Introduction
There has been a resurgence in social scientific analysis of missionaries over the past decade (Nunn Reference Nunn, Aghion and Durlauf2014), and many of these analyses focus on missionary influence on nationalism. A number of studies suggest that Christian millenarian movements cultivated nationalism through the import of ideas related to the Enlightenment, citizenship, and nation-building, as found in contemporary Europe (Reid Reference Reid1978; Bosch Reference Bosch1991; Sundkler and Steed Reference Sundkler and Steed2000; Van der Veer Reference Van der Veer1996; Woodberry Reference Woodberry2006; Dunch Reference Dunch2001). Missionaries—especially Protestants—complemented their educational initiatives by setting up religious journals and newspapers, which became key channels for the introduction of new modes of political expression and communication (Hastings Reference Hastings1997; Zhang Reference Zhang2007; Sanneh Reference Sanneh2015; Cagé and Rueda Reference Cagé and Rueda2016). Through this infrastructure, scholars argue that converts acquired new political and economic aspirations and were drawn to nationalist ideologies.
The literature on missionary activity in the Ottoman Empire makes similar claims. Previous studies have shown that American missionaries spurred the rise of nationalism within Christian communities of the Ottoman Empire through introduction of new media and educational institutions as well as novel notions of self and community (Becker Reference Becker2015; Fildiş Reference Fildiş2012; Kieser Reference Kieser2002; Merguerian Reference Merguerian1998; Tejirian and Simon Reference Tejirian and Simon2014). Despite producing some valuable findings, most of these studies have examined the impact of missionaries through what they have imparted onto their target populations. Relatively little research has been carried on the agency of indigenous Christian actors and how they might have changed in the course of their interactions with missionaries.
The present article delves into the height of missionary evangelizing efforts in the Ottoman Empire and examines the consequences of American missionary proselytizing in the Armenian community. Contrary to previous research, which has primarily focused on missionary work and its direct consequences, I argue that the American missionaries fostered change by triggering a backlash amongst the Armenian Orthodox community. Specifically, I contend that educational competition between Armenian community schools and Protestant missionary schools complemented previous indigenous initiatives in education expansion. This drove the Armenian community to intensify its investment in mass education and further modernize its schooling system, especially in the Eastern Provinces. In the end, both educational expansion and educational reform played vital roles in bringing Armenian nationalism to the masses.
For evidence, I compiled an original database of prominent Armenian figures who were born in the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th century. If Protestant missionary schools were intimately related to the rise of Armenian nationalism, we should expect to see a significant percentage of Armenian nationalists graduating from missionary schools. On the contrary, the data reveal that Armenian nationalists in the 19th century were primarily educated in Armenian community schools, which aligns with the proposition that Armenian schools were more consequential for the development of Armenian nationalism the 19th century. To further strengthen this proposition and illuminate the specific mechanisms at play, the second portion of this article focuses on the changing nature of Armenian community schools during the second half of the 19th century. Given that American missionaries were pioneers of modern education in the Ottoman Empire and engaged in a fierce competition with the local Armenian Apostolic Church at the time, special attention will be paid to the interaction between the educational efforts of both missionaries and the Armenian community.
Literature Review
A large and growing body of work in the field of economic history offers evidence that the historical presence of Christian missionaries, especially Protestant missionaries, positively influenced contemporary social and behavioral outcomes in former European colonies. Several studies have shown that missionaries contributed to increased human capital and economic prosperity by setting up schools and introducing the printing press, (Wietzke Reference Wietzke2015; Bai and Kung Reference Bai and Kung2015; Valencia Caicedo Reference Caicedo and Felipe2018; Castelló‐Climent, Chaudhary, and Mukhopadhyay Reference Castelló‐Climent, Chaudhary and Mukhopadhyay2017; Michalopoulos, Putterman, and Weil Reference Michalopoulos, Putterman and Weil2018), expanding literacy and schooling (Bolt and Bezemer Reference Bolt and Bezemer2009; Gallego and Woodberry Reference Gallego and Woodberry2010; Mantovanelli Reference Mantovanelli2014; Robert and Rachel 2017; Okoye and Pongou Reference Okoye and Pongou2014), and spreading notions of civic engagement and democracy (Woodberry Reference Woodberry2006, Reference Woodberry2012; Cagé and Rueda Reference Cagé and Rueda2016). In most of these works, missionary activity is regarded as a direct, progressive, bottom-up form of Western institution building that undermined traditional structures.
Missionary impact on the rise of nationalist movements have been examined through a similar lens. The educational institutions and printing technologies introduced under missionaries are seen as consequential to the national consciousness of native groups. The role of the printing press or “print capitalism” in transforming notions of self and community has been well documented (Anderson Reference Anderson2006; Habermas Reference Habermas1996). Building on the work of Benedict Anderson (Reference Anderson2006), Adrian Hastings (Reference Hastings1997) argues that ethnicities turned into nations when their vernacular literature moved from an oral to a widely used written form. Outside the Western world, translation of the Christian bible into vernaculars by missionaries played a crucial role this process and helped a new sense of cultural identity develop (Phipps Reference Phipps1972; Woodberry Reference Woodberry, Sang Leung and Ming Ng2007; Pahumi Reference Pahumi2018; Sanneh Reference Sanneh2015). The Christian missions transformed their audiences by drawing them into the discourse of modernity—rather, “missionary modernity” (Becker Reference Becker2015) or “evangelical modernity” (Makdisi Reference Makdisi1997)—which reflected an amalgam of spreading the idea of the Gospel while advancing ideas of individualism, liberty, Enlightenment, and progress (Maxwell Reference Maxwell and Etherington2005; Ayandele Reference Ayandele1966; Barbeau Reference Barbeau2017; Murre-van den Berg Reference Murre-van den Berg2006). Transmission of these ideas was further deepened through foreign language instruction, giving students access to foreign publications and newspapers (Reid Reference Reid1978; Womack Reference Womack2012; Woodberry Reference Woodberry, Sang Leung and Ming Ng2007; Ayandele Reference Ayandele1966).
