Tusan: “Crimes against Humanity”: Human Rights, the British Empire, and the Origins of the Response to the Armenian Genocide

Michelle Tusan (Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas - History) has published “Crimes against Humanity”: Human Rights, the British Empire, and the Origins of the Response to the Armenian Genocide (American Historical Review, Vol. 119, no. 1, pp. 47-77, February 2014). Here's the abstract:

In "'Crimes against Humanity': Human Rights, the British Empire, and the Origins of the Response to the Armenian Genocide," Michelle Tusan argues that this event proved crucial in the emergence of human rights justice as a central issue of the twentieth century. The response to the attempt by the Ottoman Empire to exterminate Christian minorities during World War I was rooted in nineteenth-century humanitarianism, which later was tested by imperial politics and the rise of new forms of visual media—forms that represented atrocity to a mass audience for the first time. Using official records, private papers, and silent film, Tusan explores the origin of modern human rights regimes by analyzing the central role played by the British Empire as an arbiter of justice during and immediately following the war—a time before international institutions had taken on the responsibility of prosecuting war criminals. The linking of the early practice of international human rights justice with the ideals and actions of a humanitarian movement that evolved in an imperial context reveals why the Armenian Genocide was labeled a crime against humanity at the time and continues to determine how the event is remembered today.