Boghos Nubar

Nubar was born in Istanbul in 1851. His father was Egyptian Prime Minister Nubar Pasha. He was educated in Egypt and France as a civil engineer, where he worked on irrigation projects in Egypt and Sudan.

As early as the beginning of 1912 the Catholicos of Etchmiadzin Gevork V had sent Boghos Nubar to the governments of Europe to lobby for administrative autonomy for Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

Boghos Nubar, did not demand independence or amendments for the Armenian National Constitution, but to enforce the reforms called for in the Treaty of Berlin, which have remained a dead letter hitherto. In February 1914, the Armenian reform package, also known as the Yeniköy accord, was implemented: which created of two inspectorates in Ottoman Armenia placed under the supervision of two European inspectors general, who would be appointed to oversee matters related to the Armenian issues.

In January, 1919, The Times published a letter from Boghos Nubar (an Ottoman citizen) in which he protests, belatedly, about the non-representation of Armenians at the Paris Peace Conference. The letter includes a useful summary of the Armenian contribution to the allied war effort.

Our volunteers fought in the French Foreign Legion and covered themselves with glory. In the Légion d'Orient they numbered over 5,000 and made up more than half of the French contingent in Syria and Palestine, which took part in General Allenby's decisive victory. In the Caucasus, without mentioning the 150,000 Armenians in the Russian Armies, about 50,000 Armenian volunteers under Andranik, Nazarbekoff and others, not only fought for four years for the Entente, but after the breakdown of Russia, they were the only forces in the Caucasus to resist the advance of the Ottoman Empire, whom they held in check until the Armistice was signed. They helped the British in Mesopotamia by preventing the...

Boghos Nubar retired from politics in 1921 and died in Paris in 1930.