“A Fortress of Americanism in this Oriental City”: The American College for Girls in Constantinople and U.S. Interests in the Late Ottoman Empire

This paper explores the relevance of the American College for Girls in Constantinople (Istanbul) as both an engine and a reflection of expanding American interests in the Near East from 1908 to 1923.  In 1908 responsibility for the college’s governance passed from its missionary founders to an independent board of American philanthropists who enjoyed close ties to government and business interests.  An analysis of the institution’s promotional literature in the years between the Young Turk Revolution and the founding of the Turkish Republic confirms the shifting focus of the college toward an American liberal arts education offered by women for women as a major cultural export to the region. The correspondence of the new school governors, the writings of college president Mary Mills Patrick (1889-1924), and the published works of college graduate and stateswoman Halidé Edib reveal that the college was a site of advocacy for Ottoman reforms, American intervention, and feminist internationalism. These sources illuminate the possibilities and limits of American political and cultural expansion in the Ottoman Empire and its successor nations, and reveal the unexpected ways in which the actions of players at the college reverberated in the United States and the Near East. The late Ottoman setting offers an excellent location in which to explore the transnational dimensions of American missionary encounters, female institution building in international education, and the transfer of influence from mission to state in the Near East as the U.S. emerged onto the world stage as a global power after the Spanish-American War and the First World War.