Okay, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us to this webinar. My name is Rachel Kerr and I'm really delighted to welcome you all virtually to the Department of War Studies. Thank you so much for joining us for this event which is jointly organised and convened by the Centre for Grand Strategy and the war crimes research group in the department. So before we start, I have a couple of housekeeping notes. First, I think your microphones and videos are automatically turned off but if not please please do that. And second is that we'll have some time for Q&A at the end after our speakers have presented. So please post your questions in the Q&A section in the chat and we'll pick them up there. So you can post up questions as people are talking and we'll just pick them up at the end and respond to those. The third thing to note is that we're recording the event. We had a lot of people wanting to subscribe to it so we're recording it and it will be posted on our YouTube channel afterwards. So if you want to watch it again or you want to send it to other people or just catch up with it then that'll be there. So once again welcome. We're here to celebrate the launch of Dr Charlie Laderman's latest book, Sharing the Burden, the Armenian Genocide and the Anglo-American's Struggle to Remake Global Order, which has recently come out with the Oxford University Press. The book presents a fresh new perspective on an event that's etched in the history books and in discussions of genocide and particularly the dangers of ignoring it. So everyone probably knows well Hitler's quote, Hitler's question in August 1939 shortly before invading Poland, who after all speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians? The answer is that many of us do as it comes out, but whilst it's often invoked the details of the massacre and the response of the international community such as it existed at the time is often skirted over. So thankfully we have Dr Laderman and Professor Donald Bloxham with us today to explore the details of this particular case and to consider its resonance and its relevance today and I'm really delighted to be able to introduce both of them. So first of all Dr Laderman is a lecturer in international history here in the Department of War Studies. He was previously a Harrington Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, a research fellow at Peterhouse Cambridge, a Fox international fellow and Smith Richardson fellow at Yale University and a fellow at the Kluge Center in the Library of Congress. He's also the co-author with London Sims of Donald Trump, The Making of a World View, which came out in 2017. And we're also extremely privileged to have one of the leading experts in genocide studies to discuss the book. So Donald Bloxham is Professor of Modern and European History at the University of Edinburgh. He's the author of numerous articles and books on the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide and the post-Second World War war crimes trials, including I wanted to mention the excellent genocide on trial war crimes trials and the formation of Holocaust history and memory, which I think is essential reading for anyone interested in the role and function of war crimes trials and the potential dissonance between the legal process and how it's received and understood. So Professor Bloxham's bio also tells us that he's working on two intriguing projects on the role of moral evaluation in the historians confrontation with the past and exploring the structures and fantasies of destruction in genocide, both of which sound fascinating and I very much hope that we'll be able to invite him back at a later date to discuss one or even both of those. So we'll proceed with the presentations. Dr Ladyman is going to speak first about the book for about 30 minutes and then we'll hear from Professor Bloxham and then we'll open up for questions. So Charlie, if you want to get going. Great, thank you Achille. Thank you for that kind introduction and thank you to the Grand Strategy Centre and the war crimes research group for hosting this event. I'm particularly delighted that Donald Bloxham, the foremost scholar of the international response to the Armenian genocide and one of the leading scholars as Rachel mentioned and genocide in general, is here to discuss the book and to offer his comments. I'm really delighted that he's here to do that. As some of you may know this book launch was originally planned for March before a combination of the lecture of strike and COVID-19 rendered that impossible. That seems a long time ago now, particularly as the launch was scheduled for shortly after the US Senate, following on from the House of Representatives, voted overwhelmingly to recognise the Armenian genocide. There are a few issues that have brought about any sort of bipartisan consensus in the US Congress at the moment but this was one and with that in mind I intend to take up the challenge issued by Congress when passing that resolution which was to encourage education and public understanding of the facts of the Armenian genocide including the American role in the humanitarian relief effort and the relevance of the Armenian genocide to modern day crimes against humanity. So let me just start by sharing my screen so that you can you can see the PowerPoint. Specifically what I'm going to be talking about today is and trying to explain is why the struggle for survival of one of the world's smallest nations became so entangled in the foreign policies of the two most powerful states the United States and the British Empire and in doing so what I'll try to do is to explore the possibilities, the limitations and the continued dilemmas of humanitarian intervention today particularly in US foreign policy. That's not to say that the debates over intervention for the Armenians and the ones that we have today are directly analogous. The past is indeed a foreign country as LP Hartley said and they did do things differently then. American interests and security fears were certainly not exactly the same then as those it faces today but some of the dilemmas that statesman faced were comparable and so what I want to do is to discuss a few of them at the end of this talk. It was especially apt that it was Congress that took the lead in recognizing the Armenian genocide and calling for the United States to help prevent these modern day crimes against humanity for it was around 120 years ago that another congressional resolution regarding the Armenians confirmed a fundamental departure in American foreign policy signalling that the country was becoming a great power with global responsibilities would no longer remain indifferent to events beyond its continent. The earlier resolutions occurred in the wake of the first large-scale Armenian massacres which ultimately claimed the lives of roughly 100,000 Armenians between 1894 and 1896 and served as a precursor to the even greater crimes of 1915. The treatment of the Ottoman Armenians was a humanitarian cause celeb at the turn of the 20th century possibly akin to what we see today with the treatment of the Syrians. Winston Churchill would recall that the Armenians plight stirred the ire of men and women across the English-speaking world while future US President Herbert Hoover stated that the name Armenia was at the front of the American mind but I appreciate that this question might not be at the front of many of your minds so let me start by giving you a little bit of background on the Armenian question which was the diplomatic term that arose from the insecurity of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Due to time constraints this is obviously necessarily a brief overview and I discuss it in more detail in the book but I'd also be happy to discuss any of this in more depth during the Q&A. Now the Armenians have become the first people to embrace Christianity as their state religion in the third century AD and their faith was strengthened by their claim to also be descended from Noah whose ark according to the book of Genesis landed on Mount Ararat in the heart of the Armenian homeland which you can see here. They had held resolutely to their Christian customs for centuries but by 1400 most of their territory had fallen under the Ottoman Empire. This was a multi-ethnic and multi-faith polity and although the Armenians as a Christian minority were second-class citizens they lived relatively peacefully in their historic home while the empire thrived. But by the end of the 19th century or certainly into the 19th century the crumbling empire had become the sick man of Europe. It would suffer repeated international humiliations and outside interventions by the European powers many in support of uprising by the empire's Christian minority subjects. As these nations gained independence the empire's territory shrunk and despite attempts to reform by the late 19th century it had become increasingly despotic under the rule of the new sultan Abdul Hamid. Persecution and