George Horton (October 11, 1859 – June 5, 1942) was a member of the United States diplomatic service who held several consular offices in Greece and the Ottoman Empire between 1893 and 1924.

[citation needed] Today Horton is best remembered for The Blight of Asia, 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 served again after the war from 1919 until the Great Fire began on September 13, 1922, spending the last hours before his own evacuation signing passes for those entitled to American protection and transportation to Piraeus.

Before publication Horton had resigned his diplomatic commission, and he wrote strictly in the capacity of a private citizen, drawing on his own observations and those of the people he quoted.

[10] First, he wanted to illustrate that the catastrophic events in Smyrna were merely "the closing act in a consistent program of exterminating Christianity throughout the length and breadth of the old Byzantine Empire."

Second, he wanted to establish that the Smyrna fire was started by regular Turkish army troops with, as he put it, "fixed purpose, with system, and with painstaking minute details."

Third, he wanted to emphasize that the Allied Powers shamefully elevated their selfish political and economic interests over the plight of the beleaguered Christian populations of Asia Minor, thereby allowing the Smyrna catastrophe to unfold without any effective resistance and, as he said, "without even a word of protest by any civilized government."

[2] This view is shared by 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.

"[11] 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.

[12] 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.

It opened in quotation marks with "the manner in which" he had summarized for the AP: "During my consulship at Saloniki I was bombed by Bulgars and Germans and during my official career I have had many rough experiences with submarines and fire, but never in my life have I seen anything like the Smyrna catastrophe.