American Christian penetration of Constantinople society in the late 19th century

Abstract

The first community of American subjects in the Ottoman Empire, at thebeginning of the 19th century, was made up of merchants and missionaries.Most of the missionaries, particularly those employed by the ABCFM, weredispersed among mission stations throughout the interior of Asia Minor andthe Balkans from 1819 until 1931. It is worth pointing out that until the 1890’s the American missionaries were the only Westerners engaged in missionary work whose activities in the Empire were innocent of political motives. At that time America was far from Europe and not a member of the club of European Great Powers. It is interesting that during the period 1894-1914, as the US began to emerge as one of the Great Powers, american diplomacy is still wavering between legitimate support for the missionary effort and the emergence of US imperialist ideology. The ABCFM missionary station in Constantinople (1831-1931) was one of the oldest of the Turkey Mission stations as well as the largest and the most enduring. From the last quarter of the 19th century, however, the work of themissionaries at the Constantinople station began to reach out beyond the smallEvangelical community of the city (Protestant millet). Among the factorscontributing to the more rapid penetration of the multi-ethnic society of theEmpire by the missionaries were the circumstances prevailing in Ottoman society as a consequence of the Russo-Turkish war (1877-1878), the ArmenianQuestion (1894-1896) and the liberal ideas known as Protestant Liberalism,which were increasingly common in Protestant Theology from the last quarterof the 19th century. Thus the ABCFM, like the other American missions, came to rely more in its work on American cultural ideas (education, technology,philanthropy). It is obvious that the “American Christian culture” which wassteadily gaining ground in the American missions over the two last decades ofthe 19th century, shared much of its inspiration with the ideology ofimperialism. Taking as its starting point and its centre the work of the missionary station in Constantinople from the end of the 19th century, the forces of “American Christian imperialism” turned their attention to a new cultural andsocial  mission. Thus the missionaries initiated the first manifestation of american intervention in Ottoman society and more generally in the Middle East as a whole. In fact this was the first step along the road towards the spreading of the “american dream" to this part of the Globe