The Constantinople Home: The Multiple Meanings of Space and Location in an American Mission in Istanbul

This paper explores the multiple meanings of the Constantinople Home as a way to examine the intersections of the sacred and the quotidian in the American Protestant missionary enterprise in the Ottoman capital of Istanbul (Constantinople) As a center of missionary work for American Protestant women that was completed in 1876 by the Woman's Board of Missions of the Congregational Church, the Home was intended to be a major site for the task of religious conversion in the Islamic Ottoman Empire. Built at a time when the empire was undergoing a serious redirection of its imperial reform program, the building represented different opportunities for different people. The paper examines the significance of the building's geographic location, the complexity inherent in its name, and the contradictions built into its working plan, all of which led the men and women of the mission to perceive its purpose differently. The encounters of American missionaries and Ottoman subjects within the sophisticated cosmopolitan atmosphere of Constantinople contributed to a redirection of the Constantinople Home from a simple mission school to a multinational, ecumenical women's college that became an Ottoman institution independent of the Woman's Board of Missions. A focus on the Constantinople Home offers a reassessment of the historiography that attributes the demise of women's boards to events taking place within the United States. It also exposes the fissures in American and Ottoman society that defined the possibilities and limits of American religious and cultural expansion in the Near East.