Americans Discover the Bulgarians: 1834-1871

 

Although Great Britain and Russia understandably played k\.

 

   Although Great Britain and Russia understandably played leading roles in Bulgarian affairs between 1876 and 1878, a handful of Americans had a decisive hand in disclosing and publicizing the Turkish massacres in Bulgaria, which set off a chain of events leading from Batak to Berlin. Furthermore, American Protestant missionaries In the Ottoman Empire and later in Bulgaria were the chief sources of American public opinion and information about Bulgaria long before the "April Uprising."  Also, it may be noted that the primary interests of U. S. officials in the territory of the Ottoman Empire until after World War I was the missionary-philanthropic-educational enterprise, even though this activity lay in the private sector.2 For some of us today, the ideology, apocalyptic fervor and selflessness of nineteenth century missionaries may be as alien and incomprehensible as they were for the Bulgarians who first encountered them. Likewise) the extraordinary worldwide American missionary eruption of the nineteenth century is difficult to comprehend·3 My purpose here is to account for the presence of Americans on Bulgarian soil and to discuss the origin and nature of American missionary interest in Bulgaria.4

    Protestant missionary societies and their counterparts, the Bible Societies, were products of the evangelical reaction to eighteenth century rationalism and formalism. Respectively, the two societies most global and most important in the establishment of the American missionaries in Bulgaria were the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS, 1804) and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABGFM, 1810), which became the largest missionary society in America. Evangelical American Protestantism was a combination of belief in personal conversion and salvation and rational conviction in the Bible as the sole embodiment of the "Truth." This only needed to be explained in order to be accepted. It advocated the "pursuit of happiness," a confidence in the superiority of the Protestant (American) way of life, and included a messianic element which scheduled the millennium for 1866 and held that as anti-Christ the Sultan was second only to the Pope!  In 1832, the famous French observer, de Tocqueville, concluded that there is “no country in the world in which Christianity retained a greater influence over the souls of men."

    It was this grassroots religiosity which wholeheartedly embraced foreign missions. Among the first missionaries sent out by the Board,  initially interdenommational, were those who went to explore the Ottoman Empire.5  Lack of success with Muslims and Jews shifted focus ! to the Orthodox churches, the hope being to "reform" them as a whole, similar to the original Reformation.  The Greek Revolution and American missionary philhellenism resulted in a thriving Greek mission until Greek independence and the resulting chauvinism, plus Patriarchal anathemas, closed that door. The Greek "Great Idea" (Megala idea) left no room for foreign Protestantism.

    For practical as well as theological reasons, Bible and tract translation and printing, along with schools, were in the vanguard and, at times, almost became the sum of missionary work. Transferred from Malta, Smyrna developed into the Board's publication center in 1833. it was the Smyrna missionaries who first took an active interest in the Bulgarians and their thirst for reading matter and education.

    The first actual contact between Bulgarians and Americans was in the course of a tour of Thrace made by two missionaries from Constantinople, H. G. 0. Dwight and William Schauffler, between Thessaloniki and Adrianople. They were astonished by the presence of large numbers of Bulgarians. "People everywhere marvel that we should be Americans and yet not black or copper-colored," wrote Schauffler.  1834 was the same year in which the word, "Bulgaria," first appeared in print in America, in a work by Talvj.6

     Ten years later, in view of the imminent closing of the Greek operation, with which the Bulgarian work had been linked by the missionary management in Boston, Elias Riggs wrote, "Look for a moment at the Bulgarian field. A whole people is there presented to us just awakening to a desire for education, earnestly desirous of books, but having no means of obtaining them, and no press in their country." Riggs estimated 4,000,000 Bulgarian-speakers. And fellow missionaries in Constantinople wrote to Boston, "It is the opinion of all here that a mission among the Bulgarians is more called for than among any other people . . . " But it was more than fifteen years before such a mission was started, although tours through Bulgaria continued.

