexisting communal hatred involving Armenians, Kurds, and Turks, but rather a historically contingent issue rooted in modern property relations. From this perspective, Polatel’s work illustrates that the Armenian question was shaped by continuously changing, intertwined imperial and global political processes that are embedded in local land disputes, thereby also challenging the notion that the massacres of Armenians and the genocide were inevitable. Polatel offers a way to see the changing meanings associated with land ownership beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, and particularly after the 1870s, as a principal factor facilitating widespread dispossession and precipitating waves of violence directed against Armenians. The book, thus, seeks to understand the Armenian land question as part of “the new territorial turn” in the late nineteenth-century world, which linked sovereignty to territoriality and introduced intimate connections between nationalism and land.
The book consists of seven chapters, and one can read it in two parts: the first four chapters focus on the period before the Ottoman 1908 constitutional revolution. According to Polatel, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the Armenian land question emerged as a class issue between Kurdish power holders and Armenian peasants and only later transformed into an ethnic conflict during and after massive episodes of violence in the 1890s. The last three chapters focus on the post-revolutionary period, demonstrating that the question persisted in the post-1908 period, with the Ottoman government and the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) members showing little interest in resolving it, either because of their fear of disrupting the pre-existing relationship with the Kurdish “notables” or because of their anxiety about foreign power involvement.
Polatel’s opening chapter illustrates the ways in which the conceptualization of land ownership changed with the commodification and nationalization of land beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, providing an overview of legal changes in land property and a portrayal of land disputes across the Empire. He suggests that the commodification and nationalization of land served as the background conditions for the Armenian land question. The second chapter proceeds to examine the transformation of land disputes involving Armenians into a systematic Armenian land question in the post-1870s context. It discusses the change in the nature of the land question in the new international legal and political context forged by the Berlin Treaty of 1878. The external pressure on the Empire to reform its governance of the Armenian-populated Eastern provinces, the growing connection between nation and fatherland in Armenian nationalism, and the rise of a new demographic concern within the Ottoman government to secure Muslim social and political dominance all constituted a turning point, bringing land and its ownership to the heart of the Armenian question.
Chapter 3 discusses how the rise of Armenian political parties, the transformation of the relationship between Kurdish tribes and the central government through the formation of the Hamidian regiments, and, relatedly and most importantly, a series of massacres targeting Armenians affected land disputes. Exploring the evolution of conflicts during the 1890s, set against the backdrop of widespread violence, it reveals the mass dispossession of Armenians and the transfer of property to Muslim notables and commoners. Polatel demonstrates that initially localized within the Eastern provinces, these disputes expanded geographically over time. Early confrontations were primarily centered on land ownership, but subsequently extended to include urban property and industrial assets held by Armenians. Whereas initial episodes involved smallholding Armenian peasants, later phases involved the dispossession of prominent Armenian landowners as well. Chapter 4 examines the role of the Ottoman state in the Armenian land question and the massacres. It demonstrates that the Ottoman government actively influenced the outcomes of mass violence and property transfers through policies designed to weaken the Armenian population and preserve Muslim socio-economic hegemony. These policies included specific regulations on immigration, settlement, and property rights, such as an administrative ban on land sales to Armenians that excluded them from the land market.
The 1908 constitutional revolution brought new opportunities for thousands of dispossessed and displaced Armenians to reclaim and return to their land. Chapter 5, however, discusses how the CUP failed to resolve the land issue, citing the strengthening of ethnonationalism and reluctance to challenge the influence of Kurdish “notables.” Chapter 6 explores the influence of the Balkan Wars and their aftermath on discussions regarding Armenian reform and land rights. Polatel notes that the wars brought international attention to reform debates, with Armenian grievances growing as Ottoman failures in battle increased. Armenian political actors pushed for reforms that gained support from the Great Powers, through international diplomacy, while Ottoman officials and CUP leaders sought to domesticate and tame these reform efforts. The final chapter indicates that the international reform the Ottoman government finally adopted heightened tensions among Armenians, Kurds, and Turks just before World War I. Polatel interprets this period as one where land disputes became a critical arena for competing Turkish, Armenian, and Kurdish nationalisms, each with its own territorial ambitions.
Over these seven chapters, the book effectively illustrates the rise and evolution of the Armenian land question. It also highlights that the actions of the state, Armenian, and Kurdish actors mutually informed each other, thereby shaping the character of the Armenian land question. Rather than presenting a linear trajectory, Polatel highlights moments with potential to resolve the issue, as well as its non-resolution due to Ottoman fears about the international context and demographic concerns. These, in turn, contributed to the increasing socio-political influence of Muslim Kurdish elites. The author’s use of the “new territorial turn” to elucidate the formation and transformation of the Armenian land question, as well as its decades-long deadlock, underscores the interplay among international, imperial, and local political contexts. It illustrates that land ownership can have different meanings, and land and property can become battlegrounds for conflicting political projects. Furthermore, it elucidates the extensive dispossession of Armenians as both the central concern of the Armenian question and a manifestation of the Ottoman imperial project, conceived as a response to anxieties about its sovereignty within the evolving international framework.
The author’s attention to the “new territorial turn” to explain the issue, therefore, provides valuable insight, yet it also somewhat limits the understanding of the underlying political economies in which the Armenian land question developed. The book could have benefited from taking into account the broader economic and fiscal crises of the Empire in the post-1870s. The book presents the 1870s as a pivotal turning point but does not explore the potential connections between crisis and dispossession. This could have also prompted the author to highlight the links, similarities, and unique aspects of the Armenian land issue alongside other waves and projects of dispossession in different parts of the Empire after the 1870s. Furthermore, while the Ottoman government’s and Armenian political actors’ interpretations and engagements with the “new territorial turn” are clearly articulated throughout the text, the connection between the significant expropriation of Armenian lands by Kurdish “notables” and the concept of territory could be made more explicit. Clarifying this linkage would invite deeper reflection on the motivations of Kurdish “notables” in undertaking such extensive expropriation. Recognizing the prevailing perspectives within Ottoman scholarship – including Turkish, Kurdish, and Armenian studies – that often depict these actors as quintessential feudal figures for whom expropriation became almost an end in itself, it may be fruitful to reinterpret the history of Kurdish aghas and beys through an analytical lens that views them as actors within capitalist networks – engaged in extraction, finance, tax-farming, animal trade, and property accumulation. Such an approach could present alternative explanations for widespread land expropriation, situating it within broader capitalist trajectories.
Furthermore, the story presented here suggests the opportunity to link up with histories of racial capitalism, where the dispossession of specific groups and communities was justified, and expropriation became possible and feasible. Understanding racialization as a broad process of hierarchically reordering differences to enable appropriation and accumulation could foster a more nuanced perspective on the ways in which class and ethnicity were interlinked in the processes of dispossession and transfer of property. Delving into political economies, in short, could further illuminate the intrinsic links between the “new territorial turn” and the various patterns of accumulation and dispossession that accompany it, thereby enriching the already substantial analysis provided by Polatel and offering potential for further development in the field.
Apart from these notes from the perspective of someone who specializes in the history of capitalism and political economy, Polatel’s Armenians and Land Disputes in the Ottoman Empire constitutes a substantial scholarly contribution. Through meticulous research, Polatel bridges the academic divides between Armenian and Ottoman studies. This book convincingly demonstrates that the land disputes and dispossession of thousands of Armenians constituted the heart of the Armenian question, and tells this trajectory as a history of the Empire under the new international context.
