THE TREATMENT OF ARMENIANS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE. Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

First edition, first printing. Original red cloth with black titles to the spine and upper board. With a fold out map facing the title page. The 'Guide to the Reader' slip is loosely laid in, as called for. A very good copy, the binding square and firm, the cloth lightly mottled, the spine faded, the extremities very slightly bumped. There is some spotting to the closed text-block edge and early pages, the contents are otherwise clean throughout and without stamps or inscriptions. The map is in very good or better condition, remaining crisp and sound with a just few light spots and one tiny 1mm hole.

The first trade edition of 'The Blue Book', officially 'The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire', a report collecting over a hundred documents, including eyewitness accounts, letters and news articles on the deportation and massacre of Armenians in different regions of the Ottoman Empire in 1915 and 1916. It was commissioned by the UK Parliament, compiled by James Bryce and Arnold Joseph Toynbee, and presented to Parliament in 1916. It was published by Hodder and Stoughton in the same year. The Blue Book was the first book to thoroughly articulate the issue of the Armenian Genocide and remains one of the most significant single sources on the subject. The authenticity of the report has been challenged multiple times, most recently with a petition created by the Turkish government in 2005. These criticisms have been consistently met by political historians and spokespeople of the British government by pointing to evidence of the meticulous critical assessment and scholarly integrity of the authors and to the large collection of original documents supporting the content and creation the report held in various archives. The Blue Book and the questioning of its validity are the subject of the 2009 documentary 'The Blue Book, Political Truth or Historical Fact' directed by Gagik Karagheuzian, which follows historian Ara Sarafian as he investigates individual accounts that are collected in the report, as well as modern political responses to it.