This thinking has been extended to the Middle Eastern context, relating Arab, Assyrian, and Armenian nationalist movements to Protestant missionaries’ activities (Kieser Reference Kieser2002; Tejirian and Simon Reference Tejirian and Simon2014; Fildiş Reference Fildiş2012; Zachs Reference Zachs2001; Smith and Kemeny Reference Smith and Kemeny2019; Rostam-Kolayi Reference Rostam-Kolayi2008). Scholars have long debated the impact of the educational program of the Syrian missions–specifically, the American University of Beirut (AUB)—on the creation of the Arab Awakening in the Levant (Antonius Reference Antonius1969; Abu-Ghazaleh Reference Abu-Ghazaleh1990; Tibawi Reference Tibawi1966).Footnote 1 Many scholars today would reject the claim that missionary activities are directly linked to Arabism or Arab nationalism. Even so, there is a growing understanding that missionary efforts in the region had considerable impact on the creation of the “idea of Syria” (Zachs Reference Zachs2001) as well as identity formation in Lebanon (Womack Reference Womack2012) and Palestine (Kark Reference Kark2004). In the case of the Assyrians, missionaries were central to the development of a common literary language and a modern Nestorian (or “Syrians” as they called themselves) literature (Murre-van den Berg Reference Murre-van den Berg and Hunter2009). This had the inadvertent effect of eliminating the linguistic diversity that existed between Nestorians in Persia and the Ottoman Empire. Adam Becker (Reference Becker2015) recently made the case that the American missionaries contributed to the development of a national consciousness among East Syrians through their attempts at reforming the Nestorian community.
Perhaps the most controversial claim about missionary influence on nationalism in the region is that Protestant missionaries were crucial for the development of Armenian nationalism. Missionary efforts—especially after 1856—were mainly focused on the Armenian community in the Ottoman Empire. The Armenian nationalist movement started crystalizing in the late 19th century, with the first Armenian nationalist party—the Armenakan Party—opening in the Eastern Ottoman province of Van in 1885. This period also coincides with the height of American missionary activity, particularly in the troubled eastern Anatolian regions bordering the Russian Empire and Qajar Dynasty. The Ottoman state, under the rule of Sultan Abdülhamid (1876–1909), regarded the American missionary schools as a threat and expended significant efforts to control them, even closing missionary schools on grounds of sedition (Şahin Reference Şahin2011; Deringil Reference Deringil1998; Abdülhamid Reference Abdülhamid2010). American missionaries’ direct role in the formation of Armenian nationalism is attested in the literature. These distinct, yet at times overlapping, arguments straddle three categories: those that focus on (1) ethnic segmentation, (2) the content of education, and (3) the use of vernacular languages.
Ethnic Segmentation and Alienation
The educational system developed by American missionaries often catered to the Christian communities of the Ottoman Empire, with the inadvertent effect of crystallizing ethnic segmentation (Göçek Reference Göçek1993; Barkey Reference Barkey2008, 287). Scholars studying education and ethnic violence have noted that ethnic segregation can amplify social distance between communities and can, in some instances, lead to nationalist violence (Lange Reference Lange2012). Adding to the sense of detachment among students was the general absence of Turkish and even Ottoman cultural influences from the curricula of American schools (Berkes Reference Berkes1998, 192). The exposure of the Armenian population to Western education and culture had the further effect of sharpening existing differences between Armenians and Muslims, alienating Armenians from the local culture (Alan Reference Alan2008; Badr Reference Badr2000; Göçek Reference Göçek1993; Zeytinoğlu, Bonnabeau, and Eşkinat Reference Zeytinoğlu, Bonnabeau, Eşkinat, Landis and Albert2012; Grabill Reference Grabill1971). The most extreme variant of this argument claims that missionaries instilled among Armenians a hatred for the Turkish race, nation, and Ottoman state. The schools established by missionaries fostered an American and Christian admiration, in turn leading the students to perceive themselves and their community as distinct from and superior to the Turkish nation and Ottoman state (Tanyu Reference Tanyu1978; McCarthy and McCarthy Reference McCarthy and McCarthy1989; Küçük Reference Küçük2009).
Content of Education
The second stream of scholarship focuses more exclusively on educational content. Theologically, the missionary movement was rooted in a democratic ethos of individualism, urging students to question all forms of authority (Merguerian Reference Merguerian and Murre-Van Den Berg2006). By this thinking, these novel ideas “provided a cultural model and forum through which the Armenians could ascertain their national consciousness” (Fildiş Reference Fildiş2012, 741). The Protestant principles of sola scriptura and salvation by grace declares individual judgement as supreme. Kedourie (Reference Kedourie1984) argues that both principles aided the growth of Armenian nationalism, as converts began to interpret salvation by grace as an instrument for building their own heaven on earth. The molding of a modern sense of Armenian national identity out of the European model in turn gave way to radical polarization (Levene Reference Levene2005, 319; Fildiş Reference Fildiş2012).