    The American connection with pre-liberated Bulgaria had three phases:   the  first  paralleled  the  Bulgarian  cultural  revival— the  Vuzrazhdane—and was between individuals) taking place mostly outside of Bulgaria.  It was mainly literary, stimulated by the success of the BFBS-sponsored translation of the New Testament by Neofit Rilski published in 1840, with a half-dozen subsequent editions totaling 30,000 copies. On the American side, Elias Riggs was the main figure who for years "monopolized" the Bulgarian mission work.  Among several involved Bulgarian literary men—Neofit Rilski, Konstantin Ognjanovic, Botyu Pelkov, etc.—Konstantin Fotinov took precedence.  His main achievement was the translation of the rest of the Bible, in collaboration with Riggs, and founding and editing the first Bulgarian periodical, Liuboslovie, copied, in part, from a missionary press. At the close of the 1850s, the Bulgarian work was transferred to Constantinople, which had also become the center of Bulgarian cultural life. The first phase concluded with the death of Fotmov there in 1858.7

   The second phase of American endeavor was the settlement of Americans in Bulgaria, with expanded activities, and coincided with the last phase of the Bulgarian Church Question. In part stemming from the defunct Greek work but more from the success of the mission to the Armenians, the Bulgarian mission owed its inception to interest in the area aroused by the Crimean War,  the  Sat-i-Humayun charter of liberties (1856), the effective interest of British Ambassador Stratford in religious liberty in the Ottoman Empire and in the desire of English and American missionary societies to expand. But most of all, credit goes to the continued popularity of the Neofit "best-seller" New Testament, as reported by Benjamin Baker BFBS agent, and the flattering reports and recommendations sent home by the Constantinople missionaries, especially Riggs, Cyrus Hamlin and Schauffler.

   The Protestant mission in Bulgaria was a joint Anglo-American initiative and a joint Methodist-Congregationalist venture. Its start was accompanied by considerable Jockeying among the interested parties. Although the by now mainly Congregationalist American Board came to dominate the Bulgarian field, the original initiative for a Bulgarian mission came in 1852 from the Methodist Missionary Board looking for a new mission field.  The suggestion and information came from the ABCFM. After the Crimean War, it was also proposed (1856) in London by the Turkish Missions Aid Society (TMAS) founded in 1854 by Evangelical elements in the Anglican Church, to aid American missionary work in Turkey. Then followed a reconnoitering tour (1857) to Plovdiv by the American, Cyrus Hamlin, and the Englishman, Henry Jones, later secretary of the Constantinople branch of the TMAS.8 With the promise of financial aid from the TMAS and the willingness of the Methodists to occupy Bulgaria "Proper" between the Balkan Mountains and the Danube, including Dobrudja, the ABCFM somewhat reluctantly took responsibility for Bulgaria ''Improper," the country south of the Balkans, where it was (again) discovered that there were many Bulgarians. A subsequent compromise in the field gave the western territory, including Sofia and Nis, to the Board, which also occupied Macedonia.

    This division of territory and labor was unfortunate, not only because it introduced an unnecessary denominational (organizational) complication but also because it conformed to the cartographical tradition of a divided Bulgaria, which received its fateful expression in the Treaty of Berlin." In 1858, the Methodists settled in Shumen and Varna (later in Turnovo and Tulcha); the ABCFM located in Adrianople (later Sofia) and, in 1859, in Stara Zagora and Plovdiv (later Samokov).  With these bases, the missionaries and their colporteurs (back-packing book vendors) crisscrossed the Bulgarian inhabited lands, sending back a wealth of information such as no foreigner, except Felix Kanitz, possessed.10

    Directly or indirectly, however unintentionally, American missionaries fostered nationalism and the breakdown of the Ottoman Empire. The xenophobic nationalism of the Greeks had thwarted the American missionaries; the nationalism of the Armenians had opened the door. The unexpected success of the Armenian mission, with the establishment of a Protestant, largely Armenian millet in 1850, was instrumental in persuading the several missionary societies to choose Bulgaria.  It seemed, therefore, to the missionaries in Plovdiv and Constantinople that the Bulgarian National, or "Church," Question .might be a godsend.

