Nazan Maksudyan
This paper discusses the use of visual representations or photographic descrip-tions by the missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) as proofs of their proselytizing efforts. The analysis is limited to the American missionaries of the “Asiatic Turkey Mission”, namely West-ern Turkey Mission (established in 1819), Central Turkey Mission (1847) and Eastern Turkey Mission (1836), whose proselytizing efforts centralized its work mainly on Armenians.1 I argue that bodily conditions of targeted constituen-cies and their physical surroundings (rooms, houses, villages) were reconceived and re-conceptualized by American missionaries as material representations and mirrors of religious and moral progress. This was usually done in the genre of before-and-after photographs or detailed physical descriptions, one criticiz-ing or pitycriticiz-ing the former “wretchedness” of people, and the other appraiscriticiz-ing how they “grew finer”. Assuming that sincere belief, or for that matter conver-sion, is a delicate matter to present evidence for, these visual representations or descriptions were useful tools to convince the world of believers and benevol-ent contributors that these people were genuinely “civilized” into good Chris-tians and were leading a Christian life.
The ABCFM, founded in 1810, established its first missions in the Ottoman Empire in 1819 and became by the second half of 19th century quite influ-ential in the Anatolian provinces of the Empire, especially in socio-cultural fields of relief, education, and health.2 The specificities of their experience
1 For more information on the work of ABCFM missionaries among the Armenians, see Bar-bara J. Merguerian, “ ‘Missions in Eden’: Shaping an Educational and Social Program for the Armenians in Eastern Turkey (1855–1895),” inNew Faith in Ancient Lands: Western Missions in the Middle East in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, ed. Heleen Murre-van den Berg. SCM 32 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 241–262.
2 There were substantive regional differences in target populations, experiences and strategies of American missionaries stationed in different parts of the Ottoman Empire, namely the Balkans, Anatolia, Arab provinces. Compared to their relatively safe and well-established stand in most of the Anatolian provinces, the American missionaries did not necessarily gain
physical expressions of winning hearts and minds 63 in the Ottoman lands—successive failure among the Muslims and then the Jews, and later never-ending controversies with Orthodox communities, both Armenians and Greeks—made the ABCFM alter their approach from a narrow effort to “save souls” into a broad program of “cultivate minds”.3 The ABCFM missionaries realized early on that the communities would not easily receive a missionary simply as a preacher of the gospel, but they would accept a school (a teacher) or an infirmary (a doctor) quite willingly. Thanks to their educa-tional, medical, and humanitarian services, the ABCFM missionaries served as a second layer of communal support—in addition to the one that the com-munities formally belonged. They successfully used these institutions to have access to other religious denominations, since they admitted everyone in their schools and hospitals, not necessarily to convert them, but “make an impres-sion” upon them as to “what true Christianity is”. Elshakry argued that even though American missionaries “failed in their mission to save souls—their suc-cess in terms of numbers of actual converts to the Protestant Church was never very impressive—they were nevertheless said to have helped win the battle for the ‘conversion to modernities’4 in the Middle East”.5 That is why, Protestant-ism as represented by the ABCFM became a main ideological enemy in the eyes of the Sultan, since it was considered as one of the major factors in the renais-sance of Armenian and Syriac self-consciousness, especially because of their emphasis on the use of vernacular languages.6
As the main material of this essay, I concentrate on an interesting section of the Missionary Herald, one of the mostly circulating Board publications:
much local respect in the province of Syria. See for instance, Habib Badr, “American Protest-ant Missionary Beginnings in Beirut and Istanbul: Policy, Politics, Practice and Response,” in New Faith in Ancient Lands: Western Missions in the Middle East in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, ed. Heleen Murre-van den Berg (Leiden: Brill, 2006): 211–240; Ussama Makdisi,The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
3 Barbara J. Merguerian, “Saving Souls or Cultivating Minds? Missionary Crosby H. Wheeler in Kharpert, Turkey,”Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies6 (1992–1993): 33–60; Ellen Fleischmann, “Evangelization or Education: American Protestant Missionaries, the American Board, and the Girls and Women of Syria (1830–1910),” inNew Faith in Ancient Lands. Western Missions in the Middle East in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, ed. Heleen Murre-van den Berg (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 263–280.
4 Peter van der Veer, ed.,Conversion to Modernities: The Globalization of Christianity(New York:
Routledge, 1996).
5 Marwa Elshakry, “The Gospel of Science and American Evangelism in Late Ottoman Beirut,”
Past and Present196, no. 1 (2007): 173–214.
