After his responsibilities for prisoners-of-war, Russian refugees and famine relief, much of Nansen’s activities during the 1920s were concerned with addressing the turmoil in the Near East and the Caucasus. It is necessary to explain the events resulting in deceived hopes, betrayed promises and flight which were the outcome for many peoples in the Caucasus, the Eastern Mediterranean, Arabia, Mesopotamia and the Asia Minor following the First World War.
The decision of the Ottoman Government to seek an immediate end to hostilities with the Allies followed the collapse of Bulgaria in the middle of September 1918. For nearly three years the Bulgarian and German Armies had held off the Allied Expeditionary Force centred on Salonika, but their front was finally broken by French, British, Serbian and Greek troops commanded by the French general Louis Franchet d’Esperey.
At the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, friction quickly developed between the Great Powers over middle-Eastern affairs. The armistice that had been signed with Turkey on 30 October 1918 led to a bitter quarrel between the British and the French, intensifying France’s distrust about British intentions in the Near East.[1]
At the beginning of the Peace Conference there seemed to be a fair amount of agreement among the Great Powers on the basic issues. For instance, all parties appeared ready to exclude the Turks from Europe and to establish international control over the Dardanelles and the Bosporus. All agreed that some form of self-determination should be granted to the Arab peoples of the former Ottoman Empire. Without any precise definition of frontiers, negotiations conducted with the Emir of Mecca had envisaged the independence of some Arab countries. All were in accord with the creation of an Armenian State. However, the Great Powers had different agendas for the Ottoman Empire and deciding on its fate turned out to be a very thorny issue. The fate of the “sick” Ottoman Empire had been subject of European diplomatic negotiations for much of the nineteenth century and the Allied Powers had drawn up further agreements during the course of the war. The best known are the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 and the Balfour Declaration of 1917, but there were others.[2] The Sykes-Picot Agreement had contemplated a special region for Palestine and the Holy Places. In the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917, the British Government had undertaken to look favourably on the establishment a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. All four of the Great Powers accepted the Balfour Declaration. It would seem that it only remained to settle the details, but these details were to prove problematic.
The principal aims of the British Government, strongly supported by its overseas dominions, were the destruction of the German Navy and the requisition of all its colonies. The top priority for France was what to do about Europe. The war had been fought primarily on French soil, resulting in widespread damage to the French economy and infrastructure; the French wanted revenge. As a result, the Near-East problems occupied less time, energy and manpower at the Quai d’Orsay.
Territorially, the French claimed Syria, Cilicia (the south-east coast of Anatolia), Lebanon and Palestine. They based their claims not only on historical rights but on Allied wartime commitments. The French argued that the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, dividing the Arab provinces outside the Arabian Peninsula into areas of British and French control, must remain in force until a new arrangement was made. With regard to the non-Turkish parts of the Ottoman Empire, it was considered by the Allies that these peoples were not ready for self-government and to determine their own destinies.
One of the most formidable lobbies at the Peace Conference was the Greek delegation, headed by their charismatic Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos. Venizelos created a great impression in Paris, even among those delegates who bitterly opposed him. When General Smuts wrote his preliminary draft covenant for the League of Nations, he suggested that there should be a Commissioner—a kind of world governor, a man like Venizelos—to lead the future organization. However, in the course of the discussion the power given to the future Secretary-General of the League was much reduced.[3]
Venizelos had extraordinary ambitions about the future role of Greece in the Near East. [4] There was a concept of establishing a Greek state that would encompass all areas where there were large Greek populations such as in Thrace and along the shores of the Aegean and the Black Seas. The Treaty of Neuilly with Bulgaria and the Treaty of Sèvres with the Ottoman Empire were triumphs both for Venizelos and for Greece. As the result of these treaties, Greece acquired Western Thrace, Eastern Thrace, Smyrna, the islands of Imvros and Tenedos at the entrance of the Dardanelles, and all of the Dodecanese islands except Rhodes. Digesting all these gains was to give Greece a bad attack of colic.
Other lobbying groups—Armenians, Syrians, Zionists, Georgians, Arabs—were very active during the Peace Conference with energetic demands for future independent states at the expense of the former Ottoman Empire. A British request that Kurdistan to be added to the draft resolution was readily accepted.
