Date Awarded
2016
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Department
History
Advisor
Paul Mapp
Committee Member
Hiroshi Kitamura
Committee Member
Guillaume Aubert
Committee Member
Leisa Meyer
Abstract
Mission Accomplished: Manifest Destiny and American Foreign Missions to the Ottoman Empire in the 1830s William Goodell’s memoir, Forty Years in the Turkish Empire, was a compilation of some of his journals, letters, and other writings during his tenure as a missionary living in Constantinople. This paper analyzes Goodell’s motivations, activities, and reflections during the 1830s in order to discuss Goodell’s role as an agent of Manifest Destiny. Though the United States did not have the desire or ability to conquer the Ottoman Empire by the sword, some Americans asserted their power through the spread of religion, and many of these Americans supported the efforts of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). William Goodell provides a view into the Protestant missionaries from the United States to the Ottoman Empire and the world at large who, in the 1830s, were intrinsic component of the burgeoning Manifest Destiny mentality and reflected physical American expansion westward in the form of Christian American expansion eastward. These evangelical missionaries were also a force of expansion, and a strand of manifest destiny expressed in the form of ideological imperialism. “A Colorful and Turbulent Career”: Depictions of Turkey in American Tourist Guidebooks, 1920-1935 Americans who wanted to visit Turkey around its establishment as a nation could consult a variety of sources which help to demonstrate the American perceptions of the Turkish Republic and its leaders during the 1920s and 1930s. The ultimate marker of these American guidebooks is the time they devoted to Robert College in Constantinople. These authors’ depiction of Robert College as an American stronghold in the Oriental East represents the type of Western gaze that acted as a penetrating force and constituted a mental and physical imposition on Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s, a process which continued as travelers used the guidebooks for their various needs. This paper discusses the differences in wants and needs between the Turkish government and Western travelers, reconciled effectively through the reality of İstanbul as the destination of choice for Westerners who wanted a taste of the Orient that was still comfortably “Western.”
DOI
http://doi.org/10.21220/S2ZW2G
Rights
© The Author
Recommended Citation
Fischer, Maureen Julia, ""Turkey is the Key": Studies on America's Relationship with the Ottoman Empire, The Turkish Republic, and Islam in the Near and Middle East" (2016). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. William & Mary. Paper 1477068545.
http://doi.org/10.21220/S2ZW2G