    Missionary detractors at home and abroad have discovered "missionary imperialism:" the Cross-Dollar-Flag syndrome. There is no doubt that the impact of Americans abroad, whether missionary or not, with their American accessories, gadgets and inventions, did affect the "natives" and trade, whether in Africa or Turkey. The missionaries came to Bulgaria with their Bibles and sewing machines. Crowds of women, Bulgarian and Turkish, came to watch. Eventually, these machines were sold locally.  In Constantinople, H. G. 0. Dwight ordered an American-made rocking chair for a local friend. Overzealous missionary supporters at home were partly to blame for the missionary imperialism myth. One enthusiast exulted:

 

No contact with Western Civilization ha-s ever roused the Oriental from his apathy, but when his heart is warmed into life by Gospel truth, his mind awakens, and he wants a clock, a book, a glass window, and a flour mill.  Almost every steamer that leaves New York for the Levant, brings sewing machines, watches, carpenter's tools, cabinet, organs, or other appliances of Christian civilization in response to native orders that never would have been sent but for the open Bible.11

 

Related to such "Bible imperialism" was what might be called "language or cultural imperialism." In 1858, the Anglo-Oriental Literature Society, connected with the TMAS, reported that:

 

The Committee should they now obtain funds for this Anglo-Arabic object) anticipate with delight the extension of similar benefits to the Slavonic nations in European Turkey) beginning with the Bulgarians—5,000,000—the Serbians, Moldavianas. etc., etc.12

 

The missionaries themselves equated  the more advanced technological standards of living of their homelands with Protestantism, religious freedom and the "Truth," as they saw it, and, therefore, the obligations to spread this divine purpose throughout the world. Or, as Lord Statford said about Turkey:

 

Our free institutions, our Protestant faith, our commercial enterprise, our skill in manufactures, all these sources of our national greatness are deeply interested in the triumph of such principles over bigotry, ignorance, and corruption, in one of their strongest and most extensive holds.13

 

   At first the Americans were well  received by  the  Bulgarians, Greeks and Turks, partly out of curiosity, it must be admitted. When the missionaries revealed their sympathies with the Bulgarians in the , Church Question, the Greeks ostracized the Americans. On the other  hand, they were welcomed in Bulgarian schools and churches. The Church Question was an unexpected and exciting windfall, offering the prospect of influencing the Bulgarian church as a whole, reforming or revitalizing it, as had been the original intention of Protestant missionaries among the Orthodox, In addition the Americans welcomed  the idea of helping to detach the Bulgarians from the Greek hierarchy, a consistent foe of the missionaries. There was also the chance to thwart the Catholics, backed by France, from creating a separatist Uniate diversion. In this they felt they had succeeded. Lastly, it offered an opportunity to counter the phil-Orthodox policy of Russia, a consistent foe of religious liberty, and, along with France, a constant obstacle to Protestant missionary work in the Ottoman Empire. But, as in the case of the Greeks but less so of the Armenians, the victory of Bulgarian nationalism in the Church Question boomeranged. True, Bulgarian leaders in Plovdiv (Gruev, Chomakov, etc.) and Constantinople took the initiative in consulting the missionaries on how to organize a Protestant church and on the possible benefits, political and other, of this move, but when the pendulum swung from the Greek to the Bulgarian side, it hardened Bulgarian nationalism to the point where any truck with Protestants was considered treasonous. 14 "How to be both a Bulgarian and a Protestant seems incomprehensible" to Bulgarians, wrote one missionary in 1870.

    The first phase of the Bulgarian mission revealed disappointment in the Church Question, which the missionaries failed to realize was an ecclesiastical rebellion, a political rather than a religious issue. It also revealed controversies on policy among themselves and with Bulgarians, who failed to realize that, under the Hat-i-Hiimayun, what was sauce for the goose (the Bulgarians in the Church Question) was also sauce for the gander (e.g., religious freedom for Protestants in Bulgaria). Contributions were made to Bulgarian education, including scientific apparatus ordered from America for Bulgarian schools in Stara Zagora. and Plovdiv, and the preparation of reading matter and textbooks, mostly scientific, in Plovdiv, and published by H. G. Danov. Reluctantly, and in self-defense, the missionaries, originally not especially interested in proselytes, helped to organize a few Protestant churches and communities, thus increasing the incidence of friction. But the brisk demand for missionary-produced reading matter turned out. to be just that—a desire for reading matter.