The British had realised that, during the First World War, “the Allied cause floated to victory on a wave of oil.” Whereas Clemenceau’s attitude was: “When I want some oil, I’ll find it at my grocer’s.” The greatest oil field in the world existed in Mesopotamia and extended all the way up to Mosul in northern Iraq. The British persuaded the French to accept Syria in return for Mosul, but this left northern Iraq exposed to sudden attack from the north. It was for this reason that the British hoped to create an independent Kurdish state as a buffer zone between Armenia and the oil-rich provinces of Mesopotamia.[5]
On the other hand, with their economy in ruins the general attitude among the Turks was one of despair. It was only in June 1919 that the Ottoman Delegation was allowed to speak to the Supreme Council in Paris.[6] From July to November 1919, the Peace Conference put aside the problem of the Ottoman Empire. The Europeans had agreed that there was little that could be done until the United States’ position on mandates was known, and therefore they concentrated their efforts on other pressing issues. The twelfth of President Wilson’s Fourteen Points stated: “The Turkish positions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which now are under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and . . . autonomous development.”
It was believed most appropriate that the administration of these former Ottoman territories should be placed in the hands of the League of Nations. A major decision was the creation of a system of mandates to be administered by the League of Nations in the Near East. Such an arrangement actually named the territories to be separated from the Ottoman Empire, with the result that the terms of the Sykes-Picot Agreement were no longer valid. The British saw it as a means of gaining unfettered jurisdiction over Palestine, as well as a possible way out of the moral dilemma resulting from conflicting French, Jewish and Arab claims. Clemenceau did not seem to understand that mandates deprived France of its ambitions to annex Syria. The French would, however, receive the League mandate to govern Syria.
In November 1919 it became clear that the United States would not accept any mandatory power, and therefore it became important for the British and French to reach agreement over zones of influence in Asia Minor and the Near East. The discussions started in December in London. The Allies were in fact worried about the rising power of the Turkish Nationalist Movement under Mustafa Kemal. The discussions would take place in London, while the signing of the peace treaty with the Turkish delegation would take place in Paris.[7]
The Conference of London convened between February and April 1920. It implemented most of the decisions already made between the French and the British, and initiated new pronouncements relating to Smyrna, financial control and economic spheres of influence. It dealt with a wide variety of non-Turkish problems, such as the Greek and Armenian questions also affecting a new Turkish state.[8] By the time the Conference closed, a draft treaty had been adopted awaiting final approval from the Supreme Council that would be meeting in San Remo in April 1920.[9]
The Treaty of Sèvres was drawn up between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies—the Allies more or less dictating their terms to the “puppet” Ottoman Government. The Allies seemed to be in a position to carve up Anatolia with total impunity, but it was a shock to the world that they agreed to maintain the defunct Ottoman Government in Constantinople. Large parts of the east of the country were promised to the Armenians and Kurds, while even larger parts were declared to be under the jurisdiction of Italy, France and the United Kingdom. On 10 August 1920 at Sèvres near Paris the Turkish treaty and five other separate treaties or agreements were signed concerning Thrace, Greece, Armenia and the Aegean Islands. The long struggle to create a Turkish treaty was at an end—or so the participants thought. It did not take long before the Allies realised that it was not going to work. The Greek invasion of Anatolia failed and the Kemalist forces regained the offensive.
By the spring 1922, the Allies were seeking to revise the treaty, while a total Kemalist military victory in the summer if 1923 resulted in an entirely new situation. The Treaty of Sèvres turned out to be null and void. It had been signed by the Ottoman Government in Constantinople, whereas most Turks recognized the authority of the government in Ankara headed by Mustafa Kemal. They feared with some justification that their country was being shared out in the manner of the European colonial empires without any consideration for the desires of the Turkish people. At the same time the Syrian population resented French rule; the Turks around Mosul were attacking the British; the Arabs were in arms against the British rule in Baghdad; there was also disorder in Egypt.
Earlier, the Turkish Nationalist Movement had signed the Amasya Agreement in 1919, which would result in the creation of a new government and the setting up of a Turkish Grand National Assembly in Ankara. Not surprisingly, a wave of indignation swept the Assembly when it learned that the Ottoman sultan had signed the Treaty of Sèvres. The new Turkish Government rejected the treaty and declared that henceforth the only source of political decision-making for the Turkish people would be the Grand National Assembly.
When establishing the Treaty of Sèvres, France, Italy and the United Kingdom had also entered into a secret “tripartite agreement.” This agreement confirmed the United Kingdom’s oil and commercial concessions in the Middle East and turned the former German enterprises in the Ottoman Empire over to a tripartite corporation.
The United States decided to have nothing to do with the partition of the Ottoman Empire. Russia was also excluded from these treaties because it had already negotiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Ottoman Empire in 1918. In that treaty, the Ottoman Government had regained all of the lands Russia had captured in the First World War and in the previous Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878).