violence against the empire's remaining Christians especially the Armenians whose homelands as you can see from this map was at the state's strategic crossroads increased as the government perceived them as potential fifth columns for European intervention and a barrier to the establishment of a more consolidated Islamic empire. This oppression would culminate in the 1894 six massacres otherwise known as the Hermidian massacres. When reports of these atrocities filtered into the United States American humanitarianism initially followed a conventional 19th century practice. Private charities and churches took the lead in marshalling relief efforts. They were led by the American missionary movement which had been proselytizing in the Ottoman empire for decades and had established the largest mission field of any nation with Armenians as their principal wars. On the other hand the federal government declined to involve itself diplomatically in this crisis or to concern itself with addressing its causes. But as public outrage grew petitions began pouring into Congress appealing for American action to aid the Armenians. Aware that America was rapidly emerging as a leading industrial nation and that Congress had recently appropriated funds for new modern warships that would transform the US Navy many Americans now urge their representatives to use this power to address the greatest humanitarian atrocity of the age. In early 1896 Congress passed resolutions calling for President Grover Cleveland to intervene to help stay the hand of fanaticism and lawless violence in the Ottoman empire. This was an unprecedented step the first time that a branch of the US federal government had outlined a political solution to a humanitarian problem occurring outside the western hemisphere. Ultimately this agitation did not need to executive action beyond sending a couple of those new warships to the eastern Mediterranean to protect the rights of American missionaries caught up in the cataclysm. But the resolutions revealed that a bold new humanitarian spirit was now infusing American diplomacy and as calls grew for the US to address the humanitarian problem closer to home that of Spain's oppression of its colony in Cuba interventionists justified this by consistently invoking the persecution of Armenians in the Ottoman empire. This analogy was particularly prominent in the mass circulation newspapers of William Randolph Hearst who some of you may know was the model also well as citizen Kane in that film. Hearst sensationalized the Cuban issue and contributed to the increasingly belligerent public mood that would help lead American intervention in 1898. His San Francisco examiner urged Americans to recognize quote Cuba is our Armenia and is at our door. Now one of the major activists for intervention on behalf of the Cubans and the Armenians was the assistant secretary of the navy Theodore Roosevelt. Once he became president in 1901 from his bully pulpit he would articulate a set of principles outlining America's responsibility to intervene in response to what he described as crimes against civilization. The 1894 to six massacres of the Armenians and the failure of any power to prevent them had a profound impact on his thinking. He frequently invoked Armenian suffering as a symbol of man's inhumanity to man and the clearest justification for righteous wars. He referenced the Armenians when protesting anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia and in Romania and also intervening diplomatically to help bring an end to King Leopold's brutal regime in the Congo. Now most Americans shared Roosevelt's horror at these atrocities but some disagreed with how he chose to respond. In the case of his protest against the pogroms in Russia former secretary of state the democrat Richard Olney made accusations that Roosevelt's actions were merely a ruse to secure Jewish votes for his re-election in 1904. Imagine Olney said the tempest of rhetoric if a foreign nation retaliated in kind such as death that lynchings in this country were disgracefully frequent and Washington would do well to put a stop to them. Now obviously Olney had a point in 1903 there were 99 recorded lynchings the overwhelming majority against black Americans. This frenzy mob executed ritual violence led Mark Twain to label his country the United States and lynch them. Twain and Olney were not alone in asking how a nation which lynchings were right could brazenly issue other states with protests against their human rights abuses and a paradox is encapsulated in these cartoons. You can see here a European cartoon showing Uncle Sam shocked at the at the actions or in what was going on in Russia while at the same time European shocked of what was going on in the American south and as you can see here Tsar Nicholas II of Russia weeping at the at a lynching in Delaware and refusing to accept a petition about the pogroms in eastern Europe. So now as you can see here this has been sort of gleefully exposed in in the international press but it was also picked up by those nations diplomats and when Roosevelt protested against the pogroms Russia's ambassador issued his own protest against American lynchings. Now Roosevelt was uncomfortable with these counter accusations it hindered America in his words and taking the lead on behalf of humanity and in his 1904 address to congress Roosevelt sought to outline a set of principles governing interventions overseas and also justifying why he felt that America could act in this case and he proclaimed that Americans should prioritize dealing with their own sins most critically violent race prejudice over protesting against wrongdoing elsewhere but in Roosevelt's words despite America's own very obvious shortcomings he believed that they had a duty to censure international wrongdoing because it had on the whole demonstrated its commitment to principles of civil and religious liberty and orderly freedom. What's more Roosevelt said there were occasional crimes committed on so vast a scale and of such peculiar horror in the extreme cases action may be justifiable while Roosevelt believes the cases in which America could intervene like it had done in Cuba militarily were necessarily few it was inevitable that America should desire eagerly to give expression to its horror when it witnessed such systematic and long extended cruelty and oppression of which the Armenians had been victims. As the international human rights lawyer Jeffrey Robertson has pointed out this is one of the earliest invocations of what came to be known as a response of responsibility to intervene or protesting its crimes against humanity. This set of principles of intervention though at the time didn't make much of an impression on an American audience but it certainly did a broad where there was an uproar about the possibility of further American action in Europe. Henry Hauser who was a French author would characterize this as humanitarian imperialism and warned Europeans the governance of the world was no longer a matter for them alone. Roosevelt's message raised hopes among Armenians Jews and their supporters that he would interfere more vigorously on their behalf. After reports of renewed Armenian massacres in 1904 Roosevelt was urged to intervene but the muted American response to that message that he delivered in 1904 chilled his ardor for action. He told an advisor that while he was entirely satisfied to lead a crusade for the Armenians this was his quote the country is not the remotest intention of fighting on such an issue. He had tried to rouse Americans but accepted they had no desire to back up words by deeds while often eager to protest abuses by other nations they were reluctant to develop the instruments of power that Roosevelt believed were absolutely essential to make such protests effective so for the rest of his presidency he was much more cautious and whenever anyone asked him to intervene he invoked a mantra that he had learned in the American West while as a cowboy never draw unless you mean to shoot. But even while pursuing this more cautious approach Roosevelt remained convinced that if the opportunity arose then the US should intervene for the Armenians and so when a decade later in 1915 amidst the turmoil of the First World War reports reached the United States which was then neutral the Ottomans were perpetrating new atrocities against their Armenian subjects and now former president was the marched outspoken advocate of intervention. So Roosevelt's disgust the US official response was characterized by restraint though although the American public responded with an impassioned expression of philanthropy to save the survivors contributing vast sums to one of the largest philanthropic operations in the nation's history the official US response was limited. President Woodrow Wilson was concerned that public condemnation one of Germany's principal allies would compromise American neutrality in a conflict that he wished to stay out of. But even after America