It is further argued that the curricula at missionary schools strengthened students’ ethnic identities. Students at American missionary schools were commonly led through teachings on their language, history, and literature (Berkes Reference Berkes1998, 192). These classes idealized and mythologized their ancient past as well as equipping students with a common language through which to conceptualize their community as a cohesive whole (Kocabaşoğlu Reference Kocabaşoğlu2000). Beyond articulating a collective identity, scholars argue that these classes were also foundational in nourishing nationalist feelings (Sezer Reference Sezer2010; Küçük Reference Küçük2009; Dingeç Reference Dingeç2009, 39–40; Fildiş Reference Fildiş2012; Aydın Reference Aydın2008; Güçlü Reference Güçlü2018). Thus, upon graduation, as one author puts it, students were “primed and ready to becoming Hunchakists” (Aydın Reference Aydın2008, 167).Footnote 2
The Use of the Vernacular
While the “Armenian renaissance”—also known as the Zartonk—was arguably well underway when the American missionaries arrived in the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century (Artinian Reference Artinian1988), a third area of scholarship contends that the activities of the missionaries accelerated the speed and intensity of previous local initiatives. Central to missionary efforts aiding the cultural renaissance was the use and codification of the vernacular Armenian language, which allowed for collective identity to be articulated anew. Prior to the arrival of American missionaries, the language of the Church (grabar) was divorced from the vernacular of the Armenian people (ashkhahrhabar) (Riggs Reference Riggs1858). Elias Riggs, part of the first generation of missionaries in the Ottoman Empire, wrote a vernacular grammar book to spread the use of Armenian amongst millet members who spoke only Turkish (Shaw and Shaw Reference Shaw and Shaw1976, 126). The missionaries further aided the standardization of spoken language through their translations of the Bible and distribution of other texts (Nalbandian Reference Nalbandian1963, 49). Thus, by this thinking, the missionaries’ advocacy for the use of the vernacular Armenian language created a new kind of unity and was integral to the growth of Armenian national awakening (Merguerian Reference Merguerian1998, 2005; Kieser Reference Kieser2002, Reference Kieser2005; Badr Reference Badr2000; Arkun Reference Arkun, Herzig and Kurkchiyan2005; Güçlü Reference Güçlü2018; Doğan Reference Doğan2013; Shaw and Shaw Reference Shaw and Shaw1976, 126; Grabill Reference Grabill1971).Footnote 3
What Is Missing from This Analysis?
Absent from these accounts of missionary influence in the formation of Armenian nationalism are the patterns of competition and emulation noted in studies on missionary influence in other parts of the world (e.g., Gallego and Woodberry Reference Gallego and Woodberry2010; Trejo Reference Trejo2009). Unlike in the continent of Africa, conversion to Protestantism was far less common in Asia and the Middle East.Footnote 4 The existence of state-sponsored world religions in these regions was often a barrier to missionaries’ influence on local populations (Tapp Reference Tapp1989). Even where the Protestants found a receptive minority, conflict was common, as traditional elites often resisted and worked to counteract the proselytizing efforts of missionaries. In such cases, the influence of Christian missionary work through example was as important as the dissemination of Christian ideas. The educational, voluntary, and political organizations established by the Protestants encouraged other communities to form their own organizations (Deol Reference Deol2000; Dunch Reference Dunch2001; Sharkey Reference Sharkey2013; Kang Reference Kang1997).
Most research on missionary societies in places with centralized religious authorities have identified competition and emulation as two important pathways for social change. Surprisingly, the effects of these two variables on the Armenian community have not been closely examined. The impact of missionary activities on Armenian nationalism has mostly been evaluated through the prism of direct influences, such as ethnic segmentation, socialization through education, or the dissemination of the printing press. We should also expect the influence of missionaries to work indirectly, through processes of competition and emulation. Confirming these expectations is the fierce competition that took place between the Armenian Apostolic Church in the Ottoman Empire and the American Protestant missionaries during the 19th century. The Armenian church experienced a sense of existential threat as a result of the activities of the American missionaries, and it took active measures to preserve the unity of their millet. Thus, as with other groups targeted by missionaries, the Armenian community in the Ottoman Empire may have responded to this outside influence by emulating missionary initiatives.
Methodology and Data
The first section of this article presents an original dataset of major Armenian nationalist figures and their educational backgrounds. These biographies lend insight into whether Armenian schools or Protestant missionary schools produced more figures for the Armenian nationalist movement. The data provides ample evidence that major Armenian nationalists were overwhelmingly educated in Armenian community schools, not Protestant missionary schools. Given this, one would expect Armenian community schools to be more consequential for the rise of Armenian nationalism. Probing this hypothesis, I use a detailed case study to explore the changing character of Armenian education in the 19th century.
The second section of the article relies on comparative-historical methods to explore whether the proposed sequence of competition and emulation noted in other regions of the world helps explain the statistical composition of the elites in my sample. To test whether missionary influence on Armenian nationalism was indirect, rather than direct, this article uses comparative historical methods: causal narrative and pattern-matching (Lange Reference Lange2013; Mahoney Reference Mahoney2000a, Reference Mahoney2000b). The causal narrative explores a specific phenomenon through a narrative analysis while pattern-matching investigates whether the pattern in a case matches the pattern predicted by theory.
This article primarily relies on two archives: English sources drawn from the Archives of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions at Houghton Library and Ottoman Turkish sources from the Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurbaşkanlığı Devlet Arşivleri Başkanlığı (Turkish Presidency State Archives of the Republic of Turkey). Various documents are reviewed: official reports, educational statistics, correspondence between the provincial government and the Porte, meeting reports, letters to friends and relatives, diaries, and the American Board’s periodical The Missionary Herald (published in Boston). Other primary sources include lectures, diaries, travelogues, and newspaper articles.
Dataset of Armenian Nationalists
Description of Sample
If missionary schools directly influenced the rise of an Armenian nationalist movement, one would expect to find that graduates of missionary schools played an influential role in the Armenian ethno-nationalist movement. In order to test this hypothesis, I collected a sample of 90 individuals active in the Armenian nationalist movement at the end of the 19th century. The data is sourced from memoirs, secondary literature, and an Armenian biographical encyclopedia Who is Who? (Ayvazyan Reference Ayvazyan2005). For the purposes of this study, a nationalist is someone who at some point in their life supported the idea of an independent Armenian nation-state in the Eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, this person should have been active (either born, educated, or lived) within the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the 19th century for them to be considered as part of the sample.
