Errand Into the East

American missionaries had a lasting effect
on contemporary discussions of education, nationalism and
religion in the late Ottoman Middle East. In addition to
symbolizing the clash between the local Muslims and others
in the nineteenth century, the American missionaries in the
region helped shape the discourse of American and Ottoman
diplomatic and cultural relations, serving as a precedent
for more recent diplomatic and religious confrontations. In
this book, Emrah Sahin analyzes the objectives and results
of the missions with particular analysis of the missionary
life in Istanbul, the Ottoman metropolitan capital in this
century, when religion was the single most important element
of civil, communal identity. American missionary experience
from the start in New England to getting established in
Istanbul is considered in terms of their meaning for the
missionaries and on the lives of the Ottomans. Pairing new
archival material from the missionary collections with the
growing secondary literature on related fields, Sahin offers
a fresh interpretation of American missionaries and their
pivotal movement in American and Middle Eastern history.