Armenians in America1

ARMENIANS IN AMERICA1 DENNIS PAPAZIAN Armenians were among the first Europeans to come to America. A man called ‘Martin ye Armenian’ was among those who lived in the British colony at Jamestown (founded in 1607), arriving either 1618 or 1619. Later, to help with the raising of silkworms, two more Armenians were invited to the colony. One of them, ‘George ye Armenian’, according to the records, was offered an inducement of 4,000 pounds of tobacco to persuade him to remain and continue his work.2 Nothing, apparently, came of these efforts to raise silkworms in America. Aside from such isolated cases, we have no record of other Armenians reaching America until the early nineteenth century, when young men from the Ottoman Empire first appeared seeking an education. The first of these, apparently, was a student named Khachik Oskanian who arrived in 1834. To understand his appearance, we must go back in history. Problems in the Old Country Most Armenians who came to America in the nineteenth and early twentieth century came from the Armenian heartland, central and Eastern Anatolia, which had fallen under the sway of the Ottoman Empire. Mohammed, the founder of Islam, considered Christians and Jews as “People of the Book”, namely those who accepted the sacred scriptures. He placed these people in a 1 Of necessity, an essay of such a short length dealing with such a large topic must be selective in coverage and simplified in its presentation, thus requiring broader generaliza- tion than those with which the author is comfortable. Necessary nuances are lost, and exceptions, perhaps important ones, go unrecorded. Since many items in this essay can be substantiated from numerous sources, I will limit my citations to standard books and arti- cles which can be of further use to the interested reader and those sources which have made a unique contribution to and understanding of this subject. A thorough biblio- graphy is appended to aid those who wish to find more detailed information or who would like to pursue research on various topics. 2 R. Mirak, Torn Between Two Lands: Armenians in America 1890 to World War I (Cam- bridge, MA, 1983), p. 36. Mirak’s book is the most dependable and thoroughly researched history of the Armenians in America up to World War I. 312 D. PAPAZIAN category above pagans and idolaters, but below Muslims, and deemed them worthy to be “protected” as long as they submitted to Muslim rule, accepted subordinate status, and paid a military exemption tax. Customarily, only the “faithful” of Islam could “draw the sword” to fight for Islam.3 Christians and Jews in Muslim politics were called dhimmi.4 Since Islam tends toward theocratic rule, and since the dhimmi had no status within an Islamic state, the Muslim rulers organized the dhimmi into religious communities (millets), also theocratic in their structure. The head of the community – the chief rabbi or the patriarch, as the case might be – was responsible for his people to the ruling caliph or sultan and his laws. When the Ottoman Turks overran the Byzantine Empire and Armenia, they instituted the millet system for the Christian and Jewish minorities. The millet system was progressive for its day, inasmuch as it allowed the non-Muslim religious communities to maintain their own language and customs from below while accepting an alien political authority from above. This system recognized non-territorial nationality as compared with the territorial specific nationality more prevalent today.5 An Armenian living anywhere in the Ottoman Empire was an Armenian and a member of the Armenian millet. As the Empire began to deteriorate in the nineteenth century, however, the millets came to be seen by the ruling Muslims as an exploitable and despised underclass.6 In the early 1800s, the Protestant Churches in America regarded missionary work among the heathens to be their bounden duty. To coordinate their missionary activities, these Churches established the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1812.7 The American Board sent 3 The Ottomans apparently made some exceptions to this rule, at least in the Balkans, where certain Christian noblemen became allies of the Turks. See A. Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 130-137. 4 Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam (London, 1985). 5 Hastings, Nationhood (see n. 3). In this book, Hastings gives nationalism and nations a thorough re-analysis. He challenges current ‘modernist’ and Marxist orthodoxies, such as that in Hobsbawm’s Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (New York, 1990). Hastings sees Armenian nationalism extending as far back as early Christian times. 