Armenian News Network / Groong
French
Political Satirist Orens Denizard
Decries Sultan Abdul Hamid II in his 1903-1904 Cartoons Depicting Ruthless
Massacres by the Turks:
Europes
failure to stop the Armenian massacres of the 1890s was the go-ahead for Abdul
the Damned to viciously suppress the Macedonians in 1903
Armenian News Network / Groong
October 4, 2017
Special to Groong by Eugene L. Taylor
and Abraham D. Krikorian
Long Island, NY
We
are great fans of T.E. Lawrence (Thomas Edward Lawrence) and have seen the film
Lawrence of Arabia many times. Every time we watch it, we appreciate it
even more. Many will recall that
the two young Arab boys in his service called him Aurens
(or as Ali, actor Omar Sharif would later have it, El Aurens.) Presumably they had a problem
pronouncing LAW-rence.
Occasionally,
one or other of us will jest and address each other as Ohrenz
– but only in a special context. (Only relatively recently had we
seen it spelled out properly by the filmmakers.)[1]
Some
time back, we made a post on Groong that dealt with what Sultan Abdul Hamid II
really looked like. We included
in that article, a caricature image on a post card of the Shadow of God on
Earth [Zil Allah, pronounced then as zil-oullah] or,
as we prefer to call him Abdul the Damned, dated by the artist September
1902. It was also signed with
what we in our ignorance mistakenly read as Oreds. The n of the signature looked like a d.
[2]
While
we did not spend a huge amount of time attempting to track down satirist artist
Oreds, we got nowhere in the time we did spend. Why? Not only because of our misspelling his
surname, but also because it appears that Orens has
not been well-studied either biographically or from the perspective of his
extensive work as a satirist. We
had trouble finding him in lists of cartoonists and satirists or cartoonists. Once again, we learned that it sometimes
takes more than a little time to learn, but learn we did. See Fig. 1.
Fig. 1
The French text
reads Crochet Turc en Usage en Armenie
pour bouchers constant! and may be translated as Turkish hook for butchers used non-stop in
Armenia. Note the date 9 [Septembre] 1902 on the lower right and the signature Orens right above it.
Incidentally, we are not sure whether he intended the reader to read
left to right, or top and bottom on the left, and top and bottom on the
right. The size of the lettering on
the right is slightly smaller. In
either case, it translates pretty much the same.
Most readers will
know that there was an outcry against the horrors perpetrated against the
Armenians during the Hamidian massacres of 1894 to 1896. Even when 4-time Prime Minister William
E. Gladstone of Great Britain came out of retirement to give an impassioned and
fiery final public talk in 1896 condemning the Turks, not much happened that
really mattered. The many lofty
concerns voiced on behalf of the Armenians by him and many others even as the
atrocities were happening, were in effect, neutralized by the interests of
the British Empire. That is not
because people like Gladstone were insincere in their feelings, it is just that
the situation was bigger than both of them as the saying goes.[3]
Be that as it may,
and to use a modern expression, Gladstone got a fair amount of mileage from
his activism on behalf of the Armenians (see Figs. 2, 3 and 4 taken from a rare
memorial volume published at the end of May 1898 after his death by The Illustrated London News.)[4]
Fig.
2
Front cover of the fully illustrated
memorial volume issued by The Illustrated London News at the end of
May 1898.
Gladstone had passed away at his
home at Hawarden Castle in Flintshire, Wales (not
very far from Liverpool, England) on May 19, 1898 at the age of 88.[4]
Fig.
3
From pg. 26 of the same memorial
volume.
Mr. Gladstones Last Public
Appearance at a Great Crisis:
his speech at Liverpool on the
Armenian Massacres, September 24, 1896.
Fig.
4
MR. GLADSTONES
LAST APPEARANCE ON A PUBLIC PLATFORM: SPEAKING ON THE ARMENIAN QUESTION AT
LIVERPOOL, SEPT. 24, 1896
Caption
to Fig. 4 retyped below to render it easily readable.
Some 6,000 people
assembled in Henglers Circus, Liverpool, to hear Mr.
Gladstone speak on the Armenian question.
