FAITH , FREEDOM , AND FLAG : THE INFLUENCE OF AMERICAN MISSIONARIES IN TURKEY ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS , 1830-1880 A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The School of Continuing Studies And of The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Liberal Studies By Elizabeth W. Shelton, M.A. Georgetown University Washington, D.C. April 4, 2011 ii Frontispiece: orthern Armenian Mission, Constantinople, 1859 Back Row, l to r : Parsons, Isaac Bliss, Ladd, E.E. Bliss, Walker Front Row, l to r : Hamlin, E. Riggs, Schauffler, H.G.O. Dwight, Goodell, Van Lennep ii FAITH, FREEDOM, AND FLAG: THE INFLUENCE OF AMERICAN MISSIONARIES IN TURKEY ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, 1830-1880 Elizabeth W. Shelton, M.A. DLS Chair: John O. Voll, Ph.D. ABSTRACT From the early days of the American Republic, Protestant Christianity and the American values which derived from it have had a heavy influence on U.S. for- eign affairs. The initial 19 th century missionaries to Anatolia in the Ottoman Empire were highly-educated men steeped in Calvinistic and American values. In the period 1830-1880, when American official representation was slight and generally confined to Constantinople, information about activities in Anatolia came largely from the missionaries who were scattered across the region, living in towns and regularly vi- siting scores of villages in their mission areas. Their reports, letters, articles, lec- tures, and books profoundly shaped the views of policy makers and have influenced policies and opinions to this day. Who these missionaries were, what uniquely American values they took with them overseas--rule of law, democracy, equality of citizens and respect for their “in- alienable” rights, including freedom of conscience--how they reacted and then re- sponded to the traditional Islamic yet slowly modernizing societies they found in the Ottoman Empire, what experiences–especially their efforts among the Christian mi- norities–molded these impressions, and how they were portrayed to policy makers in iii Washington, are the subjects of this thesis. This examination of the eleven men (see frontispiece) who comprised the “Northern Armenian Mission, 1859” of the Ameri- can Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Constantinople concludes that the first groups of missionaries in the 19 th century set the stage for America’s out- raged response to the massacre of Armenians in the mid-1890s and to the enforced, inhumane expulsion of the Armenians from the eastern provinces of Turkey at the beginning of World War I. They set the stage for the massive, multi-million dollar outpouring of America’s relief efforts in the Near East, and finally, for President Wilson’s decision, in the face of missionary establishment pressures, not to declare war on the Ottoman Empire when the United States entered the First World War in 1917. Over the decades, the missionaries pressed the U.S. government for protec- tion of themselves and their property, setting the precedent for protection of citizens abroad. They sought, and obtained, official U.S. representation to the Sublime Porte on issues of freedom of conscience, religious liberty, equality of all citizens before the law regardless of religion, the development of civil society, and education for women. These issues continued to color American relations with Turkey throughout the 20 th century, and remain as foundations of foreign policy today. The missiona- ries’ perceptions and their images of the “Terrible Turks” portrayed in their writings persist in today’s relations with Turkey. iv v American Board Mission Stations Source: Strong, The Story of the American Board , 1910, page 386. iii PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I first bumped into remnants of the missionary movement in Turkey during my first tour (1987-1990) in Turkey at the consulate in Istanbul–the missionaries who remained, one a choir director, their publications, schools, and medical facili- ties. At that time, I had no knowledge of the missionaries nor of the movement that brought them to Turkey. It was during my second tour (1994-1997), at the consulate in Adana in southeastern Turkey, that I began to feel their presence in the region. Tarsus American College was in my consular district, as was the American Hospital in Gaziantep, an historic institution then largely forgotten by the American commu- nity. I recall standing in the little cemetery adjacent to the hospital, weeds knee high and markers askew, thinking about the missionaries who lay buried there, who had given their lives in what was then an obscure corner of the Ottoman Empire. I learned about Dr. Asariah Smith and his Yale classmates who built the first stone hospital building in his honor, the first hospital in that region. I saw markers of the extraordinary Sheperd family, with four generations