entered the war in 1917 against Germany and Austria-Hungary Wilson avoided declaring war on the Ottoman ally. Now this approach appalled Roosevelt see here on the left Wilson on the right. Roosevelt publicly declared that the Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war and the failure to act against the Ottoman Empire was to condone it. He believed that America was fighting in a common cause with Britain and France and the other allies and not declaring war on all the central powers was a show of bad faith. I think Charlie's slightly frozen we'll perhaps just give him a second or two to come back with us for a moment apologies for this hopefully we'll be able to get him back in a minute wonders of modern technology. Donald would you be happy to come in and perhaps give some of your comments on the the book while we try and get Charlie back? Of course. Yeah sure do you want to give it one more minute and see or should I come in now it's fine. Let's give it a couple more seconds and just see I've just sent him a note so I expect he hardly trying to log out and get back in or something sort out his yeah so much I'm not sure exactly what's happens to me so often. It's a trouble when you think everything's going so smoothly. I think Donald if you don't mind very much rather than having people hanging on if you wouldn't mind giving your your comments and then we'll have to catch Charlie up with them I guess. No that's fine that's fine. I won't preempt Charlie I mean I think what you know what he was going to go on I know this because I saw some of his script beforehand he was going to go on to talk about the the nature of and you'll hear this from in more detail anyway the nature of the US response during the war itself which was really to keep up the diplomatic sorry to keep up the missionary aid element and the sort of informal diplomatic pressure on the Ottoman Empire but never their war on the Ottoman Empire partly because of the legacy of missionary property and activity there partly because in some sense relations between the US and the Ottoman Empire hadn't been too bad the US felt that it was contributing enough to the defeat of the central powers by concentrating on them and this was also it's the reason for them being allowed to you know America being allowed to come in and try and kind of articulate the peace afterwards even though they're not fought against the Ottoman Empire they've been part of the alliance that led to the downfall of the central powers. I see Charlie's back online now and so I will butt out again Charlie the the last thing that we heard was the sentence ending bad faith. Yes sorry about that it's a bit like you've seen that BBC video of being interrupted by his daughter while he was doing an interview we've had a bit of that in here unfortunately the internet cut out but we're back so I'm sorry about that but yeah I'll just pick up where I left off that's okay thank you so much for your patience I'll just bring the slide back up but yeah so Roosevelt as I mentioned before saw this as bad faith towards America's allies and above all he was adamant that if America failed to vindicate the Armenians by punishing the Ottomans it would reveal all talk guaranteeing the future peace of the world there's nothing but insincere cut trap and mischievous nonsense in his colorful phrase but he's motivated by this rival internationalism and a rival humanitarianism to that spells by Wilson what Roosevelt saw was that this if America was unwilling to make sacrifices on behalf of the Armenians this compromised any claim that it might have to be the guardian of the highest civilized ideals now true Roosevelt was out of office and free to advocate policies without any obligation to consider the practicalities but his position reflected a consistent conviction expressed in and out of office that nations must uphold those values by force if necessary when they were challenged and for Roosevelt this sense that America would be not willing to do this was was a violation of that now Wilson had a very different position he did not conceive of a military solution to the Armenian question and certainly not during the war the failure of the Allied assault on Gallipoli in 1915 had already underlined the difficulties in invading the Ottoman Empire so Wilson's prime concern at this time was the defeat of Germany and unlike Roosevelt he did not believe that it was America's duty to vindicate the Armenians by declaring war on their oppressors now the principal domestic constituency with interest in the Near East were missionaries as I mentioned and they developed a more extensive network in that in the empire than any other than any other power by contrast America's economic interests in the Near East were minimal at this time now the missionaries led the humanitarian relief campaign on behalf of the Armenians and other people in the Near East and you can see that from these from these remarkable relief literature that they distributed at the time now American missions while administering humanitarian aid were insistent that the country refrain from declaring war on the Ottomans they were fearful that the preeminent position that they had developed in the empire over the past century would be jeopardized and military intervention would threaten American interests and risk worsening the Armenian situation by impeding belief efforts the missionary determination to remain on friendly terms with the Ottomans ultimately dovetailed nicely with Wilson's belief that the US should stay out of the war initially and then once in they should keep their eyes on the larger prize the Ottoman empire was only relevant as an ally of Germany and as one critic of this policy said at the time for Wilson the missionaries at this time it was not Deutschland uber Alles but Deutschland uber Alles once Germany was defeated a threat toward peace would vanish and the Ottoman empire would collapse now it's not often appreciated that when the US went to war with Germany and Austria-Hungary it didn't do so with the Ottomans nor that the US was an associated power in the First World War and not an ally why was that well above all and contrary to Roosevelt Wilson distrusted allied imperialism and he didn't want the US involved in an allied war for control of the Middle East this was the principal reason for that hands-off approach yet Wilson's apparent inaction in the face of the massacres belies the outsized role that the Armenian question would come to play in his own vision of reforming global politics at the end of the war Wilson wanted Americans to take the lead in establishing a full international system in which the Ottoman Empire would deeply dismembered and the security of its subject peoples guaranteed and in this new order the US would have a special role to play in Armenia in addition to urging US membership in the new league of nations that he outlined at the end of the war Wilson hoped that it would take on a mandate to help the surviving Armenians to establish their own state so this was to help what was a nascent Armenian republic through an international organization established its security and Wilson felt that this was a manifestation of his new order this protectorate but it was not only Wilson who saw an American mandate in the region as pivotal to a reformed international system it was also a central tenet of Britain's strategy for the post-war world so why was that well firstly the Armenian cause had also enjoyed widespread popular sympathy in Britain as you can see from this relief literature in the british context since the 1890s the Armenians had also been a core slave in Britain William Gladstone famous for his advocacy on behalf of eastern christians during the so-called Bulgarian horrors of the 1870s had taken up the Armenian security at his last great political campaign while the Ottoman Empire had previously been a part of that issue between liberals and conservatives with the latter determined to maintain close ties with Constantinople as a ball walk against Russia horror at the Armenian massacres of the 1890s as well as the change in geopolitical situation with the rise of Germany leading to a much more amicable relationship with Russia meant that anti-automanism now crossed party lines by the end of the century and this would only grow during the first world war after the Ottomans joined the central powers and perpetrated the large-scale massacres in the Ottoman Empire that followed the British failure at Gallipoli this humanitarian sympathy led to a British hope that the United States might take on the responsibility for the Armenian state without Britain having to assume responsibility from Armenian security itself but beyond these humanitarian motives and more weightily for the British government these mandates also served British strategic interests checking France's regional influence and guarding its potential Bolshevist and Pan-Islamic threats to the road to the road from Egypt to British India this sort