The Missionary Solution

Abstract

This chapter examines the attempt by American missionaries to help remold the Ottoman state into a constitutional political system in the aftermath of the 1909 Young Turk Revolution. It explains why Americans, who had long regarded their missionaries as humanitarian aid agents helping to support and uplift the Armenians through their mission stations, now looked to them to extend their “civilizing mission” across the Empire. It explores the growth of the Protestant missionary lobby in the United States and the ways in which it developed support for an attempt to build a civil society in the Ottoman Empire that would ensure security for the Armenians within a reformed Ottoman polity. It explains why missionaries and their supporters viewed this as part of a larger mission to spread Christian ideals and representative government around the world alongside British evangelists. Missionary dreams of a new Ottoman nation collapsed when, amidst World War One, the Ottoman Armenians faced wholesale destruction. This chapter concludes by exploring how Woodrow Wilson’s administration and the missionaries responded to this “Crime Against Humanity,” and why their determination to maintain American neutrality so infuriated Theodore Roosevelt. It examines how the missionary lobby pioneered an unprecedented relief operation, and worked in partnership with the leading British champion of the Armenians, James Bryce, to publicize the atrocities and plan for Armenia’s ultimate liberation from Ottoman rule.