The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

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Posted by pancho (Guest) - Tuesday, August 14 2007, 20:13:43 (CEST)
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...this is our history in the modenr era..our REAL history, explaining how we got to this sad place. But, if you don't know the path by which you came, you won't know how to choose a better.



In the sections on late 19th century and early 20th century military conflicts and political machinations, Dr. Joseph continues to provide precise and necessary details and chronologies. That is especially helpful for an understanding of the Kurdish invasions of Shaykh Ubaydulla of Shamdinan and of the Russian intrigues in northwest Iran. In this part of the narrative, the reader develops a deep awareness of the helplessness of the Assyrians as they found themselves adrift among the eddies of competing Great Power intentions.
Russian initiatives in the area, for example, as part of their imperialist designs for a southward corridor through Iran, kept impacting the Assyrians. The Urmiyah cohort of these people was even enticed toward wholesale conversion from the Church of the East to the Russian Orthodox. Each subsequent Russian involvement put the Assyrians variously in the positions of having a supporter or of alienating their Muslim neighbors by the attentions from the Russians. There was a series of sudden appearances of Russian military forces in the area and their just as sudden departures. The reader comes easily to understand the repetitiveness of these movesbetter conditions for the Christians while the Russians are on the scene followed by retributions by the Muslim majorities when the Russians leaveright up to the final Russian withdrawal in 1917. Dr. Joseph lets the reader know, by means of simple yet dramatic force, about the implications of this seesaw pattern:

With the disintegration of the Russian forces, the Nestorians had not
only lost their chief military support but were now completely isolated.
The disappearance of the restraint which the Russian army had
exercised
was again followed by chaos.


He continues his careful reconstruction of events through the catastrophe of World War I, the disappointments and betrayals of the post-War conferences, and the clashes between Assyrians and Arabs during the 1920s and 1930s as the former group sought to find a place in the reconstituted Middle East where its ethnic unity could be sustained. In this part of the narrative, Dr. Joseph gives the reader excellent profiles of the key players among the Assyrian leadership, Agha Petrus, Mar Binyamin Shamun XIX, Mar Paulus Shamun XX, and Mar Eshai Shamun XXI. These portrayals, together with detailed accounts of treaties, protocols, conferences, and repatriation proposals, enable the reader to successfully follow the meanderings of Western post-War policies in the Middle East. The vivid manner whereby Dr. Joseph presents this litany of proposals, counterproposals, and schemes enabled me to actually feel the frustrations, anger, and disappointments of the Assyrians. That alone would have made this book required reading.
Finally, Dr. Joseph brings the story up to date with summaries of recent political developments, especially as to Assyrian independence movements and their life among Muslim neighbors, and of ecumenical discussions and accommodations that have been made by Nestorians, Chaldeans, Roman Catholics, and modern Protestant missions.
I have only two critical observations to make about this superior book. The first, and more important one, involves Dr. Joseph’s evaluation of >the American Protestant mission effort in the 19th century. I believe he underestimates both the value and the positive impact of that enterprise. He gets into some difficulty here in part because he seems to be somewhat uncertain as to the conditions of the Assyrians, especially those in Urmiyah, at the time of the American arrival in 1834. On page 62, he avers that the Urmizhnayi “lived comparatively well,” and then on page 69 he repeats the Assyrians’ hope that these missionaries “would deliver them from their oppression and insecurity,” but returns on page 89 to the more positive assessment: “…the Nestorians of Azerbayjan…lived comparatively comfortably…” I suppose that this disagreement might revolve around the definition of “comparatively.”
The evidence from the missionary reports and from European travelers not associated with the mission is clear that the pessimistic assessment is more correctthese Christians were in dire straits at the beginning of that century, with illiteracy, poverty, drunkenness, and political oppression at debilitating high levels. The author does acknowledge that the spiritual condition of this population was in a parlous state as well, with ritual and religious service by rote as the norm:
…the Christians had lost their early religious zeal and spirit. Their churches

had become ritualistic and they had long ceased to proselytize.
(page 88)
Upon noting the remarkable change in this state of affairs after the American presence, we must acknowledge the positive impact of this intercultural exchange. Where no schooling had existed, the Americans founded a village school system, fostered and supervised Sunday school programs for both children and adults, established a male college and the Fiske Seminary for girls, brought a modern medical presence into the area, and set up a printing press that published over 3 million pages of books, tracts, and Bibles in both classical and vernacular Syriac. This was not an isolated endeavorAmericans did the same among the Armenians, Jacobites, and Maronites. Many of the post-secondary institutions that were thus established in the Middle East, notably the American Universities of Beirut and Cairo, continue to function today.
Before the end of the 19th century, Assyrians were trained and functioned as doctors, teachers, and ministers, as did their counterparts among the other eastern Christian denominations. This transformation, led by the Americans, was a worthy and productive labor and must be celebrated.
The work of Fidelia Fiske, of Mount Holyoke College, and other American women in fostering and sustaining female education among the Assyrians is a beautiful and compelling story. It is interesting to note in Miss Fiske’s correspondence to America that she and her colleagues consciously worked at avoiding imposing cultural norms from the West on to the East. While they did not always succeed in that aspiration, the cultural sensitivity so evident in these letters should be imitated more often these days than it is in Western contacts with the non-Western world.
Furthermore, the spiritual revival among the Assyrians that resulted from mission activity bore fruit even to America and Europe. Assyrians in exile carried this renewed interest and attachment to the Christian faith with them, through the horrible trials of World War I, and then to their new locations around the world. A narrative of the modern Assyrians must attend to this inspiring story.
My second criticism is that Dr. Joseph is a bit too easy on the Britishboth the Church of England and the English political agencies. He very correctly labels the first Anglican effort in the areaGeorge Percy Badger’s 1842 visit to the patriarchas “injudiciously conceived.” That is an accurate assessment, but it might have been extended to the entire Anglican mission to the Assyrians. With the American missionaries already on the scene, fully involved in educational and religious activities with the Assyrians, why was it necessary for the English church to introduce Protestant sectarian rivalries into the situation? I would add to Dr. Joseph’s description of Badger’s mission, a characterization of the entire Anglican mission as “mischievous,” in spite of the good works performed by many of its members. The author correctly points out that by 1914, there was a plethora of different Protestant missions as well as a Catholic one among this tiny group of people. I have to wonder whether the cue for these interventions was given by the Anglicans when they chose to create a rival presence rather than to support the existing one. Shouldn’t the motto and the reality have been: “One faith, one church, one people?”
I am less critical of Dr. Joseph’s narrative about the British government’s moves in the period following World War I. He presents a balanced account of the ambivalence of the British positiongenuine concern for the welfare of the Assyrian survivors coupled with attention to British national interests in the area. If we place the relations between the British and the Assyrians into the larger context where Britain and France were engaged in a major retreat from wartime promises, then we might be a bit more critical than Dr. Joseph is about their motivations. It is unquestionable, as is patently obvious from the author’s documentation, that the British made several attempts to assist in the relocation of the Assyrians. Given the Assyrians’ dependence on the Westerners, however, one has to wonder why the British were less adamant about successful resettlement. In fairness to the Dr. Joseph’s evaluation of these possibilities, we note that he accurately and with detail relates how the Assyrians too often hurt their own cause during these deliberations. This is a minor quibble, not of the significance of the gap in the missionary story.
The most important point to make in this review is to encourage readers toward this outstanding work of scholarshipscholars of the Middle East will find that it contains a wealth of information, with comprehensive footnotes and a bibliography as extensive as one would wish. For both scholars and laity, this bibliography along with the footnotes will reveal productive paths toward other useful studies of the political trials of these people, of the missions, and of the current condition of people and church. For Assyrians of my generation, my children’s generation, and my grandchildren’s generation, this book is required reading. Nothing compares to it in presenting a clear, detailed, and balanced narration and summary of our recent history. It enables us to locate ourselves in time and place. As a researcher into modern eastern Christian history, but even more as an Assyrian, I find myself profoundly in debt to John Joseph.


Dr. Ameer is a graduate of Yale University, who holds both a Master’s Degree and a doctorate from Harvard University. Dr. Ameer’s doctoral dissertation was titled, “Yankees and Nestorians: The Establishment of American Schools among the Nestorians of Iran and Turkey, 1834-1850.” He continues research in that field. He also serves as Assistant Professor of Education, Clark University, in Massachusetts.



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