of the crossroads of British strategic communications for the empire but the prime motive was summarized by the colonial secretary Lord Milner in a meeting at the British cabinet just prior to the peace conference Milner said the future of the world depended upon a good understanding between Britain and the US and in his words an American mandate was not a mere cloak of annexation but a bond of union the idea of an Anglo-American colonial alliance based on US assumption of a mandate is one of the most interesting of the forgotten ideals of the world war one period it was a cause that likes of Virgil Kipling T. Lawrence Lawrence Arabia Winston Churchill and above all Prime Minister David Lloyd George worked to achieve at the Paris peace conference of 1919 and in its aftermath what has not previously been appreciated by historians is the significance of the Armenian question for both British and American conceptions of global order in the post first world war period now Wilson's commitment to assuming a mandate was not this vision which was the Anglo-American vision of a of this colonial alliance but it was a commitment to a and a determination for the US to play a hands-on role in establishing a very different form of world order for Wilson the mandates would provide an American alternative to Europe's imperial practices and more importantly ensure that the US assumed a position of global leadership but as opposition to the League grew Wilson was forced to subordinate his commitment to Armenian security to winning Senate approval for ratification of the Versailles Treaty and the League so despite engaging in ideas about an Armenian mandate this is a map from the Wilson Woodrow Wilson papers of the Library of Congress and a very different vision of what the Middle East might have turned out like and ultimately Wilson ended up having to subordinate this to the struggle over over the League of Nations like Wilson his opponents in the US Senate associated an American protector over the Armenians with that League membership whereas Wilson perceived it as a symbol of American selflessness and moral power his opponents interpreted as evidence of the unrewarding the open-ended commitments the League would impose Wilson's growing commitment to the Armenian cause and he sent a number of commissions to the Middle East to sketch out the possibility of a mandate including this one and which was led by the American general James G Harbord who was the chief of staff for the American expeditionary force in Europe and led this idea of what an American mandate would look like and as you can see here it's much larger than what is the contemporary Armenian state and the Caucasus this is an area that covered a large sway of the Ottoman Empire stretching from the Mediterranean in the west to the Black Sea in the east. Wilson's growing commitment to this cause was met by increasing American hostility to international commitments of any kind so for the Republican leader Henry Cabot Lodge and the rest of Wilson's opponents the US was simply being burdened with what they described as the world's poor house while its former associates in the war Britain and France seized the more lucrative oil-rich territories in the Middle East. Wilson's critics claimed it was unconstitutional to tax Americans for altruistic service to other peoples or to send Americans to what they described as this far-flung plague spot. They summoned up Washington's farewell address and the Monroe Doctrine as evidence that the US should preserve its policy of non-entanglement in the affairs of the old world and most significantly they feared that what Wilson was actually just trying to do was to use the mandate as the back door for America's entry into the League of Nations and they were determined to resist this. Now this was summed up by the Republican senator Warren Harding who succeeded Wilson as president in 1920 and he said I'm not insensible to the sufferings of Armenia but I'm thinking of America first safety as well as charity begins at home. Now Harding would make this America first message the first sort of narrowly nationalistic conception of this idea of America first a principal theme of his 1920 campaign and Wilson's request for an Armenian mandate was a regular point of attack for the Republicans and the debates in Congress reflected the debates in the country at large and you can partly see that with these cartoons. This is actually a couple of British cartoons of Wilson as the potential new Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the fact that the Ottoman Turks were waiting for what was going to happen in the Middle East for what the Americans were going to decide whether they were going to join the League of Nations or not which again points to the significance of this issue but also you see this in the cartoons in the United States. So for advocates of a mandate you can see from the cartoon on the left this was a sense of Congress crying crocodile tears for the Armenians while refusing to do anything to aid them whereas for opponents and you can see this in the San Francisco Chronicle this is JB John Bull the sort of personification of the British Empire pocketing the more lucrative Middle Eastern colonies and South African colonies particularly Mesopotamia, Egypt and giving this sort of meager Armenian mandate to the United States and what you see throughout these debates is that appeals to America's historic world role mingling with the desire to limit international responsibilities and refrain from burdensome overseas commitments and the question of America's duty to Armenia stimulated a public debate over the very character of the American nation. Now Walter Lippmann a famous American journalist would sum this up in a new republic editorial and he said if we fail at this juncture to vindicate Armenia's right to freedom and we shall never again persuade the world that our moral sentiments are anything but empty rhetoric playing over a gulf of selfishness and sloth that was one position but others there was a fundamental difference between private expressions of charity and a political commitment to another nation's security so the republican election platform in 1920 said there was no more striking illustration this is quoting from the platform of President Wilson's disregard for the lives of American boys or American interests in his request for an Armenian mandate Americans should not confuse the humanitarian and material aid they should extend with the political control that we must avoid ultimately Wilson is unable to convince Americans to join the league and his request to assume a mandate is also rejected deprived of protection Armenian independence is short lived crushed between Bolshevik expansion and Turkish nationalism so where does that leave us well although the United States was unable to prevent the wartime atrocities or to secure Armenia's independence in the aftermath this should not detract from the importance of the issue during a pivotal period in American history as American power expanded at the turn of the 20th century so did the sense that the nation could use this strength to aid oppressed minorities and persecuted people such as the Armenians events that would have been lamentable but unresolvable earlier in the 19th century occurring well beyond American reach now provoked intense debate over whether the US should respond and if so how now this humanitarianism was certainly selective and the subjects of interest were overwhelmingly religiously based drawing principally on cultural tropes of civilization and barbarism and American concern ultimately did not lead to a political commitment as I mentioned with official US response limited to relief and rhetoric but in attempting to convince their fellow countrymen of their responsibility to the Armenians both Roosevelt and Wilson would extend the parameters of debate on the purpose of American power and the nature of the nation's national interests their search for a solution to the Armenian question would encapsulate its internal conflict over America's world role in the early 20th century now what I want to conclude by is discussing five dilemmas that would continue to bedevil American policymakers in the decades to come and indeed right up to the present day that we can see in this response to the Armenian question so number one there was the risk problem of ensuring that presidential rhetoric did not become detached from political realities and this is summed up most clearly in that Roosevelt dictum never draw unless you mean to shoot now I would say that Maxim offers an abiding lesson for statecraft if one often ignored yet even while pursuing this more cautious approach Roosevelt remained convinced that if the opportunity arose then the US should intervene for the Armenians and so this illustrates a second competing dilemma of how far a leader should go to reconcile his personal ideals with the electorate's conception of the national interest during his presidency