Acknowledgments
These race names are merely convenient abstractions helping us to appreciate broad facts but it must never be forgotten that we are all mosaics of inheritances and that a “race type” exists mainly in our own minds and should not be used without great reserve in scientific discussions.
H.J. Fleure (1923)
Birthplace over ancestry, nationality (or citizenship) over ethnicity, and jus soli over jus sanguinis was the legal framework I lived with in my birthplace Uruguay and my former home country Argentina, where official forms asked about the place of your birth or the nationality you have and not the color of your skin.
My years of ongoing research on the history of Armenians in South America did not uncover any remarkable barrier to their immigration and naturalization in the seven Latin American countries where they settled, from Argentina to Mexico. The barriers existed, intriguingly, in some of the countries where they had never intended to settle.
In the United States, like everybody else, I experienced the usual share of encounters of the close kind with the salad bowl of assorted skin shades, ethnic origins, and geographical terms—an optional seasoning of nationality included at times—found in the checkboxes of legal or medical paperwork.
This piqued me to deepen my knowledge about how the colors of race had shaped Armenian immigration and naturalization in the United States, but also about the genealogy of the words “race,” “white,” “Caucasian,” “Aryan,” and “Indo-European” from the beginnings of racial anthropology and comparative linguistics. I was aware of the dark history of prejudice and discrimination against Armenians running parallel to that genealogy. However, I had not realized the extent of its relation with the ideology and politics of race lurking on both sides of the Atlantic during the first half of the past century, which would restrict Armenian immigration for four decades and threaten their ability to naturalize through their potential classification as non-white in the United States and non-Aryan in Nazi Germany.
This work was in the making for fifteen years. In the early aughts, following my penchant for setting records straight, I had penned a critical essay about scholar Artasches Abeghian’s supposed ideological bending before Nazism, which appeared in the literary supplement of the daily Haratch, then still published in Paris. Six years later, it devolved into a fifty-page article on Nazi racial theories and the “Aryan” origins of Armenians. Next came an unpublished paper, “‘White’ Armenians, ‘Aryan’ Armenians: Combating Racial Views during the First Half of the 20th Century,” dealing with the race-based policies adopted in the United States and the Third Reich, which I presented at the 35th anniversary conference of the Society for Armenian Studies (Los Angeles, March 2009). Its rewriting soon took a life of its own as a draft manuscript in continuous evolution amid other projects. I presented lectures and papers in New York, Yerevan, Montreal, and Beirut, and published several articles in Armenian, a language in which scholarship on the subject was almost inexistent:
“Artashēs Abeghean, nats’iakan ts’eghayin tesut’iwnnerě ew hayots’ ‘ariakan’ tsagumě” (Artasches Abeghian, Nazi Racial Theories, and the ‘Aryan’ Origin of Armenians), Bazmavep, 2008, pp. 147–196.
“Amerikean haka-gaght’akanakan hosank’ě ew hayerě (1890–1914)” (The American Anti-Immigration Current and Armenians, 1890–1914), in Hayagitut’yuně ev ardi zhamanakashrjani martahravernerě (Armenian Studies and the Challenges of Modern Times), Yerevan: Gitutyun, 2014, pp. 127–130.
“Ts’eghi gaghap’arin kaŗutsumě Miats’eal Nahangneru mēj ew hayerě (hamaŗõt aknark)” (The Construction of the Idea of Race in the United States and Armenians: Brief Overview), Handes Amsorya, 1–12, 2016, pp. 457–482.
“Germanakan patkerats’umnerě hayots’ masin ew hay-nats’iakan ḥaraberut’iwnnerě” (The German Conceptions about Armenians and the Armenian-Nazi Relations), Haigazian Armenological Review, vol. 40, 2020, pp. 7–50.
“Halachean datě (1909). hayots’ k’aghak’ats’iut’ean dēm aŗajin irawakan martahrawērě Miats’eal Nahangneru mēj” (The Halladjian Case (1909): The First Legal Challenge against Armenian Naturalization in the United States), Haigazian Armenological Review, vol. 42, 2022, pp. 131–168.
I would like to express my gratitude to Ashot Hayruni and Robert Sukiasyan for kindly accepting this book for publication in the series “Armenian History and Culture” at Brill Schöningh, and to Sven Kützemeier, Associate Editor, who expertly shepherded it through the publishing process.
I am indebted to Avedis Hadjian for generously editing the final and helping me avoid various pitfalls with valuable suggestions; to Marc Mamigonian for answering multiple queries and commenting on a full draft; and to Donald Abcarian and Barlow Der Mugrdechian for reading and commenting on specific chapters. I am also very appreciative of the positive evaluation by the three anonymous peer reviewers and their well-crafted suggestions, which offered me useful insights to improve and refine the manuscript. All quotations from English sources have reproduced the original text as it is, and all translations are my own, except when mentioned otherwise.
I have attempted to lay the groundwork for future travelers of roads less taken with the help of archival documents, newspapers and printed documents, letters, and memoirs, as well as an extensive collection of secondary sources. I am well aware that many sources have remained out of my reach, but I also hope that this will not impact significantly upon the final product. Due credit should be given to the collections of the New York Public Library, the Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center (Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America, New York), the St. Nerses Shnorhali Library (Eastern Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church, New York), the Bergen County Cooperative Library System (New Jersey), the Armenian Missionary Association of America (Paramus, New Jersey), as well as the National Association of Armenian Studies and Research (Belmont, Massachusetts) the Armenian Research Center (University of Michigan-Dearborn), the Mekhitarist Congregation (Vienna, Austria), the National Library of Armenia (Yerevan, Armenia), and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation archives (Watertown, Massachusetts). In this time and age, the digitized newspapers and books that I mined from the National Library of Armenia, the National Library of France, the New York Public Library, the German Digital Library, the Library of Congress, Google Books, Hathi Trust, and Internet Archive, to name just a few among many such outlets, had a role that fell short of providential.
I am thankful to Benjamin Alexander and Levon Thomassian for making documents available, as well as to Vardan Azatyan, Anny Bakalian, Artsvi Bakhchinyan, Antranig Dakessian, Bedross Der Matossian, Harry S. Cherken, Jr., G.M. Goshgarian, Ashot Grigoryan, Hagop Gulludjian, Sergio Kniasian, Minas Lourian, Christina Maranci, Zaven Messerlian, Osik Moses, Khatchig Mouradian, Aris Sevag (1946–2012), Zaven Torigian, and Ischchan Tschiftdschjan, who provided or suggested elusive, sometimes crucial sources and useful leads. Many years ago, a conversation with Ara Oshagan convinced me of the need to tackle the Armenian-Nazi controversy.
Last but not least, I am grateful to my wife Nanor for her long years of continuous and patient support.
As it is customary to say, the final content of these pages is my responsibility. Their reader will hopefully find that I have toiled to cast a wide net over a subject that is narrow only in appearance and to provide a window into a past that is not past, as well as some much-needed context as we bear witness to these times of widespread global upheaval and deep sense of historical deja-vu.
Vartan Matiossian
March 6, 2025