6 Hans-Lukas Kieser, “Mission as Factor of Change in Turkey (Nineteenth to First Half of Twen-tieth Century),”Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations13 (2002): 391–410.
64 maksudyan
“For Young People”. Starting from 1879, each monthly issue included a brief illustrated article designed for “young people”. This designation is in itself inter-esting, since it is not certain if the target audience was essentially children. If we assume that it was so, the age group must have shaped the narratives and focus of the stories and photos. This might explain less precision and more gen-eralization (in an Orientalistic fashion) in describing different religions, ethnic groups, and manners and customs. Yet, the young readers understandably were not expected to support the ABCFM financially, but they were prepared for future support. Moreover, since “For Young People” was a part within the Mis-sionary Herald, the section editors were mainly appealing to the preferences and worldviews of their principal readers, the parents. After all, it was them who would financially support the ABCFM. Thus, the target group of the sec-tion was children as much as the adults.
Shortly after its appearance, it was concluded that “Young People” depart-ment met a real demand and that these articles were widely read. Many of them were copied into other magazines and religious papers in the United States and in Great Britain. Moreover, they were compiled in two books, one in 1885 and the other in 1897, as a collection under the name ofMission Stories in Many Lands: A Book for Young People.7 They were purchased for Sunday School librar-ies and also used by Mission Circles and Young People’s Societlibrar-ies of Christian Endeavor. With their illustrations and touching stories, they became one of the Board’s main PR outlets to advertise their success at proselytizing and collect more donations.
Accounts of people and scenes in lands far away, and of the heroic men and women who have labored with zeal and success for the good of men of other climes and tongues, are among the best sources of instruction and stimulus for readers young or old.8
Many of these stories focused on the misery of people and life in general in
“Asiatic Turkey”. The first group of articles focused on and told stories of those who were genuinely physically deprived and in real destitution, such as lepers, the orphaned, starved, and sick. As a second strategy, they interpreted the bod-ies, surroundings, and dwellings of regular (not sick or destitute) people also within this general picture of misery. In other words, healthy people’s bodies,
7 Mission Stories of Many Lands: A Book for Young People(Boston: The ABCFM, 1885);In Lands Afar: A Second Series of Mission Stories of Many Lands, A Book for Young People(Boston:
ABCFM, 1897).
8 In Lands Afar, iv.
physical expressions of winning hearts and minds 65 dress, cleanliness, grooming was pathologized, together with their dwellings, villages, and even interpersonal relations. These were presented as deformed, degrading, undignified, and heathen and the ABCFM missionaries defined their role as fixing these through conversion to Protestantism. Protestant mission-ary indoctrination through sermons, everyday interaction, school education and medical care was to reform people and places, both materially and spir-itually, into “good-looking and Christian” entities. Therefore, the changes in human bodies and people’s living conditions were presented as representa-tions of internalization of Christian teachings. Those who received some form of Protestant influence were miraculously leaving their old habits behind and were reborn as new men and women. It is in fact telling that the American mis-sionaries positioned themselves as quasi-physicians: they were there to heal not only real diseases and deprivations, but also the social and spiritual ills.
A third group of articles was purportedly anthropological/sociological pieces on various ethnic/religious groups in the Empire, such as Kurds, Armeni-ans, Greeks, Yezidees, AlbaniArmeni-ans, and so on. These are purely Orientalist de-scriptions of their traditional costumes, cuisine, and “national character”.9 Pho-tographs accompanying the articles acted in a precise way to establish specific stereotypes and markers of inferiority, both of the people and of their home-lands. Photographs also expressed distinctions between “Oriental peoples” and missionaries from an ambivalent point of view: As agents of “a superior culture”, they most often envisioned their subjects as objects of both inferiority and fas-cination.10
1 Visual Representations of Conversion: Before-and-After Photographs
As soon as photography was introduced to the Ottoman Empire by the mid-nineteenth century,11 missionaries started to use it as a way to authenticate
9 In their study of postcards, Malek Alloula and David Proschaska show how photography evinced Orientalist discourse. Malek Alloula,The Colonial Harem(Minneapolis, Minn.:
University of Minnesota, 1986); David Prochaska, “Archive of l’Algerie Imaginaire,”History and Anthropology4 (1990): 373–420.
10 Eleanor M. Hight and Gary D. Sampson, eds.,Colonialist Photography: Imag(in)ing Race and Place(London: Routledge, 2004), 1.