Without a sample of the whole corps of nationalists, this study opens itself to the criticism of generalizing based on particular sub-groups or using a few biographies in order to generalize about the whole population. To partially circumvent these issues, I employed purposeful sampling, wherein I focus on known members of the three political nationalist movements active in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century: the Armenakan Party (13 individuals), the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) (35 individuals) and the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party (SDHP) (12 individuals). I complemented this list with Armenian deputies of the Ottoman Parliament and prominent nonpartisan figures of the Armenian national movement. The total number of nationalists within my sample is 90 individuals. Included in the sample are top figures of the Armenian political movement within the Ottoman Empire: the Young Armenians, Ottoman bureaucrats, revolutionary party members, journalists, writers, and artists. For each individual, I collected data on place and date of birth, educational history, and role in the nationalist movement. Because of historical circumstance, the data is complete for some individuals but sparse for others.
Results
Of those sampled, 39 percent were born in Anatolia, 30 percent in Istanbul, 27.5 percent in the Russian Empire, and 3 percent in Qajar Iran. Given that all of those included in the sample were active in the Ottoman Empire at some point, this distribution reflects the porous nature of imperial borders in Eastern Anatolia. Many young Armenians from the Russian Empire and the Ottoman capital travelled to Eastern Anatolia to aid the cause of Western Armenia as fighters, teachers, and activists. Among the pre-tertiary educational institutions catalogued, 28 percent were located in Anatolia, 27 percent in the Russian Empire, and 45 percent in Istanbul. While 30 percent were born in Istanbul, 45 percent of the total sample attended a school in the city. However, when restricted to only the first educational institution attended, the percentage of schools for Anatolia rises to 30 percent while Istanbul’s share drops to 37 percent. Many individuals appear to have sought higher education in the capital, a natural outgrowth of Istanbul’s status as an intellectual hub for the Armenian community.
Armenian educational institutions, such as the Nersesian Academy in Tbilisi (8 individuals), the Gevorgian Seminary in Etchmiadzin (10 individuals), the Getronagan High School (5 individuals), and the Berberian School (6 individuals) in Istanbul, were important centers of learning that produced many of the leading cadres of the Armenian nationalist movement. Together they account for 36 percent of the total sample. Similarly, of the 47.5 percent who attended universities, many sought higher education abroad: 57 percent in Western Europe, 26 percent in Russia, and 6 percent in Istanbul.
The most significant finding to emerge from this data is that a majority (80 percent) graduated from Armenian schools. The leading school classification after Armenian schools is Russian state schools at 11 percent. Only 2 percent of the total sample (2 individuals) attended Protestant missionary schools. The two individuals who are coded as attending Protestant schools are Soghomon Tehlirian and Hakop Ter-Hakobian; both were members of the ARF and were involved in assassination attempts against Ottoman officials alleged to have been complicit in the Armenian Genocide. In both cases, their attendance at Protestant schools was short-lived, followed by further education in Armenian high schools. Soghomon continued his studies at the prestigious Getronagan High School in Istanbul after receiving his elementary education at a local Protestant school. Hakop left Euphrates College after one year and transferred to the Berberian School in Istanbul.
Two central findings emerge here. First, the growth of the Armenian nationalist movement in the Ottoman Empire was not an isolated phenomenon: it was heavily influenced by the intellectual climate in the Russian Empire and integrally connected to institutions of higher learning in the West. These insights are supported by existing literature (e.g., Nalbandian Reference Nalbandian1963; Reynolds Reference Reynolds2011; Tejirian and Simon Reference Tejirian and Simon2014); however, my dataset lends empirical backing. Secondly, an overwhelming majority of Armenian nationalist figures emerged from Armenian schools rather than American missionary schools. This suggests that the Armenian educational system was more consequential for students’ absorption into the Armenian nationalist movement than for those in missionary schools.
Given these findings, the next section of the article will employ comparative-historical methods to trace whether the proposed sequence of emulation observed in other regions of the world can help explain the statistical composition of elites in the present sample. This approach will be rooted in a causal narrative of the development of Armenian community relations in the 19th century, focusing on community-led reform initiatives in education and their interactions with newly-arrived American missionaries.
The History of Armenian Educational Reform
The Armenian community in the Ottoman Empire did not have a formalized schooling system prior to the 18th century. Education during this period was mainly confined to the private initiatives of teachers or religious leaders (Bebiroğlu Reference Bebiroğlu2003; Barnum Reference Barnum1893). However, there were notable attempts at educational reform prior to missionary intervention, such as Jesuit missions operating in the region in the 17th century and the contributions of the Armenian community in Madras, India, to printing technologies and literature (Zekiyan Reference Zekiyan2001). The most important endogenous contribution to Armenian enlightenment during this period came from the Catholic Mekitharist monasteries. The Mekitharists’s monasteries, named after Mekithar of Sebaste (1676–1749), played an important role in creating centers of learning that stressed the use of the common speech over classical Armenian—an influence extending well beyond the confines of sectarian identity to influence all Armenians (Levon Zekiyan, pers. comm.).
It was not until 1790, forty years before the missionaries built a station and school, that the Ottoman sultan permitted the establishment of schools for Christians.Footnote 5 Many Armenian schools, funded by powerful Armenian notables known as amiras, were set up in Istanbul after this period. At the time, the progressive and conservative amiras were engulfed in a power struggle over the control of the Armenian Patriarchate.Footnote 6 Adding to these changing circumstances was Ottoman Armenians’ increased contact with the West, especially through trade.Footnote 7 As a result, many young elite Armenians began seeking education in Europe in the late 18th century (Artinian Reference Artinian1988). These individuals—commonly referred to as Young Armenians—allied themselves with progressive amiras in the community and were pivotal in reforming education amongst Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Many were members of the Educational Council (1853), founded by the Patriarchate. A large contingent also founded independent civil and secular educational societies committed to reform during this period (e.g., the Araratian Society).
