South China Morning Post, HongKong
June 8, 2008 Sunday
Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922
by Ed Peters
Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922
by Giles Milton
Sceptre, $320
It is axiomatic that history repeats itself and while Giles Milton is
too subtle a writer to underline a moral, the catastrophe that
overtook Smyrna in 1922 is echoed by more recent events in Rwanda and
Darfur, to name but two degraded places.
The city now called Izmir occupied a unique position on the Aegean
coast in the aftermath of the first world war. Thanks to an indulgent
arrangement with the Turkish government, it enjoyed the status of a
special economic zone and a bevy of merchant princes turned it into
one of the most prosperous entrepôts of the time.
Cosmopolitan and tolerant, Smyrna’s numerous nationalities existed
side by side, watched over
by paternalistic, dynastic Levantine families who intermingled and
intermarried, socialised and traded with one another in a latter-day
Arcadia. But the idyll was not to last.
Greece, which harboured territorial ambitions, landed an army in
Smyrna in May 1919, which pushed deep into Anatolia, but after a
lengthy campaign was defeated and driven back to the coast. Avenging
Turkish forces, headed by Mustafa Kemal, followed in hot pursuit and
bent on revenge.
At first the Smyrniots assumed they would be spared, putting up no
resistance and placing their faith in their city’s obvious economic
benefit to Turkey. A fleet of Allied warships was anchored in the
harbour, which residents reasoned would keep the Turks in
check. Kemal’s cavalry trotted into the city on September 9, 1922.
For Smyrna, it was the beginning of the end.
Large numbers of refugees from the countryside had already descended
on Smyrna and the Turkish army was augmented by a marauding mob of
ill-disciplined irregulars, who soon embarked on a campaign of murder,
plunder and rape. The Turks deliberately set fire to the Armenian
Quarter and the blaze engulfed the entire city, propelling an
estimated 500,000 refugees to the quayside. To compound the tragedy,
the crews of the warships offshore, bound by their neutrality and
their governments’ cynical desires to befriend the new Turkish regime,
did nothing to help.
Starving and helpless, the refugees were at the mercy of the Turks,
who robbed and raped with impunity. Corpses bobbed in the harbour and
women gave birth on the filthy pavements. It was a portrayal of hell
that contrasted bitterly with Smyrna’s years of easy prosperity.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Into the maelstrom stepped the
foremost hero of Paradise Lost. Asa Jennings was a diminutive, devout
Methodist minister from New York, who worked for Smyrna’s
YMCA. Appalled by the atrocities unfolding before his eyes, he bullied
and bluffed an armada of Greek ships to sail to the rescue. Together
with an American doctor, Esther Lovejoy, Jennings oversaw the
evacuation, saving countless thousands of people from death. Their
gallant efforts stand in stark contrast to the record of Mark Bristol,
the American high commissioner in Constantinople, who denied the
genocide, declaring the Turks to be "fine fellows".
Fans of Giles Milton won’t need to be reminded that he excels in
seeking out lesser-known yet pivotal events of the past and relating
the tales through the lives of unusual characters, be they medieval
nutmeg traders or Caucasian samurai adventurers. Like 2004’s White
Gold, which revealed the extent of the white slave trade in Africa in
the 18th century, Paradise Lost – brilliantly researched from official
and eye-witness accounts and grippingly written – casts a wider net.
When a crisis of international proportions threatens, it is of concern
to the entire world and should not be left to a few resolute
individuals to solve.