As goes without saying, coming to terms with the history of an organization such as the AGBU–which has put down roots on all five continents and is active in many different fields–inevitably means making choices. A discussion of all aspects of the AGBU’s history, particularly its local history, would have gone far beyond the scope of the present work. The approach we have taken throughout privileges the Union’s central board and the programs it designed and developed. The central board is our protagonist.
Volume 1 (1906-40), based on rich archival material, provides a fairly complete account of the AGBU’s evolution from its origins to World War II. Throughout the first volume, we have sought to put the organization’s development in the wider context of Armenian history as a whole. Our aim here has been to trace the general outlines of the “reconstruction” of the Armenian world, especially in the Near Eastern countries where Armenians found refuge and the Union made a major contribution to Armenian history. We have broadened this account to include a description of the more directly political activities of Boghos Nubar and Calouste Gulbenkian, the first two presidents of the AGBU.
Volume 2 (1941-2006), which is necessarily based on less extensive documentation, but is more fully informed by the first-hand accounts of many people who played leading roles in this period, makes no pretence to providing the kind of broad contextualization that the first volume does. While continuing to take as its guiding thread the activity of the central board, now based in New York, the second volume focuses more narrowly on the concrete operations carried out by the AGBU, such as its part in organizing the 1946-1948 nerkaght or its programs and projects during the Cold War. We do not claim to deal with all the issues these activities throw up. Volume 2 also broaches the question of the Armenian diaspora in the Western countries, especially the United States. It pays particular attention to the vast program for the construction of schools as well as cultural and athletic centers carried out under the presidency of Alex Manoogian, and also glances at the major Near Eastern crises that touched off massive emigration to the West. Finally, despite our inevitable lack of historical perspective on recent events, volume 2 surveys the operations that the AGBU has conducted in Arme-nia under Louise Simone Manoogian’s lead since the Dec. 1988 Sbidag earthquake. Considerations on the AGBU’s future prospects round off the book; they grew out of our exchanges with the organization’s incumbent president, Berge Setrakian.
Foreword