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Barclay Acheson's report on the Assyrian refugees of Iraq, June 1927
Location
Baghdad, Iraq
Year
1927
Item Detail
Acheson's brief of June 30, 1927 of his report to Near East Relief on the roughly 25,000 Assyrian refugees in British-mandate Iraq, recommending land settlement rather than feeding or orphanage programs.
Context
Barclay Acheson, an ordained Presbyterian minister, served as Associate General Secretary of Near East Relief from 1922 and by 1925 had become its Director of Overseas Operations, responsible for relief and orphanage work across Greece, the Caucasus, Syria, and Iraq. On his annual inspection tours he kept a detailed diary — dictated and typed, with supporting memoranda — that records the decisions behind NER's transformation into the development-oriented Near East Foundation.
Written at Baghdad on June 30, 1927, this is Acheson's own brief of the report he prepared for General Secretary Charles Vickrey and Laird Archer after investigating the roughly 25,000 Assyrian refugees in British-mandate Iraq — survivors of the wartime Assyrian genocide and displacement. Confronting an infant-mortality rate he recorded as 78 percent, Acheson nonetheless recommended that Near East Relief not feed the refugees or run orphanages, but press for land settlement through government channels and diplomatic pressure — relief that would save lives now weighed against a development principle meant to prevent permanent dependency. The document exemplifies the relief-to-reconstruction philosophy that came to define the Near East Foundation.
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Holding Institution
Rockefeller Archive Center
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External Link
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Attribution
Barclay Acheson Collection (Series 12), Near East Foundation Records, Rockefeller Archive Center
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Rights
No known copyright restrictions. Based on available information, NERHS is not aware of copyright restrictions on this material. Items are presented for non-commercial research and educational use. Users are responsible for determining rights status and compliance with applicable law.
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Notes
Excerpt of pp. 39–41 of Barclay Acheson Diary, 1927 Part 2, from the digitized RAC scan. Full volume in the Barclay Acheson Collection (Series 12), Rockefeller Archive Center. CAUTION — SENSITIVE LANGUAGE: Section IV attributes infant mortality to “basic racial tendency… inter-breeding” and Section VI opens “Flower of race”; verbatim is retained for the record, but any public display of this text needs a curatorial note. Section VI continues on the following page. Document Contents transcribed from the typescript.
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Document Contents
Spent most of the day on an informal report on the Assyrians to Vickrey and Archer. The following is a brief of the report:
I. INTRODUCTION. Schedule of trip from Beirut to date.
II. SOURCES OF INFORMATION. Mrs. Kerr, Major Jeffreys, Lieutenant Reed, Captain McGregor, Sir Henry Dobbs, Mr. Smith, Mr. Jardine, Father Panfil, leaders of the House of Mar Shimun, et cetera.
III. REFUGEE CAMPS. No real suffering and no need for feeding or orphanage program. Gradual transition from present support through military service to permanent residence necessary.
IV. INFANTILE MORTALITY. 78%, due to basic racial tendency to produce weakly children, practice of inter-breeding, inexpensive, unnutritious substitutes for goat's milk, malaria, and unsanitary and unhealthful baby care.
V. ORPHANAGES. Unneeded. Protestant Episcopal church-school with 241 boys and 50 girls; Near East Relief should not support these…
VI. IMMEDIATE STEPS NECESSARY TOWARD A PERMANENT CONSTRUCTIVE SOLUTION. Flower of race at present employed as British soldiers. Race divided into trained military force and trained professional refugees. These habits fixed. [continues]