The Treaty of Lausanne of 24 July 1923 was the only First World War Peace Treaty that was truly negotiated between the victors and the vanquished. This treaty constituted an overwhelming diplomatic victory for the Turkish Nationalist movement.
In the plan for a League of Nations, published by General Smuts in December 1918 on the eve of the Conference of Peace, we find for the first time the broad outlines of an international mandates system. The author described in twenty-one points, each accompanied by a commentary, the main characteristics of what, in his view, what the future international organization should look like. The first nine points related to the fate of countries which had belonged to the European or Near-Eastern Empires which had collapsed. In respect to these territories General Smuts proposed that the League of Nations should be regarded as having “the right of ultimate disposal in accordance with the fundamental principles,” in other words the League would have the last word.[10]
In their capacity as the victors of the First World War, France and the United Kingdom had intended simply to annex a number of these countries. However, Smuts feared that there would be an undignified “scramble among the victors for this loot” and suggests instead: “Reversion to the League of Nations should be substituted for any policy of national annexation.” This meant that the right to intervene in the government of these countries would only be authorized by the League. On the other hand, the peoples of these countries were hoping that the principle of self-determination would be applied to them. Nevertheless, the ability of these territories to govern themselves varied considerably from one country to another. For some of them, General Smuts continues, “it will be found that they are as yet deficient in the qualities of statehood and that . . . they will in one degree or another require the guiding hand of some external authority to steady their administration.” Smuts foresees other cases where “owing chiefly to the heterogeneous character of the population and their incapacity of administrative cooperation, autonomy in any real sense would be out of question and the administration would have to be undertaken to a very large extent by some external authority.” In any case, this would be true of Palestine. “No State,” continues General Smuts, “should make use of the helpless or weak condition of any of these territories in order to exploit them for its own purposes.” All of these considerations are summed up by General Smuts in the following recommendation:
(4) That any authority, control, or administration which may be necessary in respect of these territories and peoples, other than their own self-determination autonomy, shall be the exclusive function of and shall be vested in the League of Nations and exercised by or behalf of it.[11]
One question arises immediately: How is the League to impose this authority? The main body of the League would consist of a conference made up of national representatives. Any authority or administration would have an international character. The author goes on to indicate the weak points of an international administration: Up until this time, joint international administration had worked fairly well in limited situations such as for international postal arrangements. But when it has been tried in the government of peoples or territories, it had failed.
The administrative personnel taken from different nations did not work together well. The inhabitants of any territory administered in this way would either be confused or, if they were smart enough, would exploit the system by playing different nationals off against each other. In any case, the result would be “paralysis tempered by intrigue.” Smuts asserted that if the League of Nations attempted to administer anything directly through its own personnel, it could easily turn into a fiasco. “The only successful administration of underdeveloped or subject people has been carried on by States with long experience for the purpose and staffs whose training and singleness of mind fit them for so difficult and special a task. . . . That is to say, where an autonomous people or territory requires a measure of administrative assistance, advice or control, the League should as a rule meet the case not by direct appointment of international officials but by nominating a particular State to act for and on behalf of it in the matter.”[12] Thus, General Smuts recommends that, subject to the supervision and ultimate control of the League, the mandate should be carried out by a designated state. Nevertheless, he points out:
The delegation of certain powers to the mandatory States must not be looked up on as in any way impairing the ultimate authority and control of the League. . . . For this purpose it is important, that in each such case of mandate, the League should issue a special Act or Charter clearly setting forth the policy which the mandatory will have to follow in that territory. . . . The mandatory State should look upon its position as a great trust and honour, not as an office of profit or a position of private advantage for it or its nationals.[13]
Accordingly he recommends:
(6) That the degree of authority, control or administration exercised by the mandatory State shall in each case be laid down by the League in a special Act or Charter, which shall reserve to it complete power of ultimate control and supervision, as well as the right of appeal to it from the territory or people affected against any gross breach of the mandate by the mandatory States
(7) That the mandatory State shall in each case be bound to maintain the policy of the open door, or equal economic opportunity for all, and shall form no military forces beyond the standard laid down by the League for purposes of internal police.[14]
General Smuts’ plan envisaged mandates only on the territories of Eastern Europe and of the Near East which would be decided by the Paris Peace Conference. As regards the German colonies, they were in the General’s opinion “inhabited by barbarians who not only cannot possibly govern themselves but to whom it would be impracticable to apply any deals of political self-determination in the European sense. . . . The disposal of these colonies should be decided on the principles which President Wilson has laid down in the fifth of his celebrated Fourteen Points.”