engaged in missionary work. I felt an immediate bond with Dr. Fred Sheperd as he was a graduate of the University of Michigan (my alma mater) Medical School and his wife Fanny, who must have been one of the first women to graduate from the University of Michigan Medical School, and was a Mount Holyoke graduate. Only later did I learn of the important influence of Mount Holyoke on the missionary movement. vi As I traveled around my consular district, I saw other evidences of the mis- sionaries: a girl’s school here, a boy’s school there, a kindergarten, a playground, an occasional clinic–all abandoned or revamped for different use. Some buildings still had the original names on them; others had had their original identity removed and replaced. I began to wonder about the Americans who came to this part of the Otto- man Empire and stayed for their entire lives, people who learned languages, bore children and buried a good number of them in these soils, people who left their homes and families behind and headed into the unknown for the sake of a belief. As a Foreign Service Officer, I felt somewhat akin to them, but I could not imagine the hardships they must have endured, the dangers with which they lived, the strange- ness of the culture and the food, the isolation, and the determination they must have shown by staying for decades and finally being accepted by the local communities. Still ignorant of the enormity of the American missionary movement, the tipping point came for me after visiting my parent’s church in Florida, and meeting so many people who said to me, “I had a great-grandfather who was a missionary to ….” “I had a great-aunt and uncle who were missionaries in ….” It was a United Church of Christ parish, and that was my first exposure to the Congregational con- nection with the American missionary movement. Over lunch that day, I remember my Mother and I questioning what were the origins of the American missionary movement, and why had so many missionaries gone to foreign lands. I determined that day to find information about it. vii Building on my conviction that people make history, I was interested in try- ing to find the missionaries as people by reading what they had written and said, and how they said what they did. Because of that quest, this thesis will feature more and longer quotations than might usually be found in a work of this nature. It is important to understand the missionaries by reading their own words. In my research, I found a group of highly educated, articulate, and very observant commentators in their com- munications to their colleagues, employers, friends, schoolmates, publications, and families back home. I began a bit of reading, but it was only when I retired from the Foreign Service that I was able to devote some proper time to learning about the movement, and that led me to seek a doctorate at Georgetown University. (The Dean who in- terviewed me, after listening carefully to my interest in Protestant American missio- naries in Turkey, looked at me over his half-glasses and said, kindly, “But you do understand, my dear, that this is a Jesuit institution!”) At the top of my list of acknowledgments must be Georgetown University which offered an academic home, intellectual encouragement, and a thorough shak- ing-up of all those things I had decided must be true when I was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan decades before. Professors John Voll and Gabor Agos- ton at Georgetown reintroduced me to the pleasures and rigors of academic work. A particular thanks goes to Dr. John Voll, who guided me, encouraged me, and kept me going through the ups and downs of dissertation writing, and to my ABDers group that gave support to each other over many, many months of writing. viii Thanks also must go to Dr. Heath Lowry and to Amb. Robert Finn, both of Princeton, for their early encouragement and confidence in my ability to accomplish this research. Dr. Lowry gave me the greatest of academic gifts, a large annotated bibliography. Various archivists were especially helpful to me at Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, Bowdoin College, Houghton Library at Harvard University, Wil- liams College, Middlebury College, the Congregational House Library, and George- town University. Bruce Johnson and Ken and Betty Frank welcomed me to Bible House and the missionary archives in Istanbul. Family members kept me going. My three daughters bought me a laptop computer so that I could move into 20 th century technology and be able to make the most effective use of my time in archives. My cousin, Celinda Scott, a French teacher of many decades, took over the French translations and made them correct. And my dear husband, Napier, my favorite editor, proofreader, and master of the English language, endured trips, my ups and downs, and many TV dinners during the writing of this dissertation.