Roosevelt publicly promoted the Armenian cause as far as he felt possible but was ultimately forced to accept that despite their sympathies few Americans believed that action for the Armenians was compatible with American interests Wilson faced this predicament even more acutely in his attempt to secure the mandate is a Poland's pointed it as evidence that the president's internationalism was utterly divorced from any idea of the American national interest and that it was simply designed to benefit other nations and America's expense the backlash against Wilson's idealism and the reluctance to assume broader international commitments would reflect a pattern that would repeat itself on many other occasions where policy seemed to be guided by excessively utopian thinking but in responding to the Armenian crisis Wilson was forced to wrestle with a third important dilemma this is one that every would be intervener faces in the wake of a humanitarian atrocity either you assume the burden of administering the territory or you force the oppressor to mend his ways moreover having decided the US should assume that burden Wilson faced a related fourth dilemma over the legitimate basis for an intervention did it require the mandate of an international organization the League of Nations at that time the United Nations today as Wilson proposed or should it be pursued either unilaterally or with a coalition of willing partners as Roosevelt insisted ultimately however all those who worked to resolve the Armenian question for over three decades were confronted with the cruelest dilemma of all but sometimes it's simply not possible to achieve a good solution now Wilson made sure that he personally never forgot the Armenian tragedy in November 1917 a delegation of Armenians visited the White House and presented him with a portrait of a young Armenian girl in traditional dress which you can see here the girl's haunted expression symbolized the destruction of her nation in her hand as you can see she clasped a mountain snow drop a flower whose appearance Armenians regarded as a sign the winter was over and spring was on its way the Armenians faith that better days were ahead was captured by the inscription on the painting less balance hope the portrait the portrait was displayed in the White House for the remainder of Wilson's term in office after leaving office the former president brought the painting to his new home in Washington DC where it continues to hang over the fireplace in the drawing room to this day a constant reminder of the tragic question that neither he nor any other American was able to resolve thank you thank you very much Shelley that was absolutely fascinating insight into the into this particular episode and in particular the this sort of mesh of of of different domestic and international factors that went into all of this and created created the story that it did and I think in particular um to me what stands out is this kind of standoff maybe between principle and pragmatism and also if we're thinking about you know what's happening now and the debates were happening at the moment between this sort of inward facing and the outward facing profiles of liberal states and that sort came through strongly in some real discussions earlier on I'm going to hand over to Donald now to respond um and give us his um his perspectives on the book and his his thoughts on it um and then we'll open it up to to some questions after that so Donald please thank you very much Rachel and um and thanks Charlie I uh well I begin by saying congratulations this is you know an excellent piece of work and um obviously one very close to my own heart and it's really heartening to see it being given such a solid scholarly treatment um it's a really it's a beautifully produced book it's a beautifully written book you cover all of the important places and um it's it's it I'm going to say it's one of those books that's waiting to be written really or has now been written it's it seems it's it's a peculiarity of this field I think um you know you mentioned the rhetoric of the nomenclature of the Armenian question tied in as it was to the eastern question that that old sore of European politics but also of European historiography it's been really interesting to notice in the last 20 years or so the way in which um an older historiographical obsession diplomatic straightforward diplomatic historiographical interest in the end of the Ottoman Empire the arbitration of its successor territories has been reinvented through the prism of humanitarian and genocide studies perspectives both of those somehow united quite closely um so we've got a really interesting new angle on quite an old topic if you like um and that's been really a very fruitful addition to um to the canon of of you know some of the historiographical backdrop to contemporary issues um obviously you're joining a few other people who've worked roughly on on similar areas Davide Rodonio and um and Gary Bass spring to mind although you've got a obviously a very your own unique focus and dealt with the Armenian question far more depth than either of those scholars did there's no accident of course all of your focuses are on the Ottoman Empire and there are very good reasons for that we might um there are two reasons for that really aren't they one of what we call the strategic interest one in inverted commas perhaps and this is something I'll ask you to tease out a bit later on but let's call it the humanitarian interest um strategically the Ottoman Empire is so important for the other great European powers because it's it's it's part of the great power system in some sense um and in that sense thoroughly enmeshed within great power politics and the concern about what happens as declines and potentially falls is a huge element huge preoccupation of European elites in the other states in the late 19th century and the early 20th century um the other aspect is its cultural difference all that strange blend whereby you have its in terms of its leadership and um the dominant elements of the population uh religiously different significantly culturally different leadership to the leaderships of the other great powers and within the Ottoman Empire itself for hierarchy with Muslim populations at the top and Christian populations lower down and um so it's got these these sort of twin one hand kind of thoroughly tied into the European power system at a strategic level and that's a kind of strategic problem and the other hand these special elements um of I don't know what you would call it really cultural ethno-religious concern um which tie in very heavily to the humanitarian element um there um such that generally when we see what we might call humanitarian concerns being raised they tend to pertain primarily to Christians you know that's a I'll come back to this later at the end in one question was the end it's not exclusively true I mean I think one thing that would be really interesting to see someone draw out actually these days maybe it would make a good master's dissertation topic or even a phd topic is the brief kind of fling with the interest of the fate of Muslims in the aftermath of the Crimean war would be um you know as the Russians you know drive through and consolidate rule in the Crimea in the North Caucasus at the expense of the Circassian peoples a whole bunch of different peoples cast under that kind of common nomenclature and the extent to which there is a brief um pro Circassian moment in in Britain in the 1860s interesting because many of these Circassians and Muslims some are still Christians some are animists uh nevertheless it kind of breaks out of that kind of that sort of nexus of the humanitarian pro-humanitarian also being pro-christian at this stage I think one might merit study but on the whole um the humanitarian interest is in Christians and that gives a specific plan to Christians within the Ottoman Empire but when we think about these two on the whole you know that the actions of so many of the European powers including Russia and that you know are guided by the intersection of these two elements the strategic element about managing the decline or in some cases hastening or in some other cases trying to forestall you know delay the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the fate of Christians specifically within it those are the two kind of sort of central issues really in managing the so-called Eastern question um but it seems to me that here's where you know your project is really interesting and really sort of brings out something important uh well one of the many areas of that and if you say take Britain but I think the same is broadly true of other countries you take Britain too um on the whole it's got the strategic issue and the humanitarian issue and for those people who are in power rather than those people outside criticizing those in power for those people in power it's generally a question of how you get the humanitarian concerns such as they are to