Despite their original intention to annex the former German and Ottoman territories and to share them out equally, France and the United Kingdom accepted the “mandates” system. However, according to Article 119 of the Treaty of Versailles, the German colonies in Africa and the Pacific were not handed over to the League of Nations, but to the Principal Allied and Associated Powers. Article 132 of the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920 contained a similar clause whereby Turkey renounced all rights over its territories outside Europe. As we already know, the Treaty of Sèvres never came into force and was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne, which we shall come to in a minute. It was for the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers, and not the League of Nations, to select the countries that would have mandatory powers over these territories. On 7 May 1919 the system of mandates was introduced. The mandatories for Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia (Iraq) were designated by the Supreme Council at San Remo on 25 April 1920. France was entrusted with the administration of Syria/Lebanon and the United Kingdom with that of Palestine/Transjordan and Iraq.
Although the League of Nations played no part in the designation of the mandatory powers, it did have supervisory powers granting “charters” to the selected mandatories. These charters specified the conditions for governing various countries.
According to Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations: “the degree of authority, control or administration to be exercised by the Mandatory shall, if not previously agreed upon by the Members of the League, be explicitly defined in each case by the Council [of the League of Nations].” The interpretation and application of this clause was to going to cause problems. It would seem that the authors of the Covenant had at first intended to insert the precise terms of the mandates in the Peace Treaty, but this idea was subsequently dropped. In July 1919, a Committee composed of experts in colonial questions tried to establish the terms of mandates, but no agreement was reached because some of the governments concerned expressed reservations.
Subsequently, the Principal Allied and Associated Powers submitted to the League’s Council a number of draft mandates which the latter adopted with slight amendments, after satisfying itself that they were in conformity with the terms of the Covenant. With regard, however, to the mandates for the Near Eastern territories (known as “A” mandates since they were expected to be short term before these countries achieved full independence), a considerable delay occurred mainly due to the intervention of the United States. In February 1921, the American Government asked to inspect the draft mandates. The Council, which before the receipt of this request had already postponed the subject, decided to comply with the wishes of Washington. In the course of the following eighteen months negotiations on the terms of these mandates took place between the United States and the various mandatory powers.
The two mandates for Palestine/Transjordan and for Syria/Lebanon were approved by the Council on 24 July 1922, subject to the outcome of negotiations between the French and the Italians. On 29 September 1923, France and Italy announced that agreement had been reached and the Council noted that the mandates for Syria/Lebanon and for Palestine/Transjordan would now enter into force.
The mandate for Iraq was delayed for several years. The Iraqi people, not unexpectedly, expressed a desire to have a national government of their own under an Arab ruler. The British Government, which had submitted a draft mandate to the Council in 1920, declared on 17 November 1921 that the political developments in Iraq called for a series of protocols and subsidiary agreements that were not ready until March 1924. The Council of the League of Nations finally approved the mandate for Iraq in 1926.
In order to supervise the working of the mandates system, the Council of the League of Nations created a Permanent Mandates Commission on 1 December 1920.
A number of provisions in the Treaty of Sèvres had foreseen an independent territory for the Kurds. A Kurdish region was scheduled to have a referendum to decide its fate, which was to include the Mosul Province on the border between Turkey and Iraq. There was no general agreement among the Kurds on what their borders should be, because the areas of Kurdish settlement spread out across the existing international borders in the region and their population was mixed with Armenians and Turks. The outlines of a “Kurdistan” as an entity were proposed in 1919 by Şerif Pasha, who represented the Society for the Ascension of Kurdistan (Kürdistan Teali Cemiyeti) at the Paris Peace Conference. He defined the region’s boundaries but caused controversy among other Kurdish nationalists themselves as it did not include the Van region (an area disputed with the Armenians). An alternative—one might say ambitious—map was proposed which included the city of Van and an improbable outlet to the sea via Turkey’s present southern Hatay Province.
Neither of these proposals was endorsed by the Treaty of Sèvres, which suggested a much reduced Kurdistan located entirely on what is now Turkish territory. Finally, the Kurds received no offers for a separate territory from Iran, British-controlled Iraq and French-controlled Syria. However, even this reduced plan was never implemented because the Treaty of Sèvres was abandoned. Subsequently, in February 1925 a revolt broke out among the Kurds of eastern Anatolia. The revolt was suppressed by the Turks, the ringleaders hanged and some of the Kurdish population deported to central Anatolia.