11 The first known photograph is of Rais al-Tin Palace, in Alexandria, taken on November 7, 1839. For more information, see Jacob M. Landau,Exploring Ottoman and Turkish History (London: Hurst & Co., 2004), 101–104; Engin Çizgen,Photography in the Ottoman Empire (Istanbul: Haşet Kitabevi, 1987); Wolf-Deiter Lemke, “Ottoman Photography: Recording
66 maksudyan their experiences in distant parts of the world and to establish “a visual impres-sion of ‘heathenism’ more dramatic than could be achieved with the written word”.12 Next to tourists, painters, artists, art historians and journalists, mission-aries were a large group of photographers in the Empire. They found it useful to illustrate their tracts with photographs, and so from early on the mission stations tried to acquire the necessary equipment and know-how to take and print photographs.13 By the late 19th century, photography became an estab-lished part of different forms of field work, including Christian ministry.
The discourse of before-and-after was always omnipresent in ABCFM public-ations. It conveyed an image of accomplishment on the part of the missionaries and a promise of remarkable alteration on the part of the targets. Therefore, the relationship between conversion and visual representation was a strong one, in which photographs operated as complex discursive objects of power and culture.14 As eyewitness evidence of Ottoman reality, photographs played a significant part in reproducing the stereotype that Ottomans were degener-ates in need of guidance from the Protestants.15 The pictures of those whose physical features in terms of dress, cleanliness, or posture were dramatically inferior, potentially hostile, or disruptive were used in the “before narrative” in order to justify the value of Protestant missions.
As proofs of reclamation of freedom for the “long-enslaved Eastern Churches”, of “spiritual conquest of the people”, mainly of evangelization, they relied on showing how despicable pre-missionary life was and how it won-derfully improved with the intervention of the Protestants. Formulaic conver-sion anecdotes published alongside a pair of photographs (often one taken before and other after supposed conversion) within the reports and articles that appeared in the Missionary Heraldserved as proofs of achievement in the field, which was necessary to legitimate the continuing flow of funds. They reinforced the difference of the “other” and therefore the need for missions as
and Contributing to Modernity,” inThe Empire in the City: Arab Provincial Capitals in the Late Ottoman Empire, eds. Jens Hanssen, Thomas Philipp, and Stefan Weber (Beirut: Ergon Verlag Würzburg, 2002), 237–249.
12 Barbara Lawson, “Collecting Cultures: Canadian Missionaries, Pacific Islanders, and Mu-seums,” inCanadian Missionaries, Indigenous Peoples: Representing Religion at Home and Abroad, eds. Alvyn Austin and Jamie S. Scott (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 256.
13 Landau,Exploring Ottoman and Turkish History, 103.
14 Hight,Colonialist Photography, 1.
15 Ayshe Erdogdu, “Picturing Alterity: Representational Strategies in Victorian Type Pho-tographs of Ottoman Men,” inColonialist Photography: Imag(in)ing Race and Place, eds.
Eleanor M. Hight and Gary D. Sampson (London: Routledge, 2004), 122.
physical expressions of winning hearts and minds 67 assimilating and evangelizing forces. In that sense, the American missionaries depended on the ability of the photographs to convey “a sense of mission to the viewer who responded with increased prayer and increased giving.”16
All the articles in the “For Young People” were published along with visual material, such as photographs, engravings and drawings. When there was no visual to display certain people and places, the American missionaries relied on their literary skills and provided very detailed, even photographic descriptions.
The visual qualities of the articles mirrored the missionaries’ understanding of the propagandistic power of photographs when placed alongside personal testimony. They were used as tools to tangibly confirm that evangelical activity had yielded widespread cultural and spiritual transformation. American mis-sionaries’ reports largely relied on transformation of the bodies and physical surroundings of the people of “Asiatic Turkey”. In that sense, changes in the liv-ing conditions and customs of the people, “social progress” as it was presented, was the main indicator of conversion.
The missionaries used photography as if it can also capture people’s beliefs.
In their quest to give visibility to “true Christianity”, they had to devise solid, material proofs of inner belief that one can see. Therefore, ironically, true faith, which the Protestants praised without concession, was actually reduced into a set of material, observable traits. Although social change was presented as the spillover effect of proselytizing, in fact it was the essence of conversion itself. People were, in effect, converted into a certain definition of “civiliza-tion” (with its tangible definitions of cleanliness, neatness, nutrition, hygiene, home, domesticity, family life, order, child-rearing, and so on) rather than into an abstract set of rules (religion).
2 “Growing Fine”: Armenian Orphans and the ABCFM
The American missionaries’ “visual success” was crystallized in the descrip-tion and depicdescrip-tion of the orphans in their orphanages. These children were in a most extreme destitution before arrival and were under absolute mis-sionary control thereafter. The ABCFM had always embraced philanthropy as a part of its missionary mandate. The missionary work was divided into four departments. Next to evangelistic work, publication, and education, philan-thropy was an important part of the missions.17 The missionaries organized
16 Carol Williams,Framing the West: Race, Gender, and the Photographic Frontier in the Pacific Northwest(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 88.
17 Rev. George F. Herrick, “Canon Taylor on Missionary Methods,”Missionary Heraldvol. 85 (January 1889): 13–16.
68 maksudyan local relief measures in the case of fires, earthquakes, famines, and diseases.
Relief for the orphans had one outstanding advantage, given manifold religious and social limitations of the American missionary establishments: they were free from family ties, which made conversion to Protestantism very difficult or even impossible.18
The opening of the ABCFM orphanages within the “Asiatic Turkey” mission started after the Armenian massacres of 1894–1896,19 which orphaned around 50,000 children.20 Before that, the missions only had three very small-scale asylums. But these events forced the missionaries to open more than sixty orphanages in around thirty districts. The number of orphans in each orphan-age ranged from 50 to 1,000, though they had in averorphan-age about 100 children.
The orphan asylums of the ABCFM were thought to have provided for around 10,000 orphans in the following decade after the massacres. These massacres made the missionaries content with their operations, as they had found a great opportunity to make a massive impact on the local population.21
Before-and-after narrative was strong in American missionary writings about orphans and orphanages. Long depictions of children’s bodily features were provided, describing in detail how they were received in miserable con-ditions of dirt, sores, and vermin and how they were tamed in the hands of the missionaries into clean, good-looking, and well-behaved children. Orphan girls, coming “literally in rags”, without “shoes or anything warm for winter”, were fur-nished with “plain but neat cotton or woolen dresses”.22 They were now “clean,
18 Roland Löffler, “The Metamorphosis of a Pietistic Missionary and Educational Institution into a Social Services Enterprise: The Case of the Syrian Orphanage (1860–1945),” inNew Faith in Ancient Lands: Western Missions in the Middle East in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, ed. Heleen Murre-van den Berg. SCM 32 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 157.
19 For further information on the Eastern Anatolian Armenian massacres in the late 1890s and the involvement of the American Protestant missionaries in the relief efforts, see Hans-Lukas Kieser,Der verpasste Friede: Mission, Ethnie und Staat in den Ostprovinzen der Türkei 1839–1938(Zurich: Chronos Verlag, 2000); Selim Deringil, “‘The Armenian Ques-tion is Finally Closed’: Mass Conversions of Armenians in Anatolia during the Hamidian Massacres of 1895–1897,”Comparative Studies in Society and History51 (2009): 344–371;
Margaret Lavinia Anderson, “ ‘Down in Turkey, Far Away’: Human Rights, the Armenian Massacres, and Orientalism in Wilhelmine Germany,”The Journal of Modern History79 (2007): 80–111.
20 It was generally argued by the contemporaries that there were around 50,000 destitute orphans. “Editorial Paragraphs,”Missionary Heraldvol. 95 (October 1899): 396; “Fifty Thou-sand Orphans made so by the Turkish Massacres of Armenians,”New York Times, Decem-ber 18, 1896.
21 Nazan Maksudyan, “ ‘Being Saved to Serve’: Armenian Orphans of 1894–96 and Interested Relief in Missionary Orphanages,”Turcica42 (2010): 47–88.
22 Miss Nason, “Work for Orphans,”Missionary Heraldvol. 93 (March 1897): 112–113.
physical expressions of winning hearts and minds 69 merciful, obedient, rapidly learning both in books and in Christian life, so dif-ferent from the wretched little creatures they were when they first came in”.23
The ABCFM missionaries tried to change behaviors and social attitudes of the orphans by implementing Protestant work ethics. Among their main ped-agogical aims were cleanliness, passion and continuity at work, teamwork, and mutual responsibility.24 The American missionaries argued that the orphans they had sheltered, clothed, cared for, and disciplined were regarded with admiration by the whole community around them, as their physical conditions improved after they were institutionalized. An anecdote from Urfa exemplifies the perception.
As these boys were taking a walk on a recent day a group of people stopped to gaze at them, and one said, ‘Does Miss Shattuck pick outall the fine boysin the community for her orphanage?’ ‘No’ replied another,
‘they grow fine after she has had them a little while’.25
As dirty, half-starved and neglected orphans, they were “other children”, based on otherness of need, poverty, and undesirability. The missionary relief thus
As dirty, half-starved and neglected orphans, they were “other children”, based on otherness of need, poverty, and undesirability. The missionary relief thus