Although the AGBU’s maiden venture consisted in providing symbolic aid to war victims in the Caucasus, the overriding concern of all Armenians at the time was clearly the catastrophic plight of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian subjects. But it was no easy matter to set up support programs for the Armenian provinces under the regime of Sultan Abdülhamid, whose secret police tracked, step by step, any move in this direction. Accounts written by the AGBU’s founders show that, under the old regime, the organization had to utilize diplomatic channels and consular services in order to deliver aid to Turkey: the money was sent “in the form of checks which were made out to the church leaders in each town or village and, invariably, forwarded through the consulates.” Requests for aid began pouring into Cairo very early on. Thus, at its 6 December 1906 meeting, the Union’s central board of directors reviewed pleas for aid from Armenians in the Van and Agn areas, both of which had been stricken by famine; weighed a joint request from the monastic communities on the islands of Lim and Gduts for a contribution toward the upkeep of their monasteries; and considered an urgent appeal from the primate of Edirne for help for arson victims in the city’s Armenian quarter.14 In March, faced with continuing famine in the Van vilayet, the AGBU decided to extend the province additional financial aid, half of it earmarked for the purchase of wheat and the other half going to provide the peasants with seed. The monasteries of Saint Kevork in Gardzhgan and Saint Garabed in Mush, which had given refuge to large numbers of orphans, were also granted subsidies. By 1907, however, famine plagued nearly all the Armenian provinces, as the Patriarch’s correspondence makes clear.15 The Union confronted these bitter realities for the first time; they brought it, so to speak, face-to-face with its responsibilities. Its founders were... Read all
The AGBU’s First Ventures, 1906-1909
Membership in May 1907
* Cairo: 418
* Alexandria: 282
* Other Egypt: 82
* Europe: 9
* Indonesia: 9
* Djibouti: 12
* Ethiopia: 3
Membership in May 1909
* Cairo: 438
* Alexandria: 175
* Other Egypt: 84
* Sudan: 24
* Paris: 5
* Marseille: 20
* Manchester: 36
* Indonesia: 10
* Djibouti: 12
* Ethiopia: 3
* United States/Boston: 89