    The missionaries in Bulgaria also had arguments among themselves, with the authorities and with the population.  A perennial dispute was whether to operate schools and if so what kind. Originally, the idea was to help provide teachers for Bulgarian schools. 15 There was also the question of teaching English, at one time forbidden by the Board, which was obviously a drawing card but also a possible inducement for their pupils to take off for America, which was opposed. Among the most serious issues was whether in their pamphlets a defensive position in behalf of evangelical Protestantism should be maintained or an offensive polemic against what they considered abuses in the established church.

    Among lesser harassments were the obstacles to renting premises posed by Church authorities, both Greek and Bulgarian; when the first Bulgarian Protestant died, how to obtain a burial permit; the physical mistreatment of colporteurs and the boycott of adherents, and so forth.  Finally, there were missionary deaths from sickness and murder. These missionaries had come to Bulgaria bringing their American convictions of church-state separation and of religious freedom, both alien to the Bulgarians. The Turkish authorities, conforming to traditional millet practice, supported the vested ecclesiastical authorities but) under pressure from British and American officials, yielded in the face of the various capitulations, treaty obligations and Tanzimut declarations. This further exacerbated relations between Americans and Bulgarians, although the Bulgarians were using the same tactics against the Greeks.

   Critics of the missionaries here and in Bulgaria, then and now, ascribe to them political motives.  Such may have been the case in the minds of English backers who perhaps hoped to pit American missionaries against Russian and French influence. One reason for the existence of the TMAS was that English missionaries would never be free from suspicion of political motives. The jockeying of the Great Powers in Constantinople did affect the missionaries. It is true that nostalgic expatriate missionaries did unconsciously indulge in "selling America," but only as private individuals, in spite of the official-sounding “American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions” The missionaries have also been accused of a lack of sympathy with Bulgarian national interests.  Not so, as seen in their stand on the Church Question. True, and with good reason, they advised against reckless revolutionary plots, as did George Washburn, but they were Americans in 1876 who helped turn disaster into success.  Finally, these missionaries were (and still are) charged by Bulgarians with undermining the "faith of their fathers" and promoting irreligion. This is true only if "religion" is equated with the religious practices, ceremonies and superstitions of specific sects or churches. Actually the missionaries deplored the irreligion of young Bulgarians at home or returning from the West.

    Whereas the Board stations managed to hang on and develop, across the mountains the Methodists, although the largest denomination in America, several times verged on extinction. Their problems were similar. Albert Long, in Turnovo, was one of the most successful American missionaries. He transferred to Constantinople in 1864 to edit the Bulgarian periodical, Zornitsa, take part in the new version of the Bible, and in 1872 join the faculty of Robert College.  Since its founding in  1863 by Cyrus Hamlin, and continuing under George Washburn, both former Board missionaries, Robert College had become a fruitful meeting ground between Americans and Bulgarians, as the events of 1876 were to show.

    1870-1871 was a significant point, marking the independence of the Bulgarian Church, the Exarchate; the publication of the definitive version of the entire Bible, with its influence upon the Bulgarian literary language; the independence of the Bulgarian (European Turkey) mission from its parent, Constantinople; the formation of the first Bulgarian Evangelical Church; and the transfer of the girls' school at Stara Zagora and the boys' school at Plovdiv to Samokov, which then became the main seat of the Bulgarian mission. July 4, 1871, also saw the formal dedication of Robert College by ex-Secretary of State William Seward, of Alaska fame.

    The conclusion of the second phase and the first decade of missionary work in Bulgaria also coincided with the shift of the center of gravity of the Bulgarian national movement from Constantinople to the revolutionary marshalling grounds north of the Danube. Nor did developments at that time in the West pass unnoticed: the unification of Germany under Protestant ascendancy, the Pope's loss of temporal power) the defeat of Catholic France) opposition to papal infallibility—all made a great impression upon the Oriental mind, according to one American missionary.