fit into your border strategic concerns so you've got strategic concerns there you try to make the you know you try to make the humanitarian consideration fit that if it doesn't well sod it um would be bit of broadly the um the scholarly way of summarizing the situation now with the Americans it's oddly different isn't it I mean this is this is a peculiarity of the Wilsonian moment in after the First World War where that you've got these this measure which is whatever we call it sort of cultural ethno-religious or religious humanitarian whatever that box of box of things and it's you know he does try to address it up as being a strategic benefit in some way but it's it's minimally strategic in terms of at least in terms of the kind of history of what I might think of as the cynicism of great power endeavor in that region um it's minimally strategic and sort of maximally kind of whatever you might use that it's um maximally charitable in some sense right or expressive of a value rather than an interest which is of course as you rightly intimately in the book what the one reason it never gets off the ground um but it's very interesting for that you know the amount of the amount of work that goes into trying to sell an idea which you know principally being solved on its value basis rather than its interest basis is is is really kind of remarkable really um and it leads to I mean I suppose I want to ask two questions of it based on some of those kind of lineages coming out of the fact that we have this remarkable sort of value-based concern you know however different however one might assess it in all sorts of ways which then collapses but you sort of you imply you know quite rightly and very recently some some afterlives are all sorts of these questions and one of the afterlives is of course the relationship between this um what we see in the late Ottoman Empire specifically with the American agenda there or the Wilsonian agenda and you know latter-day humanitarian intervention in strategically significant areas which you can think of think of a number um you make the move at some point very consciously you know and you intimate the difficulty of this and you know I want to draw out more you know how do you get from the kind of basically pro-Christian things about saving lives that also happen to Christian life but the more general humanitarian thing that tends to inform rhetoric today or so what point is that does the one morph into the other or is one sort of piece of rhetoric consciously cut off at some point and replaced by another one what's the nexus between those two things um we might call this the sort of inverted Circassian question if you like the other question um if this is okay it's to think about oh it's a peculiarity isn't it when so much of the you know the Armenian sort of nationalist concerns in the aftermath of 1915 and 1918 was with mandatory Armenia an independent Armenian state significantly housed in part of eastern Anatolia um and that became for a long time the yardstick by which you measured America and the Armenian question was the extent of people agreed or didn't agree with the mandate idea it seems to me that there are other ways in addition to that or separate to the mandate idea that have some sort of humanitarian valence and these perhaps you don't touch on quite so much in the book and maybe you'd like to expand upon them now if you can because I'm thinking for instance I mean clearly if you're looking at the historiography or the history of um great external great powers in the Ottoman Empire the powers that have by far the most responsibility for meddling in the Ottoman Empire but exacerbating the dynamic between Armenian Christians and Ottoman Muslims and between Armenian nationalists and the Ottoman leadership are the European powers really principally Britain and Russia but by no means only them um you know if we're talking about kind of historical responsibilities these are the guys with the responsibilities sorted out if any what if any external power had such a responsibility right America coming in then ultimately not taking the mandate probably not that surprising and is in in any sense of you know these guys are probably not the ones who you know deserve the burden if it was a burden to be taken up the um but when the mandate it's not just a question is it of the mandate getting rejected because when the mandates the idea of the mandates rejected there's still this question of how American officials businessmen comport themselves these are be the Ottoman Empire and tied into that irrespective of the mandate or no our issues if a humanitarian support specifically the question of you know what happens those remaining Christians still in the Ottoman Empire during the Greco-Turkish wars or that rump of Greek and Armenian Christians that stay in the Empire even after the Lausanne population exchange and then also subsequently matters of the Turkish state's relationship to its Kurdish people which is not on the horizon yet in terms of Western diplomacy and in that sense over and above the kind of not simply not the U.S. not Congress and blood you know the American public to a certain extent turning away from the the man supposed mandate responsibility which they obviously do there's this additional effort how they then kind of cope with the humanitarian legacy in Turkey on a separate kind of ordinary everyday diplomatic level and at that level it's not just to kind of not taking on the burden it's a very conscious kind of attempt to see the way that people like to restore as a group you know selling the new to the new nationalists the way she's like how I circle American moral authority you know now your first book done is like about the interposing relation between the transition of the week and the last week. But I think the transition, at least in the Americas, and how it's possible to actually speak more to, is that I do think that what occurs should be a result of the disquieting of the trade within this, and to be able to make inventions adapt to it, because they don't need some military invention at all. So he seems important at the time, as soon as he comes to my international office, both of these ventures first, and probably most of them will definitely be on for three weeks at the same switch, the United States has a responsibility for this. And then also the intention of the combo in the United States, again, is to make inventions, and to do that, and not have these sort of inter-trash inconsistencies. But at the same time, because the transition caused by the world's campaign and both of the international and international people to go up in his colony, developed by the United States, has improved the number of people that are in America with it, so she's in place. Obviously, we're going to have to check to find some of the language that people can use in the United States as well. And I think the Russian language obviously includes five facts, that the huge part of the United States lies in the international issues because of the persecution in Russia. I think that it's the same sort of interactive international system.  Unless the United States has something to affect the situation in each Europe, then those people, there's a lot of things to come to the United States, and to be able to see the origins of the United States in the United States. And I think it's a really hard question because I think even in this period, it's still very much seen through the lens of a Christian international book. It is still seen through the Christian civilization, Christian civilization, and Barberism is sort of a form of Christian attitude to a large amount of terrorism. But it is the turn of the 20th century the policy of the Christian system. We talk to people about this, but at the same time, as you say, say we look at the Holocaust in 1913, it's very little, European or American, the United States of America and the United States of America leading to sort of the American empire and playing a large role in the coming 1915. But I think what we're starting to see is sort of emergence in the United States just in general, I think that in the works of society on the United States of the world, a very influential society that actually works at the center of the United States is expanding out its economic power and its population and that is the basis to sort of the new idea of our policy but obviously, I think it would be hard for the administration to have more of the question of how we demand it because, as you say, they're very small sort of financially to gain. And there are some people who are also bound to take on the same ability to take on is how we demand it. We are holding on to it while we want to access the oil, we might want to be more backward because we want all of these things. But what I'm saying is it's not a big decision in the interest. I think it's a big decision that we see in the 1920s because I think the minute it happens, they're very much objected and they're very disappointed and there's a lot of ideas that they don't want to best think. So we develop an idea of what's going on and see the time for bad ideas in the 90s. I'm reading that from what we know today about the idea of the 1960s about Kosovo, Bosnia and the next generation that's a dream of the end of history. For certain, it's an important thing after the first world war. We talk about events and the world that can change. I think we see it's a tricky and major figure in the origin of the history of studies and the fate of the second world war over the modern society and America. We're going to talk about power. So I think this is important for me. I've got to put that in more book. But it's a lot of work to do, but I hope it's going to be helpful. I'll be there. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I have a question. The side elements that the Armenian side talked about in the US policy are pretty similar to the ones that the US has made up by the US side with the cross-breed crisis. I'm wondering whether these elements are misused in the Pacific States and the international system during the genocide, but they're not used in the US and the rising superpower during the US collapse. As such, there was a sort of pressure or expectation for intervention. And in both cases, there was the need to be made in the US in little order. Can we expect that with current and future decline of the US superpower status, there would be some problems of the US and the cross-breed crisis, towards humanitarian intervention with the US relevant? And I wanted to, if we could add to that, I mean, there would be a question as well, going with the British government and British policy during this time, and how that intersects with the US at that level. I'm glad that the, thank you for those questions, great questions. And pick up on this idea of opposite similarities. And I was struck, I came to this topic because those were the issues that I was interested in and I wanted to go back. And obviously, if you try to, if you go back into history, if you try to approach it with the questions that you can't avoid as opposed to the questions of the present, you try to at least leave your present experience and what you can get them. But I think they are very similar. And one of the things that I think is very interesting is that the amount of power might turn a book in the political price that's happening up in the Asian side. I think she starts with the Armenian genocide and comes up in the 1990s. And it's an extremely powerful book. And I think my sense was that the lessons that she took from that are necessarily the ones that we've seen the issues that she faced. I mean, it's amazing sort of case-studying and intellectual being faced with the very issues that she studied. And she comes into the Obama administration and is in the interest of the administration, personally, when she was on the National Security Council then in Syria. And I think what the question, what we see in that book is a sense to which the United States is much of a blind-eyed genocide in that early era. And I think that's just not really a question. It is the case that the US is a blind-eyed genocide. And I think we see from these dilemmas and from the history how much amount of grapple with what you do in the basis of this. And I think that's the aspect of that. To come up again to my senses, I'm glad that I mentioned similar dilemmas. I think those are questions that, and I'm sure there's more. These are just ones that are strong to mind. It's not just about knowing what these extremely hard-pressing questions are safe for us. It's not just simply a question of being able to either ignore what the military has been. It's something to be done for that. But I think the most important thing that comes out is that the issues just don't go away. And we tend to think when we enter a period. And I don't want to mention this previous argument. Malcolm Bond was in particular those encyclicals. And I think the United States is a unique geopolitical position, sort of much more a security of this position, in terms of what was previously called full security. And it's not the basis of the rivals on its doorstep. And so there's a sense that the United States can feel that it can sort of treat the world to a certain extent. And I think the thing that's interesting about this argument is because even at the time when we have an illustration that has done that, we're still seeing some language over what we're seeing with Hong Kong today, with the Atlantic, and I think it's also going to be back on the United States also again, which we mentioned in your point previously. This is a question of liberalism both at home and abroad. And this is a debate for both of us now. I think it's interesting that the whole war in the United States was condemning them, so the treatment of its population to its individual population, but the contractions was to look at segregation in the South, look at the brutality of the system, I think it's a bit of a challenge to comment on. It's the intersection between geopolitical and domestic. I think it's not the right way. And it's a fundamental question we just have to keep getting to work with. Yes, it's a good question. It's a good question. And it's under which there's a lot of leadership in Britain in the 19th century. And I think there's an irony throughout the 19th century with some geopolitical reasons, because of concern of the constant view of the United States, it was a concern of some of its stability and it was a concern of Russia in particular. But while the 1890s are a bit freer to take a more independent position, but at that point it's a fascinating thing that you're mentioning, which is a bit of an attitude with Britain. I think some of these questions that Britain faces as a power in the 1890s as a power in relative to crime facing powers around the world that wanted to protect the United States from a multi-polar system at the turn of the century. And we see very similar things there with the United States facing some rising powers. So there's some of these questions. There's a sense to which we're facing the uprising in South Africa on the board, but it's facing some questions in Central Asia, facing complex subjections. It has a global picture of its interests. And as a result, you know there's this large humanitarian outpouring in the Middle East. There's still a sense that as powerful as Britain is, by this point, a lot of people can influence the United States on the ground without the support of the European powers. And ultimately, they can't do that because the European powers are not willing to allow it to do so. So we see the United States where the United States is, potentially less people are influencing events on the ground in the region and possibly less people are putting it. Thanks for having me, Taddle. Well, I know I got the pleasure of doing this, so I would like to extend a little bit on the second page of our presentation and briefly about the report of our protection for the Armenians, the only paper of the protection. So we ask that as we bring the Parisian refugees to the province, we expect if there are any kind of royal or special expulsion or protection over the Armenian population, as a standard role, it's a very important issue for the United States and for its particular interests and for its particular interests. But we're pretty sure we want the regimes, the regular relations of protection for the Armenians in the Middle East and the Russians in the United States in the last month. to one hand the pressure on the other. And that's their way into the Ottoman Empire. Thank you. We're going to go back four again to now. The genocide is still going on in Turkey, and the situation is like that. The question is happening, and she's separately divided today. Yes, yes, yes. I think there's a number of reasons why the vote goes to Congress, and it does, is because of what was going on on the Syrian Turkish border, and given the number of Christians, particularly those who, the Kurds obviously, was a major humanitarian concern, but also a sense to which Christians who fled from their ancestral homes, and they lived in the first war, and during the first war, we were seeing many of these sort of, their ancestors were now, sorry, their descendants were now facing a situation like this, after President Trump's withdrawal, and the sort of Turkish incursion into Syria. So in the American sense, there was an analogy. It was being brought up in the next election. But having just given an answer, I've talked about how these issues continue to be live issues, and I know that they will continue to be live issues. I mean, at the moment, in terms of bandwidth, these questions are just not, in a world where COVID-19 is dominating, but also just questions about the internal stability of the amount of humanity. These questions, particularly what's going on in the Middle East, are just not really, are not my concerns