The oil concession in this region was given to the British-controlled Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) which had held rights to the Mosul province. With the elimination of the Ottoman Empire, British and Iraqi negotiators held acrimonious discussions over the new oil concession. However, the League of Nations had to vote on who would own Mosul and the Iraqis feared that, without British support, Mosul would be lost to Turkey. Finally, the League of Nations awarded Mosul to Iraq and the current Iraq-Turkish border was agreed in July 1926. In March 1925, the TPC, renamed the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), was granted a full concession for Mosul for a period of seventy-five years.
Palestine officially fell under the British Mandate granted by the League of Nations. The principles of the Balfour Declaration sent by the British Foreign Secretary to Baron Rothschild (December 1917) regarding Palestine were incorporated into the Treaty of Sèvres:
ARTICLE 95.
The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22, the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
The French Mandate of Lebanon was agreed at the San Remo Conference. Syria was later assigned to France again under a League of Nations mandate. Faisal ibn Husayn, who had been proclaimed king of Syria by a Syrian national congress in Damascus in March 1920, was ejected by the French in July of the same year.
In the winter of 1914–1915 the Turks had undertaken a disastrous military campaign in the Caucasus against the Russians resulting in the loss of the Turkish Ninth Army with its 40,000 men. In eastern Anatolia, the Armenian population numbered as much as 30% of the population and at the outbreak of the war they had shown little enthusiasm for the Turkish cause. This lukewarm attitude aroused the animosity of the Turks, although there were Armenian soldiers serving in the Turkish Army. During the Caucasus campaign the Armenians had spread confusion behind the Turkish lines by cutting communications and forming volunteer battalions which assisted the Russians, thus contributing to the Turkish debacle. This did not endear them to the Ottoman Government, which decided to deport “the accursed race” from eastern Anatolia. On the night of 24/25 April 1915 some 250 Armenian community leaders in Constantinople, including politicians, priests, doctors, authors, journalists, lawyers and teachers, were arrested. These mass arrests in Constantinople are considered as the start of the Armenian Genocide. During June and July 1915 men, women and children were rounded up and driven out of the country—deportation became a synonym for extermination. As the columns of refugees passed, foodless and destitute of all possessions, they were brutally attacked by the Turkish soldiers. Thousands died of burning, drowning, poison, forcible drug overdoses and inoculation with typhus. In some places wholesale massacres occurred. It has estimated that the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire numbered 2 million in 1913; by 1920 fewer than 100,000 remained. A telegram dated 15 September 1915, and signed by Tala’at—Ottoman Minister of the Interior—concludes: “Regardless of women, children or invalids, and however deplorable the methods of destruction may seem, an end is to be put to their existence without paying any heed to feeling or conscience.” A month previously Tala’at assured the German Government disingenuously that the Armenian problem no longer existed. Despite protests from the Germans and from the American ambassador, the slaughter went on.
Although Armenian history stretches back for many thousands of years, for 500 years before the twentieth century there had been no such thing as an Armenian State. Armenia was a geographic term referring to a people living on a territory spread out across the Ottoman Empire, Persia and southern Russia.
The history of Armenians between 1915 and 1922 is marked by a series of dramatic events, of which the genocide is the first. In 1918 Armenians unilaterally proclaimed the first Armenian Republic and fixed their capital at Yerevan on land that previously formed part of Tsarist Russia. There were about 1 million Armenians already living in the area and they were eventually joined by some 300,000 Armenian refugees. On 22 April 1918 a Trans-Caucasian Federal Republic was formed by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. A month later the federation broke up into three independent republics as they squabbled over their borders. The Armenians gained a great victory over the Turks in the battle of Sardarabad (modern-day Armavir) in May 1918. Sardarabad was only forty kilometres west of the city of Yerevan and the victory was seen as preventing the complete destruction of the Armenian nation.
The idea of the United Kingdom and France had been to create a single, large Armenian state uniting the population and located somewhere on the border between Turkish and Russian territory with its frontiers guaranteed by the United States. By the Treaty of Sèvres, Armenia was recognized as a free, independent and sovereign state and the American President Wilson was asked to establish the boundary between Turkey and Armenia. This border granted to Armenia what is today a large part of north-east Turkey. But both the treaty and Wilson’s borders remained null and void. The annulment of the treaty meant that Armenia was once more likely to be threatened by Russia and Turkey who wanted to reclaim territory that they believed belonged to them. Following the Armistice of 1918 the Armenians had been able to establish their claim to this territory, but the victorious Allies did nothing to help them hang on to it. Nansen, with unusual cynicism, remarked: “There were no oil wells.”
