Lanterna Rally

Author: George Horton

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2017-04-19

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 9781545455050

The Blight of Asia contains first-hand accounts of the Christian massacres which took place in Turkey and Greece during the early 20th century. George Horton worked in the Diplomatic Corps of the United States, and was posted to Greece and the Ottoman Empire for most of his career as a diplomatic attache. Working across several offices in what is now Turkey and Greece, he witnessed the chaotic fall of the Ottoman government - a period in which great numbers of people were killed by Islamists for their ethnicity and their faith. The grim accounts of continuous, sustained persecution of Christian peoples in various cities and districts spares no detail. Horton felt repulsed by the often Medieval-toned barbarism and inhumanity of the killings; the 'Blight of Asia' is Horton's shorthand term for the horrors unleashed by the Ottoman Empire during its final years. Partly biographical, this memoir charts Horton's life in the different diplomatic offices. After introducing the book with historical mentions of earlier killings, the detailed main body of work - inclusive of sometimes horrifying eyewitness accounts dating from 1909 onward - is presented to the reader. Horton was catapulted to fame for authoring this book. His systematic method, which details the various massacres of Christians in Asia Minor and Greece during the early 20th century, is eloquent, civilized and composed in the face of terrible inhumanity. Perhaps the worst single event was the Great Fire of Smyrna in September 1922, wherein many thousands of people were immolated in the maelstrom. Some modern scholars, such as Biray Kolluoglu Kırlı and Peter M. Buzanski, have criticized what they perceive as Horton's anti-Turkey bias, noting his ideological opinions and the fact his wife was Greek. However, The Blight of Asia remains one of the most influential and important sources regarding these bloody episodes in Turkish and Greek history.