| Summary/Abstract |
Writing in 1929, Edward Mead Earle opens his article with a striking remark about American missionary activities in the Near East: ‘No other American activity in the Near East has been of such extent and consequence as Christian missions. No other has been so long and so earnestly supported by so numerous and so influential a constituency at home. No other has made such persistent claims upon Christian Americans for financial assistance and upon the Government of the United States for diplomatic support.’ Once missionary activities in the East are examined, it becomes clear that Earle's statement was not an exaggeration. For example, an Ottoman minister of education, Zuhdu Pasha, reports, in a somewhat alarmed tone, that hundreds of missionary schools, including 400 Protestant ones had been operating in different parts of the empire in the 1880s. Next to schools, tens of missionary-run hospitals, orphanages, and printing presses had been active all over the empire, carrying the western material and spiritual values to the Ottoman society.
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