A look inside the ruse of a French-Armenian con artist – The Public Domain Review

Finally, and perhaps most effectively, Calfa allowed people to interpret his story as they wished and capitalized on coverage of the Armenians in the European press. In the 1890s, newspapers were full of sensational stories about a bloodthirsty ruler of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who persecuted his Christian subjects. The European reading public was at least vaguely aware that Armenians were among them. As a result, many of the marquises, baronesses and other acquaintances who came to visit Calfa in Paris believed not only that Calfa was a prince, but that he himself had once ruled. They assumed that he had been dethroned by the sultan and was now forced to live in exile in Paris, like so many other dispossessed monarchs. They were unaware that the Armenians had not had a reigning monarch since 1375, and Calfa did not intervene to inform them. He relied in their minds on the association between Armenians and the persecution and made them believe that the Red Sultan had deprived him of his right to rule. He also let people use his story for their own purposes. He pandered to those who – fueled by Orientalist tropes and anti-Muslim sentiments in Europe – saw in him a Christian prince oppressed by a Muslim sultan, and welcomed their calls for new crusades that would reclaim the region for Christianity and restore him to his throne. In other words, his story was amplified by the horrific news of real massacres in the Ottoman Empire and fit right into the way Europeans expected Armenians to be treated. Calfa, ever an opportunist, used these expectations to gain the sympathy, support and credibility he needed to strengthen his princely claims in the long term.