American missionaries on issues of relief for Western Armenians and their repatriation

(according to archival documents of 1919-1922)

Abstract

The U.S. missionaries supported Western Armenians from September 16, 1915, to March 4, 1922. They implemented private charity, accumulated by the American Committee for Relief in the Near East and State funds off the American Relief Administration. These people provided counsel on refugees' repatriation, including matters of mandates, strength of the Army, time-frame and expenditures on foreign protection for vast masses who would return home. Three basic types of mandates applied to independent or autonomous Western Armenia, admitting its unification with already formed Republic of Armenia and taking into account their cooperation and provision of 30,000 soldiers in the Republican Army wuith weapons and equipment.

Missionaries served in Western Armenia and in the Republic in 1919-1922; they embraced Western and Eastern refugees together weith the starving segment of population in the limits of newly founded national State. 789,000 souls or 62 per cent of all Armenians in this unit received vitally important food supplies in 1919-1920; so the mortality rate among hunger-stricken and homeless people amounted to 23 per cent. Remarkable humanitarian efforts put forth by the members of the Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions greatly exceeded their unsuccess in the sphere of official state policy.