Thus, the American missionaries started engaging with the Armenian community in the Ottoman Empire at a time of profound change in the structure of the Armenian community. The first generation of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) missionaries who arrived in the Ottoman Empire in the 1820s restricted their organizational efforts to Bible reading groups. Later, when confronted with the mass illiteracy within Ottoman society, the Protestant missionary organization also began building churches, Sunday schools, and educational institutions. The initial efforts of the ABCFM in the Ottoman Empire were focused on the Jewish, Greek, and Muslim populations of the empire.Footnote 8 However, when these efforts did not produce the desired results, in 1856 the missionaries decided to turn the bulk of their attention to the Gregorian Armenians.
The initial reception of missionaries by the Armenian Church was amicable (Chopourian Reference Chopourian1972, 63). The missionaries were equally positive and described their relations with the Armenian Church as possessing a “pleasing character” (ABCFM 1836). During this initial period of contact, the missionaries were cautious, avoiding more aggressive and divisive efforts, such as erecting schools and assembling separate congregations (Barton Reference Barton1908, 157–158; Riggs Reference Riggs1948, 10). However, emergent relationships with the more progressive elements of the Armenian community, who welcomed ecclesiastical reform, drew scorn from the Armenian Church (Barton Reference Barton1908, 161–162). The relationship between the Gregorian Church and the missionaries suffered especially in 1839, when the Armenian Patriarch began persecuting converts to Protestantism (Anderson Reference Anderson1872a, 114). This period was followed by a second bull of excommunication and anathema by Patriarch Matteos, who barred all Protestants from membership in the Gregorian Church (Arpee Reference Arpee1936, 152).Footnote 9 Printed copies of the two anathemas were disseminated widely across Turkey, to be read in all churches (Dwight Reference Dwight1854, 245). As a result, Orthodox Armenians were forbidden to have social and business dealings with the Protestants, and the newly excommunicated evangelical Armenians lost all existing civil rights that they had possessed within the Empire.
The persecution of the nascent Protestant community prompted the creation of an official Protestant Church—and in 1850, under the pressure of the British Consulate on Ottoman bureaucrats, a new Protestant millet was approved (Kieser Reference Kieser2005, 121). The Armenian millet was thus separated into Gregorian, Catholic, and Protestant denominations.Footnote 10 The Tanzimat reforms served to institutionalize the formerly informal millet system and stipulated greater secular input into the governance of the millets. In the contest between the conservative and reformist groups within the Gregorian Armenian millet, the changing environment tipped the scale in favor of the reformist faction. This manifested itself in the official ratification of the Armenian National Constitution (Azgayin Sahmanadrut’iwun Hayoc) or The Regulation of the Armenian Patriarchate (Ermeni Patrikliği Nizamatι) in 1863. The Istanbul Patriarchate had gradually expanded its influence over the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Footnote 11 The new constitution further consolidated this process, aiming to centralize political administration, jurisdiction, and education under the patriarchs’ authority (Antaramian Reference Antaramian2014; Young Reference Young2001).
The Young Armenians, the Tanzimat reforms, and the clash between conservatives and reformists were all important factors to animate Armenian nationalism. While these developments were pivotal in the evolution of the Armenian educational system and the formation of a national identity, the intellectual growth experienced by the Ottoman Armenian community in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was largely confined to elite and middle-class circles in Istanbul and other major Western Ottoman cities (Harris Reference Harris1999, 125–126; Suny Reference Suny2001, 18–19). The economic and ideological changes experienced by some Armenians in the West did not match the experiences of the majority of Armenians living in the Eastern provinces. The Anatolian Armenian peasantry, which constituted an overwhelming majority of the Armenian population, had little understanding of the nationalist ideals being brought to fruition and tended to more readily identify with their locality, clan, or kinship. Faced with an illiterate peasant society without a universal educational system or standardized vernacular, any effort toward nationalization of the masses was limited.Footnote 12 This article argues that one crucial neglected factor that propelled the Armenian community to invest in mass education and modernize its schooling system was the competition the Armenian church received from the American Protestant missionaries.
Evangelicalism was a significant challenge for the Gregorian Church. Ideological differences between the two camps (Chopourian Reference Chopourian1972) as well as subtraction of tax-paying members of the Gregorian community (Davison Reference Davison1973, 118) created significant problems for the Armenian Church. The Protestant challenge also undermined the unifying power of the church (Kassouny Reference Kassouny1931, 25; Richter Reference Richter1910, 112) and thus disrupted the overlap between race and religion that existed in the Ottoman Empire. Protestants were frequently accused of disloyalty to the Armenian race (Berberian Reference Berberian, Matthee and Baron2000, 78–79). This generated intense debate within the Armenian community in the second half of the 19th century regarding notions of Armenian belonging. Beginning in the 1850s, catalogues of this debate can be found in Armenian newspapers (Koçunyan Reference Koçunyan, Grotke and Prutsch2014, 198), official reports, such as takrirs (Ueno Reference Ueno2013), and Ottoman archives.Footnote 13
Competition and Education Reform
The challenge that the Evangelicals posed against the old church and the eventual split of the Protestant community created an environment of ecclesiastical and educational competition. This competitive spirit was most acutely realized in the six Eastern Anatolian vilayets (provinces) where the largest communities of Armenians existed: Van, Bitlis, Erzurum, Diyarbakır, Sivas, and Mamuret-ül-Aziz. The interior provinces of Anatolia offered a promising target for the Protestant missionaries and their proselytizing efforts (Smith and Dwight Reference Smith and H. G. O.1834). They established a missionary station in the province of Trabzon as early as 1835, making significant inroads in the Eastern vilayets, especially after the official recognition of the Protestants as a community in 1850. With impetus from the constitutional movement, this period also coincided with the Armenian Church’s increased engagement in the peripheral zones as it worked to consolidate its hold over Eastern Armenians. Education held a special place for both parties’ projects, viewed as a source of both “rescue and redemption” for the Anatolian Armenians (Low Reference Low2015; Sarafian Reference Sarafian1930, 216). Thus, a common target population as well as diverging ecclesiastical traditions between the Protestants and the Armenian Church, invited natural conflict.
