294 | Migrants, Revolutionaries, and Spies
merchant. In December 1894, Iasigi accused Bogigian of providing false infor-
mation about a rival Boston-based Armenian rug merchant’s involvement in an
Armenian political organization to gain a competitive advantage. Mavroyeni was
deeply frustrated by the failure of Khatchadourian’s spy mission and his souring
relationship with Bogigian. In a sharply worded letter to his superiors in Istan-
bul, he wrote, “There are more or less five thousand Armenians in the United
States and nearly without exception each is either passively or actively our en-
emy.” He further blamed the press and “the fanatical religiosity and credulity of
the American people” for facilitating the spread of anti-Ottoman propaganda
promoted by Armenian political organizations. Mavroyeni’s outburst reveals
an assumption guiding his (and, more broadly, the Ottoman government’s) ef-
forts all along: regardless of the factors that drove them to migrate and regardless
of their political affiliation, all Armenians in the United States were first and
foremost enemies of the Ottoman government.
Nonetheless, Mavroyeni’s efforts to monitor the activities of Armenian po-
litical organizations had not been completely derailed. Throughout the following
year, his Pinkerton agent would continue to supply regular reports to his office
on the members and activities of the Hunchakian Revolutionary Party in the
Boston area. In February 1895, the Ottoman consul in Chicago, Charles Henro-
tin, provided Mavroyeni with a detailed report on the activities of the Armenian
migrant community in that city. Henrotin, the founder and first president of the
Chicago Board of Trade, assured Mavroyeni that he was using his extensive influ-
ence to sway the opinion of the city’s business and political elites in favor of the
Ottoman government. Then in October 1896, only a few weeks before departing
his position, Mavroyeni boasted to his superiors that he had secured an agree-
ment with the New York City police commissioner to supply the embassy with
a monthly report on all newly arriving Armenian migrants. As 1896 came to a
close, so too did Mavroyeni’s decade long service as the Ottoman ambassador to
the United States. He would later serve as governor of the Aegean island of Sa-
mos, followed by a stint as ambassador to Austria-Hungary. His successors in the
United States would continue his efforts at gathering intelligence on the political
activities of Armenians in the United States. Similar to Mavroyeni’s, however, the
information they collected would remain limited in scope.
The story of Mavroyeni’s spy efforts tells us much about the history of the Ot-
toman Empire in its final decades. In an era seemingly dominated by nationalism,
class, patronage networks, and politics were often more significant than ethnic
background in shaping identity. This held true as much for everyday Ottomans
as it did for well-connected elites like Mavroyeni and Bogigian. For example,
Armenian Christian and Kurdish Muslim peasants in eastern Anatolia regularly
petitioned the Ottoman government to seek redress for injustices perpetrated
on them at the hands of local elites. Similarly, Jewish and Greek Orthodox