Date of Award
4-2008
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
History
First Advisor
Dr. Woody Holton
Second Advisor
Dr. Yucel Yanikdag
Abstract
At first glance, President Taft's praise of the Ottoman Empire's transformation seems to reflect optimism about the state of the Turkish Empire and America's role in the world. Still, the very source of this optimism, Turkey's evolution from "retrograde" to "constitutional," reveals Taft's assumption that progress for Turkey was based on adopting the "modem policies" of what he believed to be a superior culture. Taft was not alone in thinking that the event he described, the inauguration of the second Constitutional era of the Ottoman Empire, signified a tremendous improvement in the world or in linking that change to the influence of American missionaries. He and Americans like him were informed by a recurrent tenet of American identity and ideology, believing in the nation's divinely granted mission to spread the sentiments of liberty and democracy to the wide world. While this ideology appealed to a notion of universal humanity, in reality America's civilizing impulse gave way to the belief in American superiority and power at the expense of other cultures.
Recommended Citation
Frantantuono, Ella M., "Self-righteous beneficence : American diplomats and missionary perceptions of the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1914" (2008). Honors Theses. 456.
https://scholarship.richmond.edu/honors-theses/456