Description
Book SynopsisThis book examines international education in Turkey after World War I. In this period, a movement for peace and international education among American educators emerged. This effort, however, had to be reconciled with the nationalist projects of new nation-states emerging from the war. In the case of the Near East that meant coming to terms with the radically nationalist modernization project of Kemal Atatürk’s Turkish Republic. Using the case of Robert College, an American educational institution in Istanbul, which aimed to foster a future local elite of a multi-ethnic and multi-religious student body, the book sheds light on the negotiation between two conceptions of modernity, as represented by American internationalist ideals and the tenets of Kemalism the Westernizing, yet deeply ethnocentric national ideology of post-1923 Turkey. Based on recently declassified archival sources, this study addresses the educational intentions and strategies for adjustment of college faculty. It also offers a rare insight into the mindset of young students attempting to make sense of what internationalism and religious, ethnic and national identity meant in the Ottoman past and in the new republican Turkey. Focusing on Robert College and the forgotten case of its dean and social studies instructor, Dr. Edgar Jacob Fisher, it addresses the little-researched field of internationalism and peace education in interwar Turkey.
Table of ContentsContents
Chapter 1. Introduction: Internationalism and the new Turkey. 3
Earlier research on Robert College and American missionary education in Turkey. 6
Argument, material, and perspectives. 9
Outline of the book. 15
Chapter 2. Background: Robert College and late Ottoman society. 22
Nineteenth-century beginnings: Protestant mission in the age of Ottoman reform.. 23
A non-sectarian college on Christian grounds: Robert College’s first half-century. 30
The end of the Tanzimat and the age of Hamidian reaction. 33
The beginning of the Young Turk era, 1908-1914. 36
The Ottoman Empire’s Great War and the Armenian genocide. 39
Robert College during the World War and the Armistice. 41
The war after the war, the Lausanne Treaty and the new Turkey’s “Year One”. 45
Chapter 3. Years of transition: Adapting to the republican order, 1923-1927. 53
“This desert of discord”: The politics of Turkish nationalism, 1923-1927. 55
“Riding for a fall”: foreign and communal schools in the age of nationalist educational reform.. 62
Three men and a donkey: Robert College and the Edgar Fisher affair of 1924. 66
From tug-of-war to US-Turkish rapprochement, 1925-1927. 82
“A cure for war”: the new secular mission of the American colleges. 89
Chapter 4. “A moderate and true nationalism”: The philosophy and practice of internationalism and peace education at Robert College, c. 1927-1933. 98
To end all wars: education for peace and internationalism after the Great War. 99
Enlightenment’s belated offspring: John Dewey and the new Turkey. 103
Practicing world-mindedness: Extracurricular activities in the service of peace at Robert College. 110
The internationalism that dare not speak its name: Teaching on the problem of nationalism.. 121
“This particular dream”: American exceptionalism, Turkish nationalism, and the notion of Turkish-American kinship 127
Chapter 5. Wonderful changes, broken unity: Modernity, Ottoman past and national belonging in the essays of Robert College students. 134
“This broken unity”: Ottomanism for the post-Ottoman world. 134
Recovering perceptions of students: aims and material 137
“Wonderful changes have taken place”: Modernity vs. tradition. 140
Ourselves and Others: Perceptions of national belonging and ethnic minorities. 147
Minority voices: Self-representations among Turkish Greek and Armenian students. 155
The shadow of 1915: Memories of violence in students’ essays. 164
Concluding remarks: The Near East and the “great brotherhood of nations”. 171
Chapter 6. Internationalism defeated: The downfall of Edgar Fisher. 176
The domestic political context: The Free Republican Party and the turn towards totalitarianism.. 177
“Anti-foreignism” and the Turkish History Thesis. 181
“The injustice of this business”: The second Fisher incident, 1933. 184
Building harmony: making sense of Fisher’s expulsion. 194
Chapter 7. Epilogue and conclusion. 207
Epilogue: The long twilight, 1934-1971. 207
Conclusion: The (inter-)nationalism of Robert College. 215