The Armenian Republic lasted for two years, until 1920, when its fate was decided by armed force. The country was finally overwhelmed by Mustafa Kemal’s Turkish Nationalist Government and Russia. At the end of September 1920 both the Turkish Army and the Red Army advanced on the country. On 2 December 1920 Armenia signed a treaty with Turkey at Alexandropol which cancelled all their territorial ambitions in north-eastern Turkey. A year later the Treaty of Kars signed on 13 October 1921 was a “friendship” treaty and ratified in Yerevan on 11 September 1922. Signatories included representatives from the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and the future Soviet Armenia, Soviet Azerbaijan and Soviet Georgia. The treaty established the borders between Turkey and the South Caucasus states, particularly on and to the detriment of Armenian lands.
The Armenians’ problems were far from over. By the end of December 1920 a Soviet communist government was installed in Armenia. In March 1922, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia had once again been obliged to join a Trans-Caucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, which became part of the USSR. The Treaty of Lausanne did nothing to save the Armenians. It was finally in 1936 that Armenia became an independent constituent republic of the USSR. Over fifty years later, on 23 August 1990, Armenia declared its independence, becoming the first non-Baltic republic to secede from the USSR.
It has been estimated that from the beginning of the First World War up to 1922, more than one-third of the Armenian race was exterminated. The persecution and atrocities meant that few people had any sympathy for the Turks. This inspired Nansen to find a homeland for the Armenians; in his obstinate opinion, the answer lay within Russia.
At the first annual Assembly of the League in 1920, Lord Robert Cecil had moved: “That the Council be requested to take into immediate consideration the situation in Armenia, and to present for the consideration of the Assembly proposals for averting the danger which now threatens the remnants of the Armenian race, and also for establishing a permanent settlement of that country.”[15]
During these years, Nansen was also concerned with the Armenian problem. In support of Cecil’s motion, Nansen went straight to the practical urgency of doing something about it. As he put it: “Before we can discuss the frontier question, it’s necessary to save the people from destruction in order that there may be some people to occupy the country.” He suggested that the League of Nations should organize a military expedition of 60,000 men to be sent at once to protect the Armenians from the Turks. Once more Nansen was ahead of his time by suggesting that the League of Nations should send an armed intervention force to protect a people under threat.
Finally, it was decided to appoint a Committee of Six to investigate the problem, with both Lord Robert Cecil and Nansen as members. They could do little more than urge upon the Council of the League of Nations the need for keeping an eye on Armenian affairs and seizing every opportunity for mediation.
At the second annual Assembly of the League (1921), Professor Gilbert Murray brought forward the case of Armenia again: “I venture to hope” he said, “that it will be the general wish of the Assembly that we do not part without having considered once more whether it is not possible to begin to discharge that debt which has been owed, not intended by the League of Nations, but by all Western Powers of Europe for so many years, and indeed for so many generations, to that much-suffering people.”
The third Assembly (1922) once more urged the Council to take steps during the negotiations for peace with Turkey about providing a national home for the Armenians. During 1922 another large group of refugees came to join the half-million Armenians scattered throughout Europe and the Middle East—in Syria, Cyprus, Lebanon, Palestine, Greece and Bulgaria.
At last, the fourth Assembly (1923) took more direct action. The resolution adopted included the following:
The Assembly: bearing in mind the resolutions passed by the first, second, and third ordinary sessions of the Assembly and by the Council in favour of the Armenians; Desirous of manifesting its sympathy towards these unfortunate people; Having considered the proposals made for the settlement of the Armenian refugees in the Caucasus and elsewhere; Considering it undesirable, however, to express any opinion on the merits of such proposals until they formed the subject of careful and impartial enquiries; Invites the International Labour Office, in collaboration with Dr Nansen, to institute an enquiry with a view to studying the possibility of settling a substantial number of Armenian refugees on the Caucasus or elsewhere.
While genocide in Asia Minor had led to the flight of the Armenians from Turkey, Nansen attempted to save the remnants of population from extinction. He drew up a political, industrial and financial plan for creating a national home for the Armenians. In a matter of weeks, thanks to the united efforts of private organizations and the League of Nations, the refugees were saved from famine and epidemics.
From 1926 to 1929 Nansen spent a lot of time and effort on trying to settle Armenian refugees in Soviet Armenia. He had at first declined to undertake the new responsibility, but at length he consented to act in co-operation with the International Labour Organization (ILO). In fact, the proposal to settle Armenian refugees in Soviet Armenia came from Albert Thomas, the energetic Director of the ILO. Thomas put together a Commission of Inquiry to visit Armenia in 1925 and asked Nansen to head it. At first, the 64-year-old Nansen refused because he was seriously thinking of retiring from humanitarian work. Thomas pointed out that the Soviet Government would not deal with the League of Nations or any of its agencies, but would deal with Nansen. Thus, Nansen accepted and travelled to Soviet Armenia with the commission in the spring of 1925. He became fascinated by the land, the culture and the people who almost lived in an earthly paradise, except for one thing—water.
