Hello and welcome to Empire with me and Eta Arnon.

And me, William Durimple.

So William on Tuesday we had a, what I thought, anyway for me it was a difficult conversation

about the build up to the Armenian genocide.

Yeah, we looked at previous outbreaks of violence against the Armenians in the form of the massacres

during the reign of Abdul Hamid and the massacres at Adana in 1909.

And then we were taking a look at the way the First World War escalated absolutely everything.

I mean, just like a catalyst into this chemical combustion that was already happening.

The Ottoman government attempted to deport Armenians as they feared they were the enemy within.

When we left you, we had secret kill orders issued by the young Turk central government.

And Anita, you asked about the hundreds of thousands of Armenians who were being deported.

Were they being sent anywhere with any intent or they just being left to die?

We are once again joined by the great Eugene Rogan author of the fall of the Ottomans.

Eugene, what was the plan for these deportations?

So women and children were seen as being no particular threat to the Ottoman state.

When the, the men who were seen as being possible fighters with the Russian side or a threat with our,

our taken aside and killed, then there is no real policy to exterminate the women and children.

It's just their scene as being a drain on resources at a time where resources are scarce.

So this is an Ottoman empire which is suffering from shortages of crops.

They're having to feed, you know, men who are in uniform rather than in the fields bringing in the

harvests. And so the state, in the first instance, will concentrate Armenian women and children

and the old in towns and cities in the southeast of Turkey, places like Adina for further measures.

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