His remarks were received with the utmost enthusiasm. Perhaps the heartiest cheers were those
which greeted the declaration that the government of his country were in no way
responsible for the present deplorable situation in Turkey. Then he went on to
say: ─ This is no crusade against Mohammedanism ─ a sentiment
which raised a loud Hear, hear ! from the
audience. Mr. Gladstones voice
seemed to gain strength and volume as he warmed to his work, and he carried his
audience away when he emphatically declared: ─ The ground on which we
stand here is not British nor European, but it is human. Nothing narrower than humanity could
pretend for a moment justly to represent it. Drawn by Sydney P. Hall. From a sketch by our special artist A.
Cox.
The brief
introduction on Turkish atrocities and massacres against the Armenians just
given (and the Bulgarians before that) will allow us to proceed onto the Orens postcards.
Then we will say a bit more about our satirist Charles Bonaventure Orens Denizard (1879-1965).
It should be
pointed out first that Armenia and Macedonia, the latter referred to often in
French as a mixed bag of peoples, or Macdoines
(rather than Macdonie), posed some very significant
and similar questions for the European balance of power structure. Most preferred that both questions go
away.
The very name
Macedonia was very confusing to the general reader. The designation was usually used in its
most restricted (and some have said probably most correct) form as meaning the
region of the Balkans comprising the three Turkish Vilayets of Salonika, Manastir and Kosovo.
The term Armenia, of course, was similarly confusing to many since
Armenians did not comprise a majority in any of the six Vilayets in eastern
Asia Minor, frequently referred to as Turkish Armenia. So far as the Turks were concerned
there was no Armenia. After all,
the last Armenian Kingdom (in Cilicia) had fallen in 1375!
The Armenian
Problem and the Macedonian Problem as usual with the other problems of the
Empire like the Cretan Problem et cetera, were the predictable result of
Turkish misadministration and mismanagement. Corruption, vile outrages and abuses of
all sorts, and outright robbery had driven these peoples to desperation and
disturbances. These, of course,
were called revolts and uprisings or insurrections or civil wars by the
Turks.
The
failure of the Ottoman government to settle satisfactorily the Macedonian
problem and likewise the Armenian problem was utterly complete. Through the terms of the Congress of
Berlin, signed in June of 1878, Great Britain and Germany preserved for the
Ottoman Empire, the bulk of the Macedonian regions that would have been lost in
the treaty of San Stefano. Article
23 was supposed to provide reforms and improvements for the Macedonians, who
were primarily Orthodox ethnic Bulgarian Christians. Article 61 of the Treaty, which was
equally toothless was supposed to provide security and improvements for the
Armenians. Neither of these
promises was kept. Simply put,
promised reforms never materialized.
Nor were they intended to materialize. Sultan Abdul Hamid II had outfoxed them
all. . He got loans for his
bankrupt Empire and never delivered anything but misery and even more
suppression.
One
contemporary author summed it up as follows:- Great
Britain saved the Ottoman Empire from a material loss of territory and advanced
her own interests in the Near-East by this action, but left European Turkey and
the Armenians practically at the mercy of the sultan [Abdul Hamid II].
We
hope that a bit more on Sultan Abdul Hamid II will provide a better
understanding of the postcards that follow.
Sultan
Abdul Hamid II has been described as a Tyrant.[6] For us that is an
understatement. He was abhorrent,
ultimately a paranoid. He
supposedly had elegant manners.
Maybe so. But when all
is said and done, he was an absolute ruler and despot who wielded unlimited power
and never hesitated to use it. One
of the problems facing those seeking to understand the period of interest to us
here is that what we today usually regard as the concept of human rights was
not really dreamed of in his Empire. This was especially the case when it came
to the so-called tolerated but none-the-less infidel population, i.e.
non-Muslim people, particularly Christians. So-called giaours
[infidels—sometimes spelled gavurs] were
certainly second-class subjects. In
our opinion, the concept of citizen was never fully espoused in the Ottoman
Empire - even when or after a Constitution was restored. The (to us ridiculous) insistence by
modern scholars that one should not use the term Turks but rather
(nominally for the sake of accuracy) Ottomans. By that mentality, we are apparently
supposed to believe that the Ottoman Empire was constituted of peoples called
Ottomans - all of whom were fairly treated. Rubbish! Talk about revisionism so as to
render the Turks blameless for anything untoward! It was, after all, the Ottomans who
did this or that. And, on the other
side of the coin, all the arts and crafts and many of the architectural achievements
carried out by Christians, are thereby to be credited to identity-neutral Ottomans.[7]
ORENS DENIZARD
We
are told on the Internet that Orens Denizard, was born on May 8, 1879 at Pontru,
France (about 132 km north of Paris) and died in 1965 in Paris. We will use his shortened name Orens Denizard because it is the
one used on the niche (drawer no. 2055 with his remains) at the Pre Lachaise
cemetery in Paris. Clearly, it is
shorter than Charles Bonaventure Orens Denizard!
