From the day it was created, then, the AGBU found itself confronted with emergencies. To put it differently, the political context ruled out the program of sustainable development that had inspired the Union’s creation, all the more in that it was not just the Ottoman population which faced hardship in 1906. In 1905-1906, violent clashes that had probably been instigated by the Czarist regime, together with the first signs of pan-Turanism, had pitted Armenians against Tartars throughout the Transcaucasus. As early as its second meeting, held on 21 May 1906, the Union decided to provide financial aid to the Committee for the Relief of War Victims in the Caucasus, especially in Baku. This was its first concrete action in the field.
The AGBU expanded with striking rapidity over all five continents once the necessary legal groundwork had been laid. This calls for close examination. Let us observe, to begin with, that the newly founded Union was not just one more philanthropic society. The Armenian newspapers that covered the new initiative were not wrong to... Read all
The Origins of the Armenian General Benevolent Union
Garabed Sheridjian (1852-1926), a high-ranking offical in the Egyptian Ministry of Public Instruction, one of the AGBU's founders and one of its leading specialists on educational matters (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris)
Yakub Artin Pasha (1842-1919), archeologist, Minister of Public Instruction in Egypt, author of studies on ancient Egypt, and one of the AGBU’s founders (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris)
Mgrdich Antranikian (1851-1938), a financier, the AGBU's first treasurer, and one of its founders (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris)
Arakel Nubar (1881-1954), Boghos Nubar's son, a financier and businessman, one of the AGBU's founders (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris)