Abstract
This chapter investigates forms of femininity in the encounter between Scandinavian female missionaries and Armenian female refugees in Aleppo, Syria, during the interwar period. It shows the deeply entangled nature of missionary and humanitarian work among refugee women and discusses the Protestant religion as a source of empowerment for women more generally. In addition to exploring Scandinavian female missionaries’ understanding of their own femininity, the chapter analyses Armenian female refugees. While facing multiple forms of marginalization, Armenian female refugees also provided relief themselves, representing a form of empowered femininity. The chapter concludes with a study of local female relief and Armenian Bible Women, thus offering an understanding of femininity as a source of empowerment and of the potential for transgressing gender systems in post-genocide society.
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Notes
- 1.
Karen Marie Petersen, Digin Virginie: En Armenisk Kvinnas Lidande (Stockholm: Kvinneliga Missions Arbetare, 1920), printed in Melissa Aguero, De bortglömda, MA thesis (Stockholm: Teologiska Hogskolan, 2012).
- 2.
See Inger Marie Okkenhaug, “Scandinavian Missionaries, Gender, and Armenian Refugees during World War I. Crisis and Reshaping of Vocation,” Social Sciences and Missions 23, no. 1 (2010), 63–93.
On the history of the Armenian genocide, see Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act. The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York: Holt, 2006); and Taner Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity. The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012); Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide. Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Jay M. Winter, “Under Cover of War. The Armenian Genocide in the Context of Total War,” in Jay Winter, ed., America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915 (West Nyack, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 37–51; Ugur Ümit Üngör, “The Armenian Genocide 1915,” in Barbara Boender and Wichert ten Have, eds., The Holocaust and Other Genocides: An Introduction (Amsterdam: NIOD/Amsterdam University Press, 2012), 45–72; Ronald Grigor Suny, “They can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else”. A History of the Armenian Genocide (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015).
- 3.
After the genocide, Armenians urged the Scandinavian witnesses to tell international society about the persecutions. See Inger Marie Okkenhaug, En norsk filantrop. Bodil Biørn og armenerne, 1905–1934 [A Norwegian Philanthropist. Bodil Biørn and the Armenians, 1905–1934] (Kristiansand: Portal, 2016).
- 4.
Monika Edgren, “Sexuellt våld I vittnesberättelser om massakern på armenier, 1915–1916,” Scandia 78, no. 2 (2012), 87–117, here 113. Edgren bases her study on the “Blue Book” compiled by James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee: The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916, the uncensored version of which was printed in 2000 (Princeton and New Jersey: Gomidas Institute).
- 5.
Nicola Migliorini, (Re)constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria. Ethno-Cultural Diversity and the State in the Aftermath of a Refugee Crisis (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2008), 31. These Armenians constituted—in addition to Russians fleeing the Bolsjevik-regime—the core of the international refugee crisis after WWI. See Peter Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
- 6.
Mathias Bjørnlund, “‘A Fate worse than dying’. Sexual Violence During the Armenian Genocide,” in Dagmar Herzog, ed., Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe’s Twentieth Century (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 16–58, here 18.
- 7.
Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill, “Armenian Refugee Women: The Picture Brides, 1920–1930,” Journal of American Ethnic History 12, no. 3 (1993), 3–29, here 8.
- 8.
Nefissa Naguib, “A Nation of Widows and Orphans: Armenian Memories of Relief in Jerusalem,” in Nefissa Naguib and Inger Marie Okkenhaug, eds., Interpreting Welfare and Relief in the Middle East (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 35–56. See also Nazan Maksudyan’s article in this volume.
- 9.
Bjørnlund, “A Fate worse than dying,” 35.
- 10.
Keith David Watenpaugh, “Are there any Children for Sale? Genocide and the Transfer of Armenian Children (1915–1922),” Journal of Human Rights 12, no. 3 (2013), 283–295, here 284. According to historian William Clarence-Smith, prices on slaves fell drastically in the Middle East with the flood of Armenian women and children for sale. Personal communication 23. September 2013 with William Clarence-Smith.
- 11.
