SLAUGHTERHOUSE PROVINCE, THE: An American Diplomat's Report on the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917

By Leslie A. Davis, Edited by Susan K. Blair

When Leslie A. Davis, US consul in Harput in eastern Asia Minor from 1915 to 1917, ventured out of the city, he found that the Ottoman policy of deportation of Armenians went much further than forcible relocation: in his repeated forays into the countryside he saw the bodies of thousands of Armenian. Davis realized the need for a detailed record of the atrocities and brought along a doctor, who determined and described the causes of death. Davis also photographed victims (his pictures are herewith published as an appendix to the report).

Davis summarized his findings in a report send to the US State Department in 1918. At the time little attention was paid to it, and it was file3d away in an obscure archive. Susan K. Blair, a scholar doing research in US government archives on Turkey and the the Near East came upon the report almost seven decades after Davis sent it to the State Department. Her introduction puts the document in its historical context and sketches the life of the man who wrote it.

Aristide D. Caratzas (1990 - Second Printing)