Failed Proselytizers or Modernizers?: Protestant Missionaries among the Jews and Sabbateans/Dönmes in the Nineteenth Century Ottoman Empire [Middle Eastern Studies, 2015] (original) (raw)

2014, Middle Eastern Studies

Examining one of the most important chapters of the global missionary history, this article aims to analyze: a) the reasons of the rise and fall of the American Protestant mission to the Ottoman Jews and Dönmes in the nineteenth century; and b) its impact on the Ottoman Jewish and Dönme communities before the arrival of the Alliance Israelite Universelle in the 1860s. The article argues that although the Protestant mission to the Jews and Dönmes failed due to such reasons as indigenous resistance, health and financial issues, and the urgency of converting “nominal” oriental Christians, it was, in a way, successful, since it contributed to the transformation and modernization of the Ottoman Jewish and Dönme communities, and by implication, Ottoman and Turkish society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Keywords: ABCFM, Protestant Missionaries, Jews, Dönmes, William G. Schauffler, Salonica, Ottoman and Turkish Modernization.

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