Summary: Much of the scholarship on missionary movements in the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century regards missionaries as agents of imperialism and a destabilizing force that contributed to the polarization of the Empire's different religious communities. In this episode of the Ottoman History Podcast, Scott Rank discusses the activities of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) and explains how Protestant missionaries were also part of an intercommunal dialogue that contributed to larger discussions about secularism, education and the emerging notion of progress in the Ottoman Empire.