    One of the first Americans to arrive in Bulgaria concluded after a half-dozen years:

True the desire of the Bulgarians to possess the Sacred Scriptures, so vividly depicted by some of the missionary fathers a few years since, caused many to suppose that the Bulgarians were seeking the religion of the Gospel.  We expected this when we came among them, but it has never to any extent, been true. They did and do buy the Scriptures with avidity. Very many are not satisfied if they do not possess every new book that is published among them, and they do have a special reverence though not love for the Sacred writings. But setting aside these first glowing expectations which never had any good foundation, I think the work here has advanced all that could reasonably be expected considering the amount of labor expended.

 

FOOTNOTES

 

1. E. M. Earle, "American Missions in the Near East," Foreign Affairs, April 1929, p. 398.

2. J.  L.  Grabill,  Protestant  Diplomacy  and the  Near East; Missionary Influence on American Policy, 1800-1927 (Minneapolis, 1971), p. vii.

3.  J. A. Field, Jr.,  America, and the Mediterranean World,  17761882 (Princeton, 1969), esp. chap. Ill, "The Missionary Impulse."

4 In English there is J. F. Clarke, Bible Societies, American Missionaries and the National Revival of Bulgaria (New York, 1971), and W. W. Hall, Puritans in the Balkans (Sofia, 1938); also more recently, R. L. Daniel, American Philanthropy in the Near East, 1820-1960 (Athens, Ohio, 1971). In Bulgarian there has been nothing since lv. D. Shishmanov, "Novi danni za istoriyata na nasheto vuzrazhdane: Rolyata na Amerika v bulgarskoto obrazovanie," Bulgarski pregied, IV (1897), pp. 53-78, until M. Stoyanov's "Nachalo na protestantskata propaganda v Buigariya," lzvestiya na Instituta za istoriya., 14-15 (1964), pp. 45-67, which unfortunately is both tendentious and inaccurate.

5 The following information on missionary matters is mainly from the correspondence of missionaries in Smyrna, Constantinople and, later, Bulgaria and the Boston home office, in the archives of the ABCFM, formerly housed in the Andover-Harvard Library of Harvard University and now in Houghton Library.

6 Therese Albertine Lousavon Jakob ("Talvj"), "Historical view of the Slavic language in its various dialects; with special reference to theological literature," Biblical Repository, IV (1834). This is mostly taken from P. S. Safari's work (1826).

7 Clarke, Bible Societies, pp. 225-290. The latest on Neofit is the excellent biography by R. Radkova, Neofit Rilski i novobulga.rska.ta. kiteratura (Sofia, 1975), esp. pp. 100-109.

8. Details of Hamlin's lobbying for a Bulgarian mission are in his Among the Irks (New York, 1878), pp. 261-273. The ABCFM also had a finger in launching the TMAS.

9.  The resulting ambiguous use of the term "Bulgaria" still creates trouble for the unwary. For example, Field (America and the Mediterranean) writes of "perhaps two million" Bulgarians between Thessaloniki and the Danube at this time. The American missionaries knew better, estimating between four and five million. For the history of "Bulgaria," see P. Koledarov, "Traditions of Antiquity and the Middle Ages in Regional Nomenclature in the Modern Map of the Balkans," Byzantmobulgarica, IV (1973), pp. 145-175.

10.  H. Gandev flatters James Baker (Turkey m Europe [New York, 1877])   by  labeling  him the   "English Kanitz."    Probfemi na  bulgarskoto vuzraghdane (Sofia, 1976), p. 484. " T. Laurie, The Ely Volume; or, the Contributions of our Foreign Missions to Science and Human Well-Being (ABCFM, Boston, 1881), p. 424.

12  Report of the Anglo-Oriental Literature Society (also called AngloTurkish) for 1857-1858. Four-page printed leaflet.

13  Stratford de Redcliffe, "Turkey," The Nineteenth Century, June-July, 1877 (written c. 1860).

14 J. F. Clarke) "Protestantism and the Bulgarian Church Question in 1861," .Essays in the History of Modern Europe, D. C. McKay, ed„ (Freeport, N.Y., 1968 [1936]), pp. 79-97.

15 Virzhiniya Paskaleva must be mistaken in ascribing to the mission school "specific political interests," in Raina Knyagina, (Sofia, 1976), p. 160, n. 2.