The Rivalry in the East
Attempts to reform education within the Armenian community stemmed from both a positive desire for change and a defensive reaction to external challenges. Part of the change in the quality and quantity of schools after the mid-19th century can be explained by the initiatives of the Educational Commission, which was established under the reforming Armenian Patriarchate (Matossian Reference Matossian and Hovannisian2013, 202; Young Reference Young2001). What I argue here, however, is that a neglected impetus for change was competition with the Evangelicals. What the educational mission meant for both sides, and the competition that accompanied it, is best communicated by the language preference. For many reformist Armenians, education was equated to salvation (Sarafian Reference Sarafian1930, 216; Cowe Reference Cowe2003, 35). Many of the pivotal figures of the Armenian community who spearheaded the cause of mass-education—like Raffi, Mkrtitch Khrimian, Garegin Srvantsiants, and Telgadintsi—were also vocal opponents of missionary activities (Kostandyan Reference Kostandyan2000, 61; Berberian Reference Berberian, Matthee and Baron2000; Dennis Reference Dennis2015; Cowe Reference Cowe2003). In this context of community division, educationwas seen as a pivotal socializing force (Dennis Reference Dennis2015, 258).
Armenian schools were, in turn, frequently perceived by the missionaries as “established in imitation or rivalry” (ABCFM 1869, 6). At the same time, education for the missionaries was the “battering ram to knock the wall that surrounds the old Armenian Church”Footnote 14, “a race” (Barnum Reference Barnum1890), or “a case of the survival of the fittest”Footnote 15. Given that both the Gregorian schools and the Protestant schools were targeting a common base, the success of one side was frequently perceived as the failure of the other. Exemplifying this point, one missionary from Van writes: “Armenian schools, such as they are, are not lacking, and one or two of them are of a tolerably high order. All the influence of the ecclesiastics is thrown in favor of their school against ours. These efforts were so successful, that our school opened last fall with only twenty to twenty-five pupils” (ABCFM 1883).
The reverse also held true: missionaries pressed their central offices for the establishment of “schools of a thoroughly evangelical character” to “counteract” the influence of Armenian schools (Barnum Reference Barnum1887, 515). They also saw the growing surveillance over Armenian schools and the curtailment of their activities during the reign of Abdülhamid II as an opportunity for increased recruitment to their own schools (Cole Reference Cole1893, 356).
When the rivalry between both parties was expressed in more subdued language, the missionaries often spoke of the Protestant schools producing a “great impulse” (Melcon Reference Melcon1903, 15), a “widespread thirst,” or the “desire of education increasing and becoming better appreciated” among native Armenians because of missionary efforts.Footnote 16 According to a wealthy Armenian of Sivas in conversation with a missionary about the value of education, said, “You showed us a picture, and looking upon it we began to see that it was very beautiful, whereupon we took it to our bosoms, and have been cherishing it since” (ABCFM 1880, 353). The result of this realization was the number of Gregorian schools in the region increasing from four to thirteen and girls’ schools from zero to three. By the end of the century, the Gregorian community in the Sivas region would have 30 mixed elementary schools, four middle schools for boys, one middle school for girls, and one secondary school (Birbudak Reference Birbudak2007).
Opening New Schools
The missionaries viewed their schools as a stimulus for Armenians to launch their own schools (Barnum Reference Barnum1892, 146; Barnum Reference Barnum1893, 298) and, in some cases, even as being “duplicated by the Gregorian Armenians” (Bliss Reference Bliss1896, 316). A missionary stationed in Harput in the late 19th century (modern day Elazig), James L. Barton observed that “if there are no Protestants, there is no school of any kind … [Yet] wherever [Protestants] open a school, an opposition institution springs up.”Footnote 17 The Protestants were, of course, not the first purveyors of education in the provinces.
Prior to the arrival of missionaries, the Anatolian provinces hosted a small number of Armenian schools. According to a survey conducted by the Armenian Patriarchate in 1834, there were 120 Armenian elementary schools in various parts of Anatolia (Ergin Reference Ergin1977, 753). However, only after the establishment of missionary schools in the provinces do we observe the Armenian Church expanding its educational efforts beyond the confines of large metropolises, such that the number of Armenian schools in the provinces had more than quadrupled by the 1870s (Young Reference Young2001, 97).
The provincial Ottoman yearbooks (salnames) of the Eastern vilayets also show that the building of Gregorian schools accelerated substantially after the arrival of missionaries. For example, before the establishment of the missionary station in the Province of Mamuret-ül-Aziz in 1856, there were four Gregorian secondary schools. The later establishment of the missionary center and the subsequent discovery of so-called “common schools” in neighboring towns “stimulated the Armenians to establish still a greater number” of schools (Barnum Reference Barnum1893). The Ottoman yearbook statistics reveal that Protestant and Gregorian schools were frequently established in the same year or in quick succession of one another (Taşkın Reference Taşkın2013). On a visit to a village just south of Harput, Perchenj (modern-day Akçakiraz), Barton provides a first-hand account of the trends in the Ottoman yearbook statistics, cataloguing the succession of events that unfolded in the struggle between Protestants and Gregorians there. He notes that when the missionaries first arrived, the “interest in education increased” so that “boys were drawn from the old church.” This, in turn, “aroused an opposition” among local Armenians, prompting the Gregorian Church to “[secure] a teacher and [open] a school.” Protestants attempted to make their school more attractive through the construction of a new school house, an effort which the Gregorians then replicated.Footnote 18
Reflected in both macro figures and mission reports, other regions have produced similar patterns. Protestant missionaries frequently reported the opening of “a competing school” by Gregorians, following the establishment their own schools.Footnote 19 An 1876 survey conducted by the local Ottoman government in Yozgat noted only one Armenian school in the region. When the famous French statistician Cuinet passed through the same region 14 years later, he recorded 31 Armenian schools and five Protestant schools (Cuinet Reference Cuinet1891). Missionaries introduced their first school into the Sanjak of Adana in 1883, at which point only one Armenian high school existed in the whole province. In turn, during the period following missionary intervention, five Armenian schools were established. In Muş, the same pattern unfolds: a decade after the Knapp family of the ABCFM started operating in the region in the 1860s, the Istanbul-based Armenian United Society launched its own programming (Miller Reference Miller2015, 354).
Copying Schools
The influence of American missionary schools on the Armenian community was not simply restricted to the reactive introduction of new schools. Community-led reforms extended into changing the very character of Armenian schools (Chopourian Reference Chopourian1972, 126; Alan Reference Alan2008, 388). Missionary schools were amongst the first purveyors of modern education in the Ottoman Empire and introduced innovations, such as modern curricula, science laboratories, programs for girls, coeducation, kindergartens, and farm schools.Footnote 20 They were also pivotal in introducing technological advancements—such as textbooks, blackboards, reading cards, desks, and chairs—into Ottoman classrooms. The Protestant schools “served as a model” (Barnum Reference Barnum1892, 146)—a “stimulus to […] reform their own schools.”Footnote 21 Thus, in order to keep Gregorian pupils out of the Protestant schools, observers note the Gregorian community expended “great effort to make their schools equal or even better than those of the mission” (Richter Reference Richter1910, 159). Primary areas of influence included the adoption of new teaching methods, the recruitment of missionary school graduates, the use of textbooks, and the advancement of education for girls.
Quality
The missionaries frequently lamented the poor quality of education among Armenians prior to their arrival, even commenting that preexisting schools had “no lessons, no suitable books, no master” (ABCFM 1832). In an article on public instruction in the Ottoman Empire written 35 years after this observation, Hyde Clarke (Reference Clarke1867, 524) noted that the improved quality of education in Armenian schools was an outgrowth of the Protestant method. The first discernable impact that missionaries had on Armenian curricula was the spread of the Lancaster method of education (Aksu Reference Aksu2008). Relying on a practice of peer-teaching, this method was a resourceful and cost-effective tool for teaching large groups of students. In order to aid the adoption of the Lancaster method, early missionary Harrison G.O. Dwight expended great effort into creating modern Armenian reading cards and textbooks for Armenian schools (Aksu Reference Aksu2008). Though the Lancaster method is described as having been unsuccessful among the Armenians (Stone Reference Stone and Hovannisian2002), there is evidence that this method of teaching was used in the Armenian national schools up until the early 20th century (Shemmassian Reference Shemmassian1996).
Prior to the arrival of missionaries in the provinces, the most common educational institutions were parish schools connected by churches. Most of these schools were characterized by newly-arrived missionaries as “primitive and non-pedagogical” (Pilibbosian Reference Pilibbosian1942) in nature, where “the priests taught a few boys to read at church services and few learned to write” (Barnum Reference Barnum1893). Thus, the emphases on math, natural sciences, languages, Bible study, and practical skills in Protestant missionary schools were noteworthy innovations (Marden Reference Marden1880). For example, the Central School (founded in the 1820s), one of the oldest schools in Harput, was characteristic of these early parish schools for its first 60 years. The arrival of American missionaries onto the Harput educational scene encouraged the Armenian Church to “develop further its own educational schools and a central high school” (Hovannisian Reference Hovannisian and Hovannisian2002, 3). Therefore, in 1887 a new school was founded on the land belonging to the old central school. Hovhannes Harutiunian (Telgadintsi), one of the foundational figures of Western Armenian literature and a graduate of the Smpadian School in Harput, was appointed as its director.Footnote 22 He carried the philosophy of his alma mater, which prioritized “modern pedagogical methods” (Tachjian Reference Tachjian2012) and updated the old school with modern equipment (desks, classrooms, chairs, etc.) such that the new Central School “began to compete with the American Euphrates college” (Beledian Reference Beledian and Hovannisian2002, 246). It is also during this period that the Central School began to teach math, geography, French, Turkish, and English (Haig Reference Haig1959, 402–408). By the end of the 19th century, the educational landscape of Harput was completely altered so that the Armenians had “a school system from the kindergarten to the college, with well-trained teachers for both sexes” (Barnum Reference Barnum1899).
Textbooks and Graduates
Male and female graduates of missionary schools were in high demand as teachers for Armenian schools (Barnum Reference Barnum1890). There is much evidence that the graduates of the missionary schools taught at Gregorian schools (Barnum Reference Barnum1890, 212; Stone Reference Stone and Hovannisian2002). The migration of missionary school graduates into community schools was naturally accompanied by the teaching techniques used in missionary schools. Missionaries viewed this trend optimistically, preferring the placement of missionary school graduates in Armenian schools over what they perceived as management “in the hand of infidel teachers” (Christian Union Reference Union1882).
The hiring of Protestant school graduates was accompanied by the use of schoolbooks printed at the Protestant missionary press (Marden Reference Marden1880). Before the institution of Protestant missions, schoolbooks were not widely used in the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, the few textbooks that existed were most commonly written in the ancient languages (Anderson Reference Anderson1872b, 733).Footnote 23 Starting in the 1830s, the missionaries published and distributed the Bible, textbooks, newsletters, tracts, and correspondence in modern Armenian. It was not until 1853 that Armenian communal leaders adopted a plan encouraging the preparation and publication of textbooks (Young Reference Young2001, 205). The attempt to integrate textbooks into the classroom was met with obstacles given that the Armenian community was engulfed in a debate over the place of classical versus modern Armenian as the basis of written language. In 1853, when Krikor Odian, a member of the Educational Council, published a grammar book of modern Armenian, he was chastised by the conservatives. As a result, this book was officially banned by the patriarchate on January 25, 1855, its use forbidden (Sarafian Reference Sarafian1930, 204). However, similar to other areas of influence, the existence of the Protestant alternative in the educational market that provided vernacular textbooks provided “an impetus for others to follow their example” (Merguerian Reference Merguerian1998, 49). By the end of the 19th century, the Armenian Patriarchate was compelled to reconsider its initial stance and started using the vernacular more widely in their schools.
Women’s Education
Like other nationalist movements, women were seen by nationalist proponents of education as symbols of national progress, and their education was encouraged and praised because of their role as mothers and teachers. However, the education of girls in the Gregorian Church was “at a very low ebb” prior to the arrival of missionaries (Barnum Reference Barnum1893, 298). Before the advent of girls’ schools, only the daughters of affluent parents learned to read and write (Clarke Reference Clarke1867). The one development that both sides unequivocally accepted is that the finding of schools for girls owe their development to the American example (Lynch Reference Lynch1901, 95; Barnum Reference Barnum1893). ABCFM missionaries opened a girls’ day schools in Constantinople as early as 1832 and a school for Armenian girls in Smyrna in 1836. Both schools were equipped with tools of modern education, such as benches, desks, and reading cards (Showalter Reference Showalter, Putney and Burlin2012; Dwight Reference Dwight1850, 47).
Like the founding of common schools, the girls’ schools evolved from a stance of persecution to one based on a sense of competition. Attempts to expand education for women was initially met with hostility by influential members of the Armenian community. However, as the popularity of these schools grew Gregorian Armenians realized that the failure to provide an education of equal footing would leave their girls under the influence of Protestant missionaries. In an Eastern Turkey village, upon the protestants building a girl’s school and securing a teacher, local Armenians objected by saying, “Why are you pressing us like this? […] You attempt to drive us to open a girls’ school. We simply cannot do it.”Footnote 24 There are many other examples where that the establishment of girls’ schools was based on the example of Protestants. In his memoirs, a Gregorian Armenian from Ichmeh observes that it was only after the Protestant school was established and took girls in their school that the Apostolic Church began taking girls into their school (Pilibosian and Pilibosian Reference Pilibosian and Pilibosian1992, 7). In Maraş too, the first Girls’ Central School was founded by the Protestant community in 1856. This later spurred the Armenian Apostolic community to have its own school for girls (Keshishian Reference Keshishian2012).
Discussion and Conclusion
The 19th century was marked by profound change for Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. The Tanzimat reforms, increasing penetration of the empire to Western commerce, and the internal power struggles in the community altered the composition of the Armenian millet during this period. Adding to these changes was the impact of the American Protestant missionaries, which intensified processes of secularization already in motion. In this complicated picture, a common narrative in Ottoman and Turkish studies has emphasized the prominent role of missionary schools spreading sedition and nurturing Armenian nationalism.
Using an original dataset of Armenian nationalists and archival data, this article has shown that this argument is relatively weak in the light of empirical evidence. Armenian nationalists were rarely products of the missionary schools operating within the Empire. Most Armenian nationalists sampled graduated from Armenian schools, with significant numbers attending well-known Armenian educational institutions in Istanbul and Russia. Meanwhile, the wealthier and usually urbanite Armenians pursued higher education in Western Europe. Taken together, it is evident that the national movement in the Ottoman Empire drew important inspiration from the intellectual currents outside imperial borders.
Still, a majority received their education at Armenian schools within the confines of the Ottoman Empire. It appears that it is in these schools that Armenians were imbued with the idea that they were a people with a just cause. However, to treat nationalism as a mass movement, education needs to reach a significant portion of the people and undergo a process of modernization. This is the point in which the impact of missionaries on the Armenian community was realized. This article has shown that while the missionaries did not have a direct effect, they inadvertently affected the rise of Armenian nationalism. This is primarily because of the intense competition the Armenian Church and Protestant missionaries engaged in during this period. This competition was most acutely realized in the Eastern Provinces and resulted in the Gregorian Armenians opening new schools as well as copying the methods and structure of missionary schools in order to remain competitive within the educational market.
The existence of similar patterns of competition between Protestant missionary schools and other indigenous educational institutions of the Orthodox Greek and Bulgarian community (Augustinos Reference Augustinos1986) and Ottoman state (Fortna Reference Fortna2002; Deringil Reference Deringil1998, 112–134; Evered Reference Evered2012) provides further evidence of the complicated and indirect ways in which Protestant missionaries altered the social landscape of the Middle Eastern region. One can also draw parallels between the Armenian case and other regions of the world where a competitive religious marketplace played a key role in bringing education to the masses. In Kerala, for example, missionary efforts to integrate education and focus on low-caste schooling fueled indigenous groups’ efforts to do the same (Lankina and Getachew Reference Lankina and Getachew2013; Bellenoit Reference Bellenoit2016; Deol Reference Deol2000). In Egypt too, where British imperialism allowed for the freer evangelization of Muslims, Egyptian Muslim and Coptic Orthodox leaders were pressured into developing local alternatives to the social service projects offered by American missionaries (Sedra Reference Sedra, Amanat and Bernhardsson2002; Sharkey Reference Sharkey2013). The reaction of the Gregorian Church to Protestant missionaries was not an isolated case but part and parcel of a larger phenomenon of indigenous reaction to missionary expansion. In light of the evidence presented in this paper, I have expanded on the ways in which competition has played a critical role in the expansion of public goods in the Ottoman Empire. Conceding this point 150 years earlier, as one missionary put it, “in various ways the indirect-influence of the missionary work is even greater from the direct.”Footnote 25
Disclosure
Author has nothing to disclose.