As
mentioned, there has not been much critical biographical work done on him (note
that we could not come up with a specific death date) but it is fair to say,
there has been some study of his work.[5] Not to worry, for we believe that Orens rendition of the vile outrages carried out under the
name of Sultan Abdul Hamid II are very in-your-face. They are unrelentingly aggressive, even
savage. They pose no problems in
interpretation.
It
has been said that political cartoons reflect the views of a society at the
time of an event. Whatever! One thing they do, however, is they
reflect trends in behavior. The
ideology is probably ignored in most except that they reflect apathy on the
part of the power structure.
Pragmatism reigns supreme.
See Fig. 5.
Fig. 5
Here
we are ungracious enough to see a sneaky despot. Sultan Abdul Hamids ear-ring/ear-hooks
suspend crosses and clearly reflect the Sultans sporadic animosity towards
non-Muslims, foremost among them the Armenians.
Note
the Orens signature on the edge of the blade of the
stylized Yatagan
sword. Our copy of this postcard is
unused and hence undated, and the card itself bears no date from the satirist. It remains for others to provide a date
for it.
Fig. 6
Image
of German Kaiser Wilhelm II in his office in front of a sheet of paper on his
desk. There is a pot of ink of
Macedonian blood with a feather pen dipped into it ready for the writing on the
left forefront.
The
Kaiser with a human skull (top part only- a symbol of the defiance of death,
reminiscent of the infamous totenkopf [deaths head] of German military notoriety) is
deep in thought about what he should do or say?
His
buddy [copain]
Sultan Abdul Hamid II is seen in the frame (probably an open window?) lit by a
candle at the left rear of the scene.
The image is dated 2 [February]1903 and signed.
The
German Kaiser remained firm in his nominal friendship for the Sultan.
Wilhelm
II was immune to all criticism.
Germany had interests in Turkey that would not be compromised by
humanitarian concerns for Armenians or Macedonians or anyone else for that
matter.
The
imagery of the reclined sword-bearer on the lower right can mean anything to
anyone.
Fig. 7
Waiting
for the go ahead to murder. At the
back we see Waiting for a decision from the yellow books.
The
different countries used variously colored books to 'house' and reflect their
official diplomatic documents – e.g. English Blue, French Yellow, Russian
Orange, German White, Austro-Hungarian Red, Belgian Grey, Serbian Blue.
Kaiser
William II with his spy glass or telescope quips Its you Turk! Continue! Keep it up! Half-a million victims in Macedonian
cemeteries are on the lower right.
Sultan
Abdul Hamid II hold his poised dagger in abeyance waiting for the
go-ahead. The date is February 1903
and is signed Orens.
Fig. 8
Sultan
Abdul Hamid II says to Europe You allowed me to exterminate 500,000
Armenians.
Why
do you oppose the massacre of Christians in Macedonia [Macdoine]? Note Kaiser Wilhelm II in the rear.
(We
have never appreciated use of the word exterminate (exterminer
in French) because it sounds too much like getting rid of unwanted insects or
vermin.
Wipe
out is perhaps a slightly better if not less gruesome.
Fig. 9
Cartoon
from the front page of Puck (New
York) vol. 54, no. 1388 October 7, 1903.
The argument was that Russia was behind all the machinations and
disturbances and revolts and uprisings because Russia had nominally
unilaterally taken over the protection of all Christians under Ottoman Turkish
rule.
After
all, someone had to do
something. Might as well be a
co-religionist. (Problem for
Armenians was that they were not Greek or Russian or Serbian et cetera
Eastern Orthodox!)
Many, like Britain, were suspicious and
doubted whether the stated protective role and benign interest of Russia was
real. Britain therefore acted as
though all Russia really wanted to get out of this role of protector was
Constantinople. The lower right
panel shows Bulgaria attacking Macedonia.
