BB-026 / Genocide
Hamidian Massacres
The Act
Under Sultan Abdul Hamid II, Ottoman forces and local irregulars killed between 100,000 and 300,000 Armenians across the empire. The massacres were a precursor to the later Armenian Genocide and involved widespread rape, looting, and forced conversion.
The Response
European powers protested diplomatically but took no decisive military action. The events foreshadowed the larger genocide of 1915–1923. Modern scholarship treats the Hamidian massacres as an early phase of anti-Armenian state violence.