Armenian Activities in the United States

Armenian Activities in the United States

XIX. As the Ottoman Empire Armenians who immigrated to America from centuries past, today is also profoundly affect the relations with the Republic of Turkey and the United States. The most active Armenian diaspora organizations in the world are those who operate in the US. The US is the point of conduct of world actions for Armenian diaspora organizations.

Armenian activities in the US, II. Abdülhamid continued uninterruptedly during the Constitutional Era and the First World War. The Armenians, who went to the US to earn their lives, turned into the Ottoman Empire and the Turks. With the support of the missionaries, the US public opinion turned to their favor in a short time and used this effect on governments.

Armenian Migration to the USA
The first organizers of Armenian immigration from the Ottoman Empire to the US became Protestant missionaries. In the early 1900s, the Protestant churches in America decided to work among other religions. The Church established the American Desk in 1812 for foreign missions to organize these works. This table was chosen as one of the fields of study by the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire. For this purpose, the first of the American missionaries came to Anatolia in 1820. According to the laws of the Ottoman Empire, the missionaries chose indigenous Christians because activities were banned to change the religion of Muslims. First of all, the missionaries wanted to reform the old Gregorian Church, to create a Protestant society among these indigenous Christians if this was not possible. The Greek Orthodox community did not pay much attention to the American Protestants, but the Armenians were eager to do so. For this reason Protestant schools, medical clinics and churches began to be filled with Armenians. Demand among the Armenians expanded the American Desk of the missionaries and its program was more effective than in other parts of the world (Şişman, 2006, pp. 15-25).

American missionaries in Anatolia established 9 colleges until 1891. Istanbul Robert College (1862), the University of Beirut (1864), and the American College for Girls (1873) are the best known.

Young students of Ottoman citizens who were educated in missionary schools began to think about going to America to complete their education. Intelligent young people selected among them were sent to America by missionaries. The missionaries were hoping that they would return to assist in missionary schools as teachers, priests or clinics. But most of these students did not return, and those who stayed in the US laid a new path for themselves.

All those who came to the US from the Ottoman country were not young people trained in American missionary schools, and others came to seek the New World with great sacrifices. Migrant Armenians gave importance to working in the same factories, living in the same place and emphasizing mutual aid. Several small Armenian workplaces, coffee houses, grocery stores, shoemakers and other small places to see social services were opened in this closed area. These students and merchants quickly adapted to America (Papazian, 2000, pp. 311-312).

In the 1880s, a new group of Armenians began to join them. These newcomers were the poorer Anatolian peasant Armenians. 40% of these migrants from the end of the 1870s were from the Harput region and 90% were single.

In 1885, they founded the Armenian-American Vadookian School in New York. His first newspapers, Aregak (Sun), were published in 1888 in Jersey City. Thus, the Armenians in America were organized. The first major Armenian settlement in America was in 1883 in Fresno, California. Those who migrated to New York for training purposes were mostly from Worcester. (Bakalian, 1993, pp. 75-78)

In the late 1880s, the revolutionary Armenians began to come to America. These revolutionaries began building cells in America between 1887 and 1890. The most important of the revolutionary leaders was Sympad Kaprielian, who was known for his Armenian nationalism. In 1886, Caprielian was captured and exiled by the Ottoman Empire and settled in New York City, where he began to publish the first Armenian Revolutionary Newspaper Haik in the US (Mirak, 1983, p.95-98).

According to the letter sent to the Hariciye Nezareti by the Ottoman Empire in the 1890s by the US Ambassador to Washington Mavroyani on 29 March 1892, the number of Ottoman immigrants in 1890 was 2,167. As ambassador Mavroyani Bey stated, the Armenians had already started to work on the American Senate since the first migrations.

In 1895, the population of Ottoman immigrants in America was 5,255, and in 1900 the numbers were 26,799 (Karpat, 1985, p. 190). Armenian historian Vartan Malcom ignored the migrations from Syria, claiming that almost all of these immigrants were Armenians, citing the events in Anatolia (Malcom, 1919, p. 65). Malcom's reason for this assumption, until 1899 in the US immigrant records of the race is not specified. However, the number of Armenians migrated to America between 1891-1898 12.50