Nansen investigated the possibilities of organizing irrigation which would allow the resettling of Armenian refugees on land situated to the east of Yerevan. He worked in close co-operation with the Soviet committee for the improvement of the land, but his requests for funds met with little response. These setbacks affected him deeply. In 1927, overcome with melancholy and depression, he tendered his resignation as High Commissioner for Refugees—but the League refused to accept it. Despite this failure, Nansen’s name is still revered among Armenians.
He reported the results of his trip to the League of Nations: “At this time the only place where it is possible to settle Armenian refugees is Soviet Armenia. Several years ago devastation, poverty and famine prevailed here, yet now peace and order are established and the population even became prosperous to some degree.” Although the League failed to implement its plan in general, Nansen still managed to resettle some refugees in Armenia, as well as in Syria and Lebanon.
The commission submitted its report to the sixth Assembly of the League of Nations in the autumn of 1925. The suggested scheme involved the drainage and irrigation of some 36,000 hectares of land in Armenia at a cost of £900,000 enabling at least 15,000 more refugees to be settled. Nansen made an eloquent appeal to the Assembly to undertake this comparatively modest proposal. He concluded with these words:
There is, in fact, in this little republic a national home for the Armenians at last, and I ask the members of the Assembly to put to their conscience the question whether they sincerely and earnestly believe that any other national home can be hoped for. I believe that I know the answer which their consciences will give and I appeal to the Assembly to approve this one effort to carry out all the promises which have been made in the past concerning a national home for the Armenian nation.
Everyone hesitated to become involved because of previous bad experiences with the Soviets. Ominously, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer was Winston Churchill, a renowned anti-communist. His view was that, since the USSR was moving towards control of the population through a rigid communist political system, it was not in the refugees’ interest to settle them in Armenia: “It would be quite impossible to ask [the British] Parliament to vote money to turn Armenians into Communists.” When he opposed the financing of irrigation in Armenia, the whole scheme collapsed. Attention now focused on resettling a large population of Armenians in Syria and Lebanon, at that time under French mandate. Many other Armenian refugees were able to spread out across the world: Bulgaria, Egypt, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Palestine, Poland, Romania, Singapore, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United States of America.
This did not seem to Nansen to be an adequate response to the Armenian people who had so often been promised that their country would be restored to them. Four years later, 100,000 of these refugees were allowed to settle in Soviet Armenia, in a barren area which would first have to be prepared for them. He continued to appeal for a loan similar to the one that the League of Nations had given to Greece, although the amount became less year by year. “I beg the members of each delegation to remind themselves of what the Armenian tragedy has been […] the survivors of the Armenian nation are waiting for their help. I beg of them not to disappoint these people.” He appealed to them in vain since his proposals continued to encounter the mistrust and hostility of governments. Neither the reports, which were favourable to the proposal, nor Nansen’s renewed appeals succeeded in convincing the European governments to finance a loan. Even the Soviet Government lost interest in Nansen’s irrigation schemes—if it ever had been.
The sixth Assembly (1925) of the League of Nations decided that it was desirable to send a further technical commission to examine the possibility of the irrigation plan. The latter worked in the country for six months and reported that the scheme was technically sound, but doubts were raised as to the possibility of raising the necessary loan on the guarantee of the Soviet State Bank. Nansen had hoped that the Western governments would, in view of their many previous expressions of interest in Armenia, themselves give the necessary guarantees. At the seventh Assembly (1926) he once more used all his powers of eloquence to persuade the governments to fulfil their promises to Armenia, now that there was a practicable scheme before them, approved and supported by experts.
I beg them to think for a moment what the history of the Armenian people has been. During the past twelve months I have spent a great part of my time in studying the story of the Armenian people, and I have been forced to the conviction that no other people in recorded history have endured misery and maltreatment in any way comparable to that through which the Armenians have passed.
However, at the meeting of the Council of the League of Nations in June 1927, it became evident that it was Soviet Armenia itself that was making difficulties, particularly about accepting more refugees. When asked to set a quota, the reply from the Armenian authorities was vague. From this moment on it was obvious to everyone—except to Nansen—that Armenia could not and would not be helped.
His trip to Armenia was described in the book Gjennern Armenia (Across Armenia), published in 1927. Two years later he also referred to the trip of 1925 in another book: Gjennern Kaukasus til Volga (Through the Caucasus to the Volga). Nansen continued to seek support for the Armenians until the end of his life. It was for this purpose that in 1928 he went to the United States of America giving a series of lectures to raise money for the Armenians. The financial outcome was meagre.
The full report of the Commission of Inquiry and other relevant papers were published by the League of Nations under the title Scheme for the Settlement of Armenian Refugees (Geneva, 1927). After returning to Norway Nansen wrote a more intimate account of the work in English under the title Armenia and the Near East (1928). It is a book full of sympathy and respect for the Armenian people, which was later published in Norwegian, French, German, Russian and Armenian.
Few responded to Nansen’s appeal for the necessary money, considering it to be a hopeless “one-man show.” Finally, at the tenth Assembly of the League of Nations (1929), Nansen, “his heart bleeding,” was forced to take the question of a loan for the Armenian homeland off the agenda. Those measures of help given to Armenia came from private sources through the American Near-East Relief and other organizations. The tenth Assembly was the last one that Nansen attended.
Why did he spend so much time on this lost cause? Nansen had a very special interest in the small Republic of Armenia and had a very unusual relationship with the Soviet authorities, which was facilitated by his assistant Vidkun Quisling. There is no doubt that he admired the communist regime and believed that the Soviet authorities would eventually grant full internal sovereignty to Armenia. One reason for this attitude is that he felt that much of the early criticism of the USSR in the anti-communist press was exaggerated to the point of absurdity.
In contrast to his naïve confidence in the Soviet authorities, he never seems to have realised just how cynical and brutal they could be. Like many people, he may also have considered communism to be a transient phenomenon. Quisling, Nansen’s agent in Moscow, had no illusions about the way the Bolsheviks ran the country. In 1927 he told Nansen that the “red terror” had begun: “Thousands of innocent citizens are arbitrarily arrested, exiled, shot or sent to overcrowded prisons.” While up to 1929 Nansen continued to believe that sending refugees to Armenia was the ideal solution, Quisling realised that it would be an error. Finally, Nansen had to admit that the situation in the USSR was “less satisfactory” and many Armenians were actually trying to flee the campaign of terror. At last, he began to understand what other people had been saying since 1922—returning refugees were being executed.
Even though Nansen was not enthusiastic about it, a greater measure of success was achieved in Syria. Nansen considered Syria as a threat to his idea of a Republic of Armenia and continued to view the USSR as the land of opportunity. He believed that, since the Armenians were Christians, they were more likely to fit into the culture of Russia than into that of the Middle East. If Soviet Armenia was an artificial state constructed almost out of nothing, did it matter that Armenians should settle in Syria?
Some 90,000 Armenian refugees were gathered from the southern coastal region of Anatolia and transported to Syria after the French evacuated that country. Most of these refugees were in three overcrowded camps at Alexandretta, Aleppo and Beirut. The French appealed to the League for help in the work that they themselves and the voluntary organizations had been doing to cope with the situation. One of its worst aspects was the arrival of malaria in the camps and the menace of this spreading to surrounding districts.
A Joint Armenian Sub-Committee was appointed with Nansen as chairman. The first step was to get the refugees out of the temporary camps and into permanent housing. Urban and agricultural settlements were set up. By 1929 there were still 32,000 people in the camps which had at least been rendered sanitary, with clothes and food available. It was then hoped that, with the aid of the French and Lebanese Governments, it would be possible to carry out the scheme of re-settlement drawn up by the Committee.
Helmreich, P. From Paris to Sevres, the Partition of the Ottoman Empire at the Peace Conference of 1919‒1920, pp. 3‒59. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1974.
Among the other agreements were: the Constantinople Agreement of 1915; the Treaty of London of 1915; and the Saint Jean de Maurienne Agreement of 1917.
Barros, J. An office without power: Secretary-General Sir Eric Drummond, 1919‒33 , pp. 1‒19. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Helmreich, pp. 38‒46
Macmillan, M. Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World, p. 396. New York, NY: Random House, 2002.
US States Policy Papers, Paris Peace Conference 1919, vol. II, pp. 508‒512, ref. 180.03110/69.
Helmreich, p. 223
Helmreich, pp. 265‒87.
Helmreich, p. 290.
Smuts, J.C. The League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion, p. 12. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1918.
Smuts, p. 17.
Smuts, p. 19 .
Smuts, p. 21.
Smuts, pp. 22‒23.
Minutes of the first Assembly of the League of Nations.