See Flora A. Keshgegian, “‘Starving Armenians’: The Politics and Ideology of Humanitarian Aid in the First Decades of the Twentieth Century,” in Richard Ashby Wilson and Richard D. Brown, eds., Humanitarianism and Suffering. The Mobilization of Empathy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 140–154.
- 12.
Peter Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking. Refugees in Russia During World War I. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2005), 127.
- 13.
Kvartalshilsen 4 (1934), 7.
- 14.
Ibid., 7.
- 15.
Letters and reports from Norwegian KMA workers Bodil Biørn and Alette Andreassen, and Danish colleagues, published in the KMA member magazine Kvartalshilsen.
- 16.
Keshgegian, “‘Starving Armenians’,” 144.
- 17.
Johannes Paulmann, “Conjunctures in the History of International Humanitarian Aid during the Twentieth Century,” Humanity 4, no. 2 (2013), 215–238, here 215.
- 18.
See for example Maria Småberg, “Material Help and Self-Help. Materiality and Cosmopolitan Care in the Swedish Humanitarian Work among Armenian Refugees in Thessaloniki, 1923–1947,” in Andreas Schmoller, ed., Middle Eastern Christians and Europe: Historical Legacies and Present Challenges (Wien et al.: LIT, 2018), 79–103.
- 19.
The life story of one of the most prominent Scandinavian women missionaries—Norwegian Marie Monsen (1878–1962), active as a preacher and teacher in China from 1901 to 1932—illustrates, for example, how a Christian calling and personal religious experience helped legitimize Monsen’s role as a preacher for men as well as for women and children. See Lisbeth Mikaelsson, “Marie Monsen: Charismatic Revivalist – Feminist Fighter,” Scandinavian Journal of History 28, no. 2 (2003), 121–133; and Karina Hestad Skeie, “Kjønn og åndelig lederskap: En analyse av Kinamisjonær Marie Monsen (1878–1962). Transformasjon fra lærerinne til Vekkelsestaler,” DIN: Tidsskrift for religion og kultur 2 (2015), 31–59.
- 20.
Inger Marie Okkenhaug, “Introduction,” in Inger Marie Okkenhaug, ed., Gender, Race and Religion: Nordic Missions, 1860–1940 (Uppsala: Studia Missionalia Svecana, 2003), 80.
- 21.
Inger Marie Okkenhaug, “Gender and Nordic Missions in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” Scandinavian Journal of History 28, no. 2 (2003), 73–82, here 76.
- 22.
The Holiness movement, originating in the nineteenth century among Protestant churches in the United States, was inspired by J. Wesley’s and the Methodists’ teaching of human existence without sin. Inspired by the Holiness movement, in Keswick, England, from 1875 on, several thousand evangelical Christians gathered for annual conventions focusing on Christians’ spiritual empowerment to overcome a sinful life. https://snl.no/hellighetsbevegelsen (last accessed 20.09.2018).
- 23.
Okkenhaug “Gender and Nordic Missions,” Scandinavian Journal of History, 76.
- 24.
Kristin Norseth, La os bryte over tvert med vor stumhet: kvinners vei til myndighet i de kristelige organisasjonene 1842–1912 (Oslo: University of Oslo, 2007), 402. The largest mission organization in Norway, Lutheran Norwegian Missionary Society, did not give women full status as missionary until 1904.
- 25.
Ibid.
- 26.
Inger Marie Okkenhaug, “Religion, Relief, and Humanitarian Work among Armenian Women Refugees in Mandatory Syria, 1927–1934,” Scandinavian Journal of History 40, no. 3 (2015), 432–454.
- 27.
Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking, 127. As noted by Gatrell, “If refugees in general have been hidden from history, refugee women were doubly banished, except insofar as they were deserving supplicants or pitiful victims […].”
- 28.
On Scandinavia and the Armenian genocide, see Maria Småberg, “Witnessing the Unbearable. Alma Johansson and the Massacres of the Armenians, 1915,” in Karin Aggestam and Annika Björkdahl, eds., War and Peace in Transition. Changing Roles of External Actors (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2009), 107–127; Matthias Bjørnlund, “Before the Armenian Genocide: Danish Missionary and Rescue Operations in the Ottoman Empire, 1900–1914