What role did American Protestant institutions play in paving the transition from empire to nation state in the late Ottoman period? Increasingly, scholars have turned their attention onto these foreign interlocutors which sometimes inspired and joined the fray of nationalist movements in the Ottoman Empire leading up to World War I. Using archival research conducted between the U.S., Albania, and Turkey, this paper considers the educational history of one such institution, the American College for Women (ACG), and the activism of three of its women alumnae: the Albanian sisters, Paraskevi and Sevastia Kyrias, and the Turkish Halide Edip. Projecting itself as a center of influence in the Near East, the ACG encouraged its students to utilize their broad education to “participate in the home, in the community, and in national life.” In the years leading up to the war, these activists became some of the leading lights in Albanian and Turkish thought that shaped the postwar fate of their respective countries. Specifically, I broach their activity in the World War I years, and their proposals for an American mandate over their respective countries at the Peace Conference in 1919. Their ideas proved unworkable, and remained in the minority view in both cases. Nevertheless, I conclude with the observation that American educational institutions, such as the ACG, became conduits of political change in the transition from empire to nation state through the very act of training activists who took leading roles in that process. Where such activists were women, American Protestant institutions also provided them with the training which eventually thrust them into the public sphere.

In April 1917, Cemal Pasha Governor of Syria and commander of the 4th Ottoman army, following rumours of an impending invasion of Jaffa by Entente forces, ordered the evacuation of city. In the morning of 6 April 1917 the Jewish population of Jaffa abandoned the city and moved either to Jerusalem or north towards the Jewish colonies in Galilee. Traditional historiography has used this example in order to show the anti-Zionist position of Cemal Pasha and of the Ottoman government at large. The evacuation of city was then recounted as a forced expulsion which ended with the massacre of hundreds of Jews. This historiography often relied on sources that in time proved to be biased or in fact exaggerated if not completely fabricated. The famous agronomist and leader of the Nili spy-ring Aaron Aaronsohn spread, largely fabricated, news about this event which were then reported worldwide by newspapers and magazines. Despite some sources point out the different nature of the events and exposed fabrication and exaggeration, it seems that some scholars purposely or accidentally neglected this material: the Spanish consul in Jerusalem conducted an investigation which for the most part disproved the allegation of a massacre, similarly the American consul in Jerusalem reported to the press that the Jews of Jaffa safely reached Jerusalem and other Jewish colonies. Through the discussion of this case study, this paper will present the complex nature of the relationship between Cemal Pasha, Zionism and Zionists. Cemal Pasha feared Zionism not a as a movement of mass migration towards Palestine, but like the emerging Arab nationalism as a threat to Ottomanism and the Empire. Relying on a variety of sources, including archival materials, letters, diaries, memoirs of local residents this paper will challenge traditional literature on Cemal Pasha and Zionism, highlighting the multifaceted and at times contradictory nature of Cemal’s perception and understanding of Zionism, showing that his decisions were mainly driven by war-time necessity rather than a plain dislike of the Jews and of Zionism.

Following the collapse of the White Guard in the Russian Civil War which followed the Revolution of 1917, the defeated anti-Communist forces under General Piotr Wrangel retreated from the Crimea and set sail for Istanbul. Over 150,000 Russians, including troops as well as civilians from among the pre-revolutionary Russian aristocracy, arrived in the city in 1920, and many remained there for a year or more. There is a dearth of scholarship in English on this topic. Apart from a few mentions in books on Istanbul (for example, by Nur Bilge Criss), or in books on Russian emigration (for instance by Marc Raeff), the experiences of the Russian refugees camped out in Istanbul in 1920-21 have attracted scant attention in the West. Yet, as anyone visiting the Flower Passage in Istanbul or reading about the planned demolition of a Russian church in the city in 2013 will appreciate, the relatively brief but large-scale presence of Russian emigrants left a mark both on Istanbul and on the emigres themselves. Using primary sources such as Russian and Turkish memoirs dealing with the period, as well as contemporary press reports, this paper will discuss the experience of the Russian exiles in Istanbul in the 1920s, and the reception they got from the Turkish inhabitants of the city. How did these erstwhile enemies (Russia and the Ottoman Empire had of course been on opposite sides in the recently concluded First World War) coexist within the confines of the city, particularly given the fact that most of the Russians were military men? How did the Russians take to living in Istanbul (the Constantinople of their dreams) as supplicants rather than conquerors? What did the Turks think of the peaceful Russian army in their midst? Did the Russians want to remain in Istanbul, or were they anxious to leave? These are the question this paper will attempt to investigate.