Robert College of Constantinople

In 1863, Protestant missionaries established Robert College in Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, holding the distinction of being the pioneer American college abroad. In many cases, the American educators at Robert College understood the field of education as a superior tool for mission. The book brings into conversation the convergence of the Protestant mission movement in the Ottoman Empire with the diverse tones of American efforts for providing education and assisting of the economic and social progress. The author argues that despite being established as a religious institution with common goals and aspirations, Robert College did not fully progress and reach its ambitions until the school switched to what the founding fathers called a non-religious curriculum. Robert College exclusively abandoned its Christian theological curriculum by minimizing its explicitly Christian dimensions and became a school with greater financial and structural autonomy, which eventually gave the school the freedom to become crossroads of cultures, faiths and nationalities. The story of Robert College in Constantinople is a fascinating account for examining the influence of United States foreign affairs and culture on various aspects of society in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ottoman Empire.