Turkish historian Biray Kolluoğlu Kırlı, in an article published by the Oxford University Press, has written that "George Horton['s] anti-Turkish bias is crudely explicit". This view is shared by Professor Emeritus Peter M. Buzanski, who attributed Horton's anti-Turkish stance to his well-known "fanatic" philhellenism and his wife being Greek and wrote "During the Turkish capture of Smyrna, at the end of the Greco-Turkish War, Horton suffered a breakdown, resigned from the diplomatic service, and spent the balance of his life writing anti-Turkish, pro-Greek books."
Scholar David Roessel shares a similar view, noting that except for his laments about materialism and the Great War, "Horton reverted to the philhellenic and anti-Turkish rhetoric" in his book.
George Horton (1859–1942) was a member of the US diplomatic corps who held several consular offices, in Greece and the Ottoman Empire, in late 19th century and early 20th century. Horton initially arrived in Greece in 1893 and left from Greece 30 years later in 1924.
[2] With a Foreword by JAMES W. GERARD, (August 25, 1867 – September 6, 1951) Former Ambassador to Germany. Under President Woodrow Wilson, Gerard served as the American Ambassador to Germany from 1913 to 1917.
Another criticism of his work was by Brian Coleman:
George Horton was a man of letters and United States Consul in Greece and Turkey at a time of social and political change. He writes of the re-taking of Smyrna by the Turkish army in September 1922. His account, however, goes beyond the blame and events to a demonization of Muslims, in general, and of Turks, in particular. In several of his novels, written more than two decades before the events of September 1922, he had already identified the Turk as the stock-in-trade villain of Western civilization. In his account of Smyrna, he writes not as historian, but as publicist.
Horton's November arrival in New York City was covered by The New York Times primarily in regard to his transport for the American Archaeological Society of thirty gold coins found at Sardis. They were believed to be minted for Croesus, and to represent the earliest coinage of gold anywhere.
Horton served as U.S. Consul in Athens 1893-1898 and 1905–1906. He was US Consul General in Saloniki 1910–1911.
During two different periods he was the US Consul and US Consul general to Smyrna, known as Izmir today, the first time between 1911-1917 (till the cessation of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the Ottoman Empire during the First World War) and the second time between 1919–1922, during Greek administration of the city in the course of the Greco-Turkish War. The Greek administration of Smyrna was appointed by the Allied Powers following Turkey's defeat in World War I and the seizure of Smyrna.
Today Horton is best remembered for The Blight of Asia[1][2], his 1926 book about the events, notably the systematic ethnic cleansing of the Christian population, leading up to and during the Great Fire of Smyrna. He briefly summarizes events from 1822 to 1909 and covers in more detail, with eye-witness accounts, events from 1909 to 1922. The title refers to what he considered the abominable behavior of the Ottoman Turks. Horton, in his book records his personal memoirs from life in modern-day-Turkey, while the events he describes are focused on that particular region, and that particular time. The book has been criticized as anti-Turkish by a number of scholars and Horton himself accused of bias against Turks and Muslims.
George Horton was born on October 11, 1859 in Fairville in Wayne County, New York. In 1909, Horton married Catherine Sakopoulos and they had one daughter, Nancy Horton. Horton was also both a professional diplomat and a lover of Greece or Philhellene. He became U.S. Consul in Athens in 1893, where he actively promoted the revival of the Olympic Games and inspired the U.S. team's participation. He wrote a lyrical visitor's guide to Athens and composed a reflective description of his stay in Argolis.
[1] "...On April 10, 1920, the Kemalists treacherously massacred the French garrison at Urfa, killing one hundred and ninety men and wounding about one hundred more, and on October 20, 1921, Franklin Bouillon[*], in the name of the French Republic signed a separate treaty with the Turks. Immediately after the burning of Smyrna he rushed to the still-smoking city and, seizing Mustapha Kemal in his arms, kissed him. This kiss of Franklin Bouillon has become historic, and while bearing no resemblance to a certain other famous and sinister caress, deserves to rank with it as one of the two most famous kisses in sacred and profane history..."
[*] Henry Franklin-Bouillon (3 September 1870 - 12 September 1937) was a French politician. He met Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in Ankara in 1921 and they became close friends. In 1922 he travelled through the devastated areas by the retreating Greek army and after visiting the burned town of Manisa, he declared that out of 11,000 houses in the city of Magnesia (Manisa) only 1,000 remained.
L'accord d'Ankara (ou l’accord Franklin-Bouillon ou l’accord franco-turc d'Ankara ; en turc : Ankara Anlaşması) fut signé le 20 octobre 1921
Treaty of Ankara, also called Franklin-Bouillon Agreement, (Oct. 20, 1921), pact between the government of France and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey at Ankara, signed by the French diplomat Henri Franklin-Bouillon and Yusuf Kemal Bey, the Turkish nationalist foreign minister. It formalized the de facto recognition by France of the Grand National Assembly, rather than the government of the Ottoman sultan Mehmed VI, as the sovereign power in Turkey.
The Turkish government in Ankara had refused to ratify the Treaty of Sèvres (Aug. 10, 1920), which had been signed by the sultan and which had awarded parts of western Turkey to Greece; reaction to the treaty brought about a Turkish nationalist revival. After defeats by Turkish nationalists in southeastern Anatolia (Cilicia) in 1920–21, the French decided to withdraw southward and strengthen their forces in Syria and Lebanon. Under the terms of the Treaty of Ankara, the French agreed to evacuate Cilicia. A “special administrative regime” was established in Hatay (Alexandretta), and the Turkish-Syrian boundary was fixed.
See also: Mavi Boncuk Article
Remarkably for a former Ambassador to the country, Gerard regarded Germany with little less than loathing. His bile was reserved not only for native Germans, but was also taken to include German-American U.S. citizens.
Gerard gained particular notoriety for a speech given on 25 November 1917 to the Ladies Aid Society of St. Mary's Hospital in New York. During the course of his speech he feared for the possibility of up to half a million German-Americans rising up and wreaking havoc within the U.S. once General Pershing's American Expeditionary Force (AEF) took part in its first major offensive against the German enemy.
His solution was startlingly simple: to hang German-Americans from lamp posts. Unsurprisingly Gerard was unsuccessful in his bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1920.
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