for American policymakers, and I don't think they'll be for some time. So we'll see. And it will be interesting to talk about the, sort of the international consciousness, and never say never on this, but as anything, until November, there's a very little chance of much more of a diplomatic, in the region, in the near future, that would be my sense, and I don't know anything about that. I think, Donald might slightly have frozen for a second, there's two more questions in the Q and A, so when I just pick those two up, we don't have, we only have sort of just over five minutes left now. So I'll leave those out, and then back to you, Charlie, and then I might quickly add a little bit like, so Candre has asked, will you discuss the ebb and flow I think you said C sort of US attitude to humanitarian intervention. How closely is this flux mirrored if there's similar changes in attitudes to non-humanitarian intervention in Vietnam in fact. And I have a question for Oliver J. Smith, hi Charlie, thank you for your great talk. What do you think were the key longer-term lessons for the Fletchling Anglo-American Alliance the handling of the Armenian question, i.e. questions that policy makers were drawing on in that and then I was just going to ask you to ask both of you, actually if Donald comes back again before the end, the question about where would you go next and I love these kind of Armenian history and the detail of it in such a in such a sort of ripped way. I wonder where you would go next if you were going to write another book on another instance of humanitarian intervention that we can you know that has something to do with the past as a different country just things differently there but it's sometimes the same sometimes it's different in the lot that we can we can that's so kind of but where would you go next if you were thinking about if we're talking to MAVA students, do you want to talk about the topic that you might might explore. That's a really good question and I'll take first one from Simon first and I think that's a really good one, I think we do do that, I think one of the things that Alex said about American bomb policy and D. W. Bogun who was a British scholar talked about this idea of the illusion of American omnipotence and we see that and the sense to which what he talked about the illusion of the illusion of the fact that he said it can lead to the sense of the American conflict, the consequence of falls and aids it's not to do with what the United States has done and I think we see that over the long period of career in the British national back in the 1950s I think it also applies to Vietnam War there's a sense to which and actually, that for so much of this time the United States is so extremely powerful there's a sense to which if it's in terms of achieving its objective because it's so powerful that it should give shape to the world and as it's all at its best and I think what we see is the limitations of that come to the question, we saw this in the aftermath of the Korean War and we see that in the aftermath of the Vietnam War as well, the Vietnam War syndrome as it happens to be called and the sense to which we see these ways is a little bit more of an idealism but I just sense a presence in the United States and I think there's a turning in which there's a sense to which and there's leaders who are who are not able to achieve their expectations so that must be my first answer on that. On second thought, I think that's a really, really question, we see I think I think there's a sense to which the number of British and campaign to bring the United States in certainly what James Boyce is probably the foremost British scholar of American boxing in that period who just rails against the idea that the British government and presently believes that it's going to lead to this kind of role in the world, it's a sense to which the United States is not understood by the constitution system or what we see in America. And the person who I think is most interested in this, one of the touches after this, in a sense, he has a more sacred experience in the sense to which and there's been a lot of joy down the streets in the region and in the lines on the American mandate he doesn't lose his sense of faith in the belief in this sort of English-speaking condition. It is certainly very private about how you bring the United States into the United States and he also has a good current, so good current is Lord George's sort of a chief advisor, probably one of the leaders of intellectual architecture of the mandate policy who believes it's not going to lead to that which and moving the British Empire to a more common office and ultimately sort of go down in the Middle East because our nation is helping the government and the world especially the users and code goes on to become a pretty massive city in its core and I think we see the lessons that he learns from this and how you bring about in public a new round to take on this large international role. So I think he does have a lot of leaders and British policy makers as well as the Americans and to my intellectuals on the way to the next one, I mean I move completely away from this on the next one, I'm working on a game with them with the same on the five days between Pearl Harbor and the separation of war and the separation of between an international and a period. So I'm just starting out the loop as I talk to that on the literature on the humanitarian dimension. I think as Lord mentioned, I think there's so much in the 19th century that hasn't been, it hasn't been for people to come to the United States to go and do that. So I'm just trying to gain the game by just the international legal conventions that come up in the inter-connected system is Martin Zawar's which is about a 19th century concert viewer in the government idea. It's the idea that this is sort of a proto-system of international governance. I think there's a lot there, I'm sure beyond this region there's there's more to talk about. I think the international legal side, I think it's very important and I think we quite have a good hand on that. So that's what I'd be suggesting people do to sort of the legal and modern countries in the area that's just in the market. I think I'm muted. This is a little bit of a start of the 1990s and I think beyond that I think there's great merit in going back. So, John, when you were off-way I was asking John, where are you going next in terms of picking the next thing to buy another book? I don't think that's a very normal thing. What was he taking? Maybe I don't know if I can ask you. So question just before we finish up whether there's one sort of episode you think perspective issues or doing MA and BS sessions or what? I think that's great, that's great, that's really important. I'm really sad that we have to do a presentation session. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you, John. Thank you. Thank you, Jolly. And I think we should end by, we're not going to have you as your member but let's all kind of raise our applause. You have whether it's a deep conversation sounds like a brilliant book. And thank you all very much for joining us. And thank you especially, Jolly, for speaking. Thank you.


Santa Cruz Island is about an hour by boat from the coast of Southern California. Santa Cruz was used for ranching in the 19th and 20th centuries. Now, students are helping bring wetlands back to the island. Irene Bailey works with the students. She says people brought invasive species to the island. This changed its environment. So we're trying to get the invasives removed from here and then plant in native grasses and other native vegetation that will be good for the plant community and the birds and stuff that are coming in. The students attend the Environmental Charter High School near Los Angeles. They are taking part in a national program called LEAF, Leaders in Environmental Action for the Future. The Nature Conservancy operates the program. Kira Adams says the girls are learning about nature. Sometimes you'll drive through a path and it feels like the Amazon and then it'll feel like the desert and then it'll feel like the tropical rainforest or then it'll feel like just like a natural forest. So it's very interesting going through this island and feeling different types of environments. Glenda Sanchez says some students are considering careers in environmental work. I think our generation where we're learning more about the environment is crucial because now we learned about it and we know what are the problems so now we need to find a solution for them. Sharon Tam says the program helps the students learn to work with others. Because we're almost like people that we're normally not familiar with and then we're living together and then we have to deal with each other every day so like communication became really important. The students were able to explore the island for four weeks, an island so close yet so far from the city in which they live.