The
ridiculous aspect of this is that the bulk of the Macedonians [Macdoines] were every bit as true Bulgarians as were the
Bulgarians of Bulgaria!
Some specialists in language claim that
the dialect of Bulgarian spoken in Macedonia was more pure than that spoken in
Bulgaria. Cartoons such as this did
little to clarify what was happening.
Fig.
10
Period
post card showing Sultan Abdul Hamid II smoking his water pipe [nergileh in Turkish] and dreaming the successful
rain of death on the Macedonians [Macdoine]. Note the Grim Reaper wielding his
scythe.
The
Sultans nightmare [cauchemar
in French] is that he himself will be impaled – rectally at that! (Incidentally, this post card is not by Orens.)
Fig. 11
Patient
Satisfied. Cartoon from 1903
showing the Sick Man Sultan Abdul Hamid II sick from having been subjected to
amputation, that is loss or severance of Bulgaria, Montenegro, Serbia and
Romania from his Empire.
The
legs and arms are in the bloody wooden tub at the front right. The ministers of Russia Goluchowsky and Austria Lamsdorf
write up their consultation on a long scroll sheet of paper. The Sultan, devoid of limbs asks to be
allowed to make future improvements.
Recall
that the Sultan said that he could survive loss of his limbs but never the body
of his Empire, that is to say Asia Minor. It is significant that by losing the
vast majority of Turkey-in-Europe, which was the most advanced and lucrative
from the perspective of revenues,
the
interest of the Empire necessarily reverted to Turkey-in-Asia. It became emphasized as the Vatan or
Fatherland. We need not dwell on
what that meant for the Armenians.
From
John Grand-Carterets La Turquie en Images. Une Turquie Nouvelle pour les Turcs
(1909) Paris:
dition Photographique pg.
70.
This
caricature was by Frederick Graetz and appeared
originally in Der Floh
[The Flea], Vienna, 1903.
Fig. 12
Map
of The Turkish or Ottoman Empire at its Greatest Extent, under the Sultan
Suleiman II, the Magnificent (1520 – 1560. The territories of Armenia became
absorbed by the mid- to late 1500s.
From
Frederic Austin Oggs Turkey and the age-long
struggle for domination of Southeastern Europe. Munseys
Magazine (NY) vol. 4, no. 3 (1915) pgs. 417- 459, at pg. 437.
Fig. 13
Map
showing the Dismemberment of the Turkish Empire, with the dates at which the
various provinces were lost.
The
boundary of Turkish Empire in 1683, is shown by a purple line. The dates are those of Independence from
Turkey.
The
Balkan boundaries are present [1915] boundaries. From Frederic Austin Oggs
Turkey and the age-long struggle for domination of Southeastern Europe.
Munseys Magazine (NY)
vol. 4, no. 3 (1915) pgs. 417-459, at pg. 433.
FINAL COMMENT
Amidst
the horror and gloom of the imagery we see the hypocrisy and insanity of the
nominal leadership of the nominally Great Empires of Europe and indeed of the
period. As reminders of things
past, these postcards are tangible evidence of history – they are valid
documents!
ENDNOTES
[1]
See Robert L. Morris and Lawrence Raskin (1992) Lawrence of Arabia: the 30th
anniversary pictorial history (Doubleday, New York) xvii, 237 pgs. at pg.
74. We have yet to figure out why
the youths could not say Lawrence
since the word for No in Arabic is a simple la – with an ell
pure and simple. The basis of the
jest for us is that in the film the Bedouin tribal chieftain Auda Abu Tayi (played by Anthony
Quinn) tells Ali who apparently on some occasion or other had told Auda that Lawrence had only fine points, concluded that
Lawrence is not perfect.
[2]
Eugene L. Taylor and Abraham D. Krikorian (September 21, 2014, on Groong). Sultan Abdul Hamid II: What did he really look
like? Caricatures versus photographs. http://www.groong.org/orig/ak-20140921.html
[3] See Eugene L. Taylor
and Abraham D. Krikorian (December 21, 2015, on Groong). Satirical Cartoon Published 120 years today, December 21, 1895, on
the cover of the weekly magazine Judge (New York):
Take home lesson - Money and Profits always trump principles or
obligations! http://www.groong.org/orig/ak-20151221.html. We may also call attention to a brief
paper by William N. Medlicott entitled Historical
revisions. XLVI. Gladstone and the Turks in History vol. 13, issue 50 1928
pgs. 136-137. Attention is drawn
there to the his [Gladstones] unqualified denunciation of the administrative
methods of the Turks never led him to diverge from the established British
policy of maintaining a Turkish empire in Europe. The famous lines Let the Turks now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner,
namely by carrying off themselves.
Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Bimbashis and their Yuzbachis,
their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag
and baggage, shall I hope, clear out from the province they have desolated and
profaned. One should not only
read the part just given but also what preceded it. Namely: - I entreat my countrymen, upon whom far more than perhaps any other
people of Europe it depends, to require, and to insist, that our Government,
which has been working in one direction, shall work in the other, and shall
apply all its vigour to concur with the other States
of Europe in obtaining the extinction of
the Turkish executive power in Bulgaria. See The Bulgarian Horrors and the
Question of the East by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P. (John Murray,
Albemarle Street, London, 1876) pg. 31.
And, unless we include what followed
where the quote usually is left off, we do not have the full picture of what
Gladstone said. desolated and
profaned. This thorough riddance,
the most blessed deliverance, is the only reparation we can make to the memory
of those heaps on heaps of dead; to their violated purity of matron of maiden,
and of child; to the civilization which has been affronted and shamed; to the
laws of God or, if you like, of Allah; to the moral sense of mankind at
large. Today, some might say
that there is a bit more than a little backpedaling given the careful
wording. For a thorough treatment
of the Bulgarian massacres see Gladstone
and the Bulgarian Agitation 1876 by R.T. Shannon, with an Introduction by
G.S.R. Kitson Clark, 2nd ed. The Harvester Press, Archon Books
(Hamden, Conn. 1975). The jacket of
that volume shows a contemporary cartoon of Gladstone chopping down a tree
labeled "Turkish Rule" with an alarmed Disraeli looking on.
[4] Gladstone died on
May 19, 1898. His career was
especially remarkable in that he served as Prime Minister for a record number
of four times! William Ewart
Gladstone, the history of his life written by H. W. Massingham [Henry William
Massingham, 1860-1924] was published as a special issue of The Illustrated London News at the end of May 1898. It is sometimes cataloged as The Life
and Political Career of the Right Hon. W.E. Gladstone by H.W. Massingham. It is 38 pages long and measures 30 cm
wide X 42 cm high. Our copy is
bound but it was first distributed with a paper cover which we reproduced in
Fig. 2.
[5] See for example Bruno
De Perthuis (2012-2013) Orens
Denizard et Le
Burin Satirique (1904). Nouvelles
de lEstampe.
La rvue franaise
sur limage imprime
(hiver, winter number) Numro 241 pgs. 16 -35; Bruno
De Perthuis (2013-2014) Orens
Denizard et Le
Burin Satirique (1905). Nouvelles
de lEstampe.
La rvue franaise
sur limage imprime
(hiver, winter number) Numro 245 pgs.15-28.
[6] See accomplished
historian Clive Fosss volume The Tyrants
(2006) published by Quercus in London.
See especially pgs. 119-122 for his insightful coverage of Abdul Hamid
II (1876-1909).
Our only complaint about
the entry worth mentioning is that a very early image of the Sultan is
included, one in which he was still a Prince! See [2] above. Foss has written some excellent papers
on how the Turks have re-written their history in a way so as to write
Armenia and Armenians out of it!
See for example his Armenian history as seen by twentieth century
Turkish historians in The Armenian
Review vol. 45, pgs. 1-52 (1992).
[7] We have seen too
many Museum Exhibits and displays featuring Ottoman this's and thats without
any mention that they were done by non-Muslims. (Anyone interested can check
this statement out by perusing the entries of whats going on at the rear of
issues of AramCo Magazine.) No shortage of Ottoman.
[8] Arguments that
Sultan Abdul Hamid II appointed many Christians to important posts are much
diminished when one learns that real power and authority was always held by a Muslim superior or
overlord. The ever-present
Armenian sycophants and evetjis
[yes men or those who assent to what the Turkish masters want] were never in
short supply.
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