The text that follows is written with three objectives. The first is to present a hitherto unpublished document in Spanish from the Austrian imperial and royal archives of 1896 on the genocidal massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. The second is, following the line of researcher Dadrian, to look for more connections between the Armenian question and the question of the East by putting us next to historians who would consider them more as one than as two different yet interconnected questions. The third is to present in Spanish, through the contributions of contemporary Western Armenian, especially American, English and French, the fate of one of the oldest peoples in the world and the state of the problem of the Armenian genocide at the present time. enlargement of the European Community to the East and the controversial candidacy of Turkey.
The document we present in Spanish translation is an economic-political study of the Ottoman vilayato Mamuret- * ul– * Aziz prepared by the Austro-Hungarian consul Zagoulic in December 1896. Vienna commissioned its consul to prepare this report because he needed truthful information about the massacres of Armenians perpetrated in the Ottoman Empire, one of the places being the vilayato Mamuret- * ul- * Aziz, during which they lost more than two hundred Armenians. Thus, the abundant and rigorously structured information compiled in the document describes the context of the killings that are of greatest interest. Hence also the importance of this written testimony about what happened: Vienna is an ally of Germany and the Ottoman Empire respectively and considers the maintenance of its territorial integrity as vital to its own existence and to the realization of its political course of expansion towards the Mediterranean Sea. He therefore has every interest in covering up what has happened and preventing it from having negative consequences for the perpetrators of the crimes.
Nevertheless the report describes a vilayato with anarchic conditions, frequent infractions of the order at the cost of the Armenian population, public insecurity and complete lack of reaction before all this on the part of the Turkish authorities in spite of the strong existing military presence: vilayato is strategic for its proximity to Russia. As a result, agriculture, livestock, and trade are declining, with frequent famines and mass emigration. In this context of an ever-endangered daily life, the Austro-Hungarian consul describes the massive killings, dehumanization and complete destruction and looting of property, the educational and religious institutions of the Armenian population. According to the document these crimes begin without the already frightened population has given any pretext, are organized, resemble the massacres perpetrated in the other vilayatosarmenis of the Ottoman Empire, are carried out with complicity and sometimes direct help of the Turkish authorities
