A History of Protestant missions in the near East

Protestant Missions in Turkey and Armenia 135
raise them to a higher moral level. The means they employed
for this purpose, in the face of much misrepresentation, were
the distribution of the Bible and sound Protestant literature,
and a vigorous work of higher education. As they were debarred
from working among that portion of the Armenian
people which lived in Kussian territory, they had to concentrate
their labours upon the Armenians in Turkey, numbering
144,000, upon whom, therefore, in spite of their wide dispersion,
they have been able to leave a deep impression. Perhaps
the plainest proof of this is that the Koman propaganda, which
formerly had quite neglected education, began to establish
rival schools in order to counteract the influence exercised by
the Protestants. 1
And the Armenians themselves became incited by the Americans
to make fuller provision for education in a way quite new
in the history of the people. They established primary and secondary
schools for boys, and even began to pay attention to
female education. It seemed as if a new spring time had come
to the people. But upon this promising development there burst
out a devastating storm which threatened to destroy all the
splendour of the new awakening and even to make an end of
the Armenians as a nation the fearful massacres of the years
1894-1896.
3. The Armenian Massacres, 189^-1896
2
(a) The Armenian Question. The status of the Zimmies
throughout Turkey is, generally speaking, bad, and that of the
Armenians is particularly deplorable. We have already seen
that they are almost everywhere a minority in the provinces
which they inhabit. They form the bulk of the population
only in certain small sections of their original home and
in a district of Cilicia about Zeitun. Their chief curse is the
1
There is in Sivas a Roman Catholic college, a rival of the American Anatolia
College in Marsovan, and another college in Mesereh as a rival of the Euphrates
College in Kharput.
2
James
" Bryce, Transcaucasia," 4th ed., 1896. Hepworth, "Through
Armenia."