2 - The Australasian Orphanage at Antilyas

Summary

Chapter 2 focuses on the Armenian Relief Fund and the Armenian Australasian Orphanage in Antilyas, in modern-day Lebanon. Children are rarely identified as the agents of change in international diplomacy, but during the immediate post-war period, the plight of the children was viewed as vital to the Armenian Relief Fund, created in 1915. This organisation defined Australian internationalism and humanitarianism during the interwar years. The Australasian Orphanage was established in 1923 and supported by the Near East Relief Fund in collaboration with American humanitarians. The Orphanage was a direct way to promote saving the refugees, and the campaign attracted significant support in Australia. The leading figures of this campaign – humanitarian activists Loyal Lincoln Wirt, Mary Serle, Reverend James Creswell, Edith Glanville and Ernest and Mary Bryce – energetically promoted the cause of those affected by the Armenian genocide, and the Orphanage became the focus of their efforts. This campaign is significant too because on many occasions efforts were made to transport Armenian orphans to Australia to save them, challenging the rigidity of the White Australia policy. Importantly, Mary and Ernest Bryce were the only activists who connected both the Armenian and Indigenous causes, identifying the destruction of Indigenous Australians as a genocide in the same way the destruction of the Armenian communities was described. In the Australian context, this campaign, it is argued, also marked a new break from British ties to a collaboration with American humanitarians.