Emrah Sahin

Errand into the East: a Social History of American Missionaries in Istanbul, 1830-1900 Emrah Sahin

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.