Armenian orphans photographed during the Armenian Genocide (1915–1917), in which an estimated 600,000 to 1.5 million Armenians were killed [1284X1027].

On the eve of World War I, roughly two million Armenians lived within the Ottoman Empire. A predominantly Christian minority, most were rural peasants, but Armenians were also overrepresented in commerce and urban professions, making them economically important, yet increasingly resented. In the decades before the war, they had already endured repression, land seizures, and [...]