The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: A History of the 'Blue Book'

By David Miller

The British Parliamentary ‘Blue Book’ on The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire (Misc 31 Cmnd 8325, HMSO 1916) is the largest single source of information on what happened to the Turkish Armenians in 1915-16. As such, it provides a focus of controversy between those who claim that it provides evidence of genocide, and those who maintain that because the Blue Book was wartime propaganda, its contents are not to be trusted. Ninety years after publication, the Blue Book is key to the question of whether the massacre and deportation of the Armenians was the result of a deliberate policy of extermination, or the unintended consequence of measures taken against the threat of foreign invasion and civil unrest.

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see also Turkish National Assembly's letter to the British Parliament regarding the Blue Book, 2005