The Economics of the Armenian Genocide in Aintab | Ümit Kurt

Ottoman History Podcast

E561 | What were the economic forces that drove the violence of the Armenian genocide? In this episode, historian Ümit Kurt speaks about his research on the role of property in the history of the dispossession and deportation of Aintab’s Armenian community. Despite archival silences, he reveals the central role of legal mechanisms and local propertied elites in these processes. In closing, he discusses the legacies of the “economics of genocide” into the present day, and how his research has been received. More at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2024/02/kurt.html Ümit Kurt is a historian of the modern Middle East, with a research focus on the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. He is currently Assistant Professor in the School of Humanities, Creative Industry, and Social Sciences (History) and an affiliate of the Centre for the Study of Violence at the University of Newcastle, Australia. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he is the author of award-winning book, The Armenians of Aintab: The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province (Harvard University Press, 2021) and the co-author of The Spirit of the Laws: The Plunder of Wealth in the Armenian Genocide (Berghahn, 2017). He is now working on his third book manuscript project on the global patterns of mass violence in the Ottoman borderlands in the 1860s-1920s. Sam Dolbee is Assistant Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, where he teaches classes on environment, disease, and the modern Middle East. His book Locusts of Power is out now with Cambridge University Press. CREDITS Episode No. 561 Release Date: 26 February 2024 Recording location: Clovis, California Sound production by Sam Dolbee Music: Zé Trigueiros, "Petite Route," "Sombra," "Big Road of Burravoe" Images and bibliography courtesy of Ümit Kurt available at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2024/02/kurt.html