Armenian Protests in the Face of Violence

About This Lesson

In the previous lesson, students learned about nationalism, how it was expressed by different groups within the Ottoman Empire, and how its spread contributed to conflict within the empire in the nineteenth century. In this lesson, students will look more closely at some of these growing tensions by examining both the efforts of Ottoman Armenians in the 1890s to improve their standing within the empire’s universe of obligation and Sultan Abdülhamid II’s violent response to their campaign for rights and reform. Students will consider how the sultan’s actions encouraged a “habit of violence” (a phrase used by historian Ronald Grigor Suny) against Armenians within the empire that increased their vulnerability to genocide nearly two decades later.

Essential Questions

• What choices and conditions led to the genocide of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire during World War I?
• How can learning about these choices and conditions help us protect the most vulnerable groups in our society today?

Guiding Questions

• How did the Armenians protest for their rights within the Ottoman Empire in the 1890s?
• How and why did the Sultan exploit existing divisions in the Ottoman Empire to foment violence in response to the Armenian campaign for rights and reform?
• How does violence become normalized? What might be the consequences, for individuals and for societies, when violence becomes a “habit”?

Learning Objectives

• Students will analyze a complex text to understand the interplay between Armenian protests for equal rights and the repressive violence fomented by the sultan in response.
• Students will be able to identify several causes and consequences of the normalization of violence against a minority group.
• Students will hypothesize about the role the Hamidian Massacres played as a precursor to the Armenian Genocide 20 years later.

See the Additional Context & Background section in the Google Doc version of this lesson plan for the essential historical knowledge needed to teach this lesson.

Lesson Plan

Activity 1: Reflect on the term Normalization

Begin the lesson by asking students to respond briefly in their journals to the following prompt:

What does it mean when we say that something considered unethical or immoral has become normalized? Write about an example of a belief or action that has become normalized in a community or country you are familiar with. How do you think this belief or action became so broadly accepted? Do you think it has had a positive or negative effect? Why?

If students are unfamiliar with the term, you might ask them to make an educated guess about its meaning by looking for its root word and using the context of the question. 

Activity 2: Introduce Levels of Questions

Explain that in this lesson the class will learn about the efforts of Armenians to improve their conditions in the Ottoman Empire in the 1890s and the response of the sultan to their efforts. It might be helpful to review the status of Christians in the millet system and how nationalism fueled efforts of Christian nations in the Balkans to break away and establish their own nation-states. It is important for students to understand that forming their own nation-state was not possible for Armenians because of how their population was scattered throughout Anatolia rather than concentrated as the majority in one area.  

Pass out the handout, Levels of Questions for Protests in the Face of Violence, and explain to students that the questions on this handout will guide their note-taking and analysis as they watch a short video clip and analyze a reading. Students will notice that the questions on the handout are labeled as either factual, inferential, or universal. If necessary, review what these categories mean:

• Factual questions (level one) can be answered explicitly by facts contained in the text.
• Inferential questions (level two) can be answered through analysis and interpretation of specific parts of the text.
• Universal questions (level three) are open-ended questions that are raised by ideas in the text. They are intended to provoke a discussion of an abstract idea or issue.

Get more guidance on using the Levels of Questions teaching strategy and bookmark it for later.

Activity 3: Watch a Clip from The Armenian Genocide

Show the clip of The Armenian Genocide (4:50–7:44) about the Armenian campaign for civil rights and the Hamidian Massacres. Time permitting, you might show the clip twice so that students can focus their attention on the video itself first, and then on jotting down information to help them with the Levels of Questions handout second. You can also share with them the handout, Viewing Guide: The Hamidian Massacres, which provides a transcript of the clip.

Note that the video clip will help students only to begin to answer the questions on the Levels of Questions handout. The reading in the next activity will provide a significant amount of additional information to help them complete their responses.

Activity 4: Read and Respond to Levels of Questions

Pass out the reading Armenian Protests and Sultan Abdülhamid II's Violent Response and give students several minutes to read the text. As they read they should annotate it with following marks:

• Circle words or phrases you do not understand.
• Write a ? next to any passages you have a question about.
• Highlight or underline information that is related to any of the questions on 

Handout: Levels of Questions. 

• Add 1, 2, or 3 next to each passage you underline or highlight to indicate which question on the handout it helps answer. 

Once students have finished reading and annotating, take a moment to define any terms and clarify any questions that arose for students from the reading. Then have students work in pairs or trios to use information from the reading and the video to respond to the three questions on the handout Levels of Questions for Protests in the Face of Violence.

Activity 5: Debrief and Discuss

As a whole group, debrief students’ responses to the questions on the handout Levels of Questions for Protests in the Face of Violence. Responses to the first two questions should be rooted in the information provided by the text and video. The third question, about the consequences of a “habit of violence,” might lead to a more open-ended and speculative class discussion. 

Before wrapping up the discussion, you might prompt students to connect what they have learned to the concept of universe of obligation, from the previous lesson, so that they are prepared to complete the formative assessment below. 

• How did the Armenians’ protests seek to expand the Ottoman Empire’s universe of obligation?
• How did repressive violence against Armenians impact their place in the empire’s universe of obligation?