The New World and the ‘New Turks’: the American-Turkish Claims Commission and Armenian-Americans’ contested citizenship in the interwar period

The flourishing of nativist political sentiments during the recent United States presidential election has resulted in popular speculation about who is, and who is not, a ‘real’ American. Foreign-born citizens’ struggles to forge a sense of civic belonging amid fears of national disloyalty have significant precedent. This article examines one such historical episode, which centres on a claims commission established between the United States and Turkey during the interwar period. The American-Turkish Claims Commission was intended to aid the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two nations through the resolution of private claims. For the hundreds of Armenian-Americans who filed claims, the Commission provided an unparalleled opportunity to seek their new government’s assistance in claiming compensation from the Republic of Turkey for losses incurred during the Armenian genocide. However, such faith was unwarranted, as the United States excluded from consideration all of the claims made by American citizens who were former Ottoman subjects. This article examines the reasons behind the exclusion of these claims and raises questions as to how immigrant communities can overcome the narrowing of what it means to be American both on the world stage and at home.     

COMMUNICATING INVASION: UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL ANXIETIES AROUND MOBILE SPECIES

This article explores how discourses of threat concerning invasive alien species emerge and how ordinary citizens understand, receive and appropriate them. It explores the ambivalence of scientists and policy‐makers using emotive or highly charged terms and vocabulary, arguing that many make strategic yet cautious use of fear to raise awareness. Based both on in‐depth interviews of scientists and/or expert policy‐makers involved in communicating with the public about invasive species, as well as citizen focus groups, it further discusses how individuals reflect critically on the terms used in written documents. We argue that the various scientific uncertainties concerning the impacts of invasive species foster and feed other domains of social anxiety beyond the usual concern previous research has shown for xenophobic connotations. These include wider fears about environmental technology, science and expertise, changing environments, and threats to human health.     

Artificial states? On the enduring geographical myth of natural borders

Alberto Alesina, William Easterly and Janina Matuszeski's paper Artificial States, published as a National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper in June 2006, suggests a theory linking the nature of country borders to the economic success of countries (Alesina, Easterly, & Matuszeski, 2006). This paper critically examines this suggestion that natural boundaries and ethnic homogeneity are desirable for economic reasons. It takes issue with the understanding of artificial and natural boundaries that they develop, arguing that this ignores two centuries of critical and quantitative geographical scholarship that has mapped, documented and critiqued the obsession of a link between topography and the appropriate shape of states and boundaries. It explores how their argument is linked to a defence of ethnically homogeneous states. The focus is on their teleological and paradoxically ahistorical vision that naturalizes politics by appealing to spatial myths of homogeneity and geometric destiny, grounded in a reactionary understanding of space as container. In so doing, I am mindful of the strong links between such proposals and calls for post-conflict partition, and the corresponding discourses of ethnic and cultural homogenization on which they rely. Instead of thinking of boundaries as geometric objects, squiggly or not, I consider boundaries through the simultaneous processes of reification, naturalization, and fetishization.     

Oval Shield Representations on the Black Sea Littoral

Finds of representations of oval shields in Nymphaeum, Panticapaeum, Myrmekia, and the Taman peninsula have raised the possibility of the presence of Celtic groups in the Greek colonies of the Pontic littoral. However, these identifications have been based on the traditional association, based on classical history and sculpture, of oval shields exclusively with Celtic groups – an association which recent research has called into question.     

The sheep of early jericho

A re-examination of the ruminant remains from the excavations of the Jericho Tell has shown that sheep were certainly present, both in the pre-pottery Neolithic A levels and in the pre-pottery Neolithic B levels. Details are given of the osteology of the fourteen bones that have been identified as sheep and the implications of their origin in the context of early domestication are discussed.