Anthropology, Sociology & Women’s Studies

This collection of letters by an American missionary teacher in turn-of-the-century eastern Turkey is a useful addition to recent studies of missionary women as purveyors of culture and religion. Among a coherent selection of letters covering a span of seven years Katchadourian has interspersed cogent explanations of events in the Ottoman Empire that affected the lives of the missionaries, making Great Need Over the Water accessible to those not familiar with the ethnographic, historical, or political layout of the Ottoman Empire at that time. Her commentary on the missionary milieu in turn-of-the-century Anatolia is helpful without being intrusive.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the civilizing mission had subsumed the earlier evangelizing one, and indeed Theresa Huntington’s letters speak less about the spirit of Christ than about the need for education and social justice. At the same time, the letters illustrate Huntington’s ambivalence about her situation and the people she came to serve. Here, the locals do not emerge as individuals; rather, we see types and groups. For example, when invitations for a social event come at the last minute, Huntington complains that such “is generally the case when Armenians get up things” (p. 281). Early in her stay (August 1899) she writes: “The Armenian character is one that doesn’t hold out well” (p. 138). Even six years later her attitude is little changed: towards the end of her stay (March 1905) Huntington writes in discouragement: “It is the same thing over and over. The same kinds of work and the same difficulties. The Armenians, here at least, never have learned to pull together.…I think it is a national characteristic and one which is a fearful obstacle to progress” (p. 337). “Very few of the people really understand why we come here” (p. 204). Emigration of the “best and brightest” Armenians troubled the missionaries, who were committed to transforming the world, not moving it to America. As Katchadourian notes, the missionaries share in the prevailing sense of despair, but during this uneasy period they disapprove of emigration as a solution. 

Huntington’s letters suggest that the women missionaries were particularly isolated and unsuccessful at integrating themselves into the community. In town, the American women covered their heads to avoid attracting unpleasant attention; more surprisingly, the missionary women, like the local women, were not allowed to shop. On the rare occasions that they ventured into the local market, a man had to precede them to clear the way and warn the merchants: “How we were stared at in the market-place! I become very tired of always being strange and foreign and always being stared at” (p. 177).

Despite a number of typos (in one case “x” is substituted for a date which was surely intended to be put in later) and mechanical errors scattered throughout the book, suggesting that the press may have taken shortcuts with copyediting, the result is a depiction of missionary life that will contribute to the discussion of American religious and cultural missions in the Middle East.

Carolyn McCue Goffman
Ball State University

[1] As Hikayat-i duktaran-i Qufhan: az yadraftah’ha-yi mashrutah (Tehran: Rawshangaran, 1996).