6 S.H. Astourian, ‘Modern Turkish Identity and the Armenian Genocide: From Prejudice to Racist Nationalism’, in Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, ed. R. Hovannisian (Detroit, pp. 23-49). See also Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi (see n. 4), for a more general analysis of the treatment of dhimmi in Muslim society. ARMENIANS IN AMERICA 313 out missionaries/explorers to most parts of the ‘pagan’ world to investigate the feasibility of sending missionaries and establishing mission stations. One of the areas in which they decided to work was among the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire – in Egypt, greater Palestine, Syria, and Anatolia (present- day Turkey), including historic Armenia. The first of these American missionaries arrived in 1820.8 Since it was quite illegal to proselytize among the Muslims or for a Muslim to convert to Christianity, such an act being punishable by death, the missionaries decided to work first among the indigenous Christians.9 The missionaries wished foremost to reform the ‘corrupted’ ancient Apostolic Churches and, if that were not possible, to establish a Protestant community among these native Christians. The missionaries believed that by producing upright Christians – charitable, loving, physically clean, and materially suc- cessful – these native Christians could serve as a light to the heathens and eventually effect their voluntary conversion. Who would not like to emulate the noble lives of the self-sacrificing missionaries and their exemplary wards?10 The Greek Orthodox community showed little interest in what the American Protestants had to offer, but the Armenians, eager for education and a chance for advancement, flocked in great numbers to the Protestant schools, medical clinics, and churches. To meet the great demand among the Armenians, the American Board enlarged its program until the Turkish field became the largest in the world.11 At the height of their work, the American Board had established five institutions of higher education in historic Armenia12 and numerous parishes, schools, and medical clinics 7 R.L. Daniel, American Philanthropy in the Near East, 1820-1960 (Athens, OH, 1970). 8 F. Andrews Stone, Academies for Anatolia: A Study of the Rationale, Program and Impact of the Educational Institutions Sponsored by the American Board in Turkey: 1830-1980 (New York), p. 27. Often these stations consisted of a school, a church, and a clinic or hospital, along with medical missionaries and teachers. 9 J. L. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: Missionary Influence on American Policy, 1810-1927 (Minneapolis, 1971), pp. 7-8. These indigenous Christians consisted mostly of Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic (members of the pre-Chalcedon ‘Lesser Orthodox’ community), and Assyrian Christians. 10 B.J. Merguerian, ‘Saving Souls or Cultivating Minds?: Missionary Crosby H. Wheeler in Kharpert’, Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 6, 1992, 1993 (1995), p. 36. 11 Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy (see n. 9), p. 33. 12 These institutions were Central Turkey Colleges at Aintab and Marash, Euphrates College at Kharpert, Anatolia College at Marsovan, and St. Paul’s Institute at Tarsus. The 314 D. PAPAZIAN managed by over one hundred American missionaries, assisted by numerous native coworkers. As one might expect, the missionaries brought to their work a mixture of Christianity and American New England culture, one often indistinguish- able from the other, at least not by the missionaries themselves. Good Chris- tians, the missionaries assumed, should resemble good Americans.13 And the good Armenians who became good Christians, and who thought and acted like good Americans, began to attract the attention and apprehension of the Muslim authorities. Armenians were being educated and socialized beyond their station in Muslim society. Armenians, naively, believed that their new status endowed them with new rights, especially as wards of the Americans. What the Armenians could not see, and what became crystal clear at the end of the Armenian Genocide, was that the missionaries were primarily interested in the Turks, for it was the Muslims whom they actually wished to convert, and the Armenians were only a means to an end.14 Coming to America Young students who graduated from the missionary schools, like Khachik Oskanian, often sought to make their way to America to complete their education, primarily (but not exclusively) in schools of medicine, pharmacy, theology or engineering.15 A select few of these young men were sent by the missionaries, and most but not all of them returned to teach in the missionary schools, become ‘native pastors’, or work in the clinics as expected. Apostolic Institute at Konya and the International College at Smyrna, in both cases out- side historic Armenia, were also established by the Protestants. For more information, see: Stone, Academies for Anatolia (see n. 8). 13 Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy (see n. 9), p. 18. 14 The Armenians in America were shocked in the 1920s to see that their cause was aban- doned by the missionary establishment which hoped that it would be allowed by the new nationalist government of Turkey to directly proselytize the Muslims.

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