Influencing the Home Base to Influence the World: Foreign Mission Fundraising and the Armenian Massacres of 1894–96

In June 1894, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions described Armenians as “nominal Christian[s] [needing] an evangelical reformation quite as much as … European Christianity in the sixteenth century.” Within months, the American Board was identifying the Ottoman and Turkish attacks on these “nominal” Christians as an attack on Christianity itself and issuing a call to action. Subsequent donations reached tens of thousands of dollars.

American influence has always depended upon a strong support network within the United States. Foreign missionary societies worked as hard to promote their work among Americans as they did to build churches, schools, and hospitals around the world. For many Americans, this propaganda shaped their understanding of foreign societies. A magic lantern show with images of Congo or a furloughed missionary’s stories about life in China offered insight that was otherwise unavailable.

Historians have previously shown how missionaries assessed foreign societies according to ideologies of cultural superiority. Examining fundraising efforts in response to the Armenian massacres of 1894-1896, this paper argues that missionary societies reinforced those constructions at home, thereby spreading the idea that Americans should--indeed needed to--influence the world. While most Americans already believed in their superiority over non-western societies, they did need to be convinced to spend money to develop those societies. This paper adds an important dimension to recent work by Ian Tyrrell and others by exploring the popular impact of the view that the United States should “reform the world.”