United States Policy Toward the Armenian Question and the Armenian Genocide

"This comprehensive analysis of U.S. policy toward the Armenian Question and the Armenian Genocide focuses on the important role U.S. interests played in keeping the Wilson administration from playing a more active role in opposing the genocide, notwithstanding broad public opinion calling for greater action. Payaslian argues that missionary and business interests feared antagonizing the Turkish leaders by too much of an intervention on behalf of the Armenians. By thus placing U.S. responses to the Armenian crises within the broader context of the political economy of U.S. foreign policy, this book offers a new perspective and challenges conventionally held views on the subject since World War I."

"Payaslian also surveys the historical evolution of U.S. policy toward the Ottoman Empire since the early nineteenth century and examines the extent to which the missionary community, commercial interests, and international economic and geopolitical competitions shaped U.S. policy during the administrations of William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and especially Woodrow Wilson. Sure to be controversial is his argument that the Wilson administration was not seriously interested in the Armenian cause, and merely utilized the Armenian Question to pursue its domestic and international political and economic objectives."--Jacket.