PRESS RELEASE
For further information, please contact:
Gloria Caudill, Administrator
Armenian Studies Program
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
[email protected]
(734) 763-0622
DR. LAYCOCK DISCUSSES CONTRADICTIONS IN BRITISH POLICY TOWARD ARMENIA
AND ARMENIANS
Dr. Joanne Laycock, historian who has studied British responses to
Armenian issues during the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
presented two public lectures in early April to present her findings.
Dr. Laycock is Manoogian Simone Foundation Post-doctoral Fellow at the
Armenian Studies Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
On April 3, Dr. Laycock discussed British responses to the Armenian
Refugee Crisis, 1918-1925 at the International Institute of the
University of Michigan. Her second lecture, "British Encounters with
Armenia in the 19th Century," co-sponsored by the Armenian Research
Center, University of Michigan-Dearborn, was presented on April 7 in
Southfield, Michigan, in the lecture hall of St. John Armenian Church.
In both lectures Dr. Laycock unraveled the contradictory nature of
British attitudes toward Armenia and Armenia during times when the
British Empire was a dominating world power and when critical events
were happening in Armenian history.
Discussing the early period of contact with Armenians, the British on
the one hand recognized Armenians as a fellow Christian people, "last
bastions of the Christian faith" in the region, and appreciated the
ruins of Ani and other architectural sites; and, on the other hand,
they characterized Armenians in the provinces as "primitive," and the
Armenian Church as "superstitious and backward." For the British,
Armenia may be timeless but "civilization had moved West," and there
had been no progress or change in the land. "Eastern invasions had
subdued the Armenians and turned them into a slavish people."
Nonetheless, argued Dr. Laycock, a strong pro-Armenian movement
developed, a movement that tried to reconcile these contradictory
perceptions into a policy that might help Armenians in the Ottoman
Empire.
The theme of contradictory attitudes was also the subject of
Dr. Laycock’s lecture on the refugee crisis. During the First World
War, she argued, the slaughter of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was
a major topic for the government and people of the British Empire,
especially considering the reservoir of sympathy from earlier
periods. But these tragic events were also used by the British
Government as a propaganda tool against the German-Austrian-Ottoman
alliance. When the war ended the British, controlling Iraq,
established orphanages. Dr. Laycock displayed wrenching photos of
Armenian refugee camps in Basra, Baquba and Mosul not seen publicly
before (courtesy of the Nubarian Library in Paris).
Yet, argued the lecturer, earlier characterizations of Armenians
returned when the caretakers of the orphanages looked upon the orphans
as a problem, "half-civilized" and when "Armenians" became "a problem
of their own," "oriental," "Eastern."
Both lectures were followed by a lively period of comments and of
questions and answers. In response to a critic in the audience who
considered British policies duplicitous, Dr. Laycock answered, "I
cannot begin to apologize for these policies," although she clearly
was not responsible for them personally.
In addition to covering the British Armenophile movement and response
to the Armenian Genocide, the Armenian refugee relief post WWI, and
British travel writing on Armenia, Dr. Laycock is currently working on
Soviet Armenian history, especially with regards to the repatriation
to Armenia and homeland-Diaspora relations.
Dr. Joanne Laycock received her doctorate in history from Manchester
University in 2005 and has, since then, published a number of
important studies in collected essays. As a Post-doctoral Fellow at
the Armenian Studies Program at the University of Michigan,
Dr. Laycock is working on new studies in her area of specialization.
Her book on Britain and Armenia Imagining Armenia: Orientalism,
Ambiguity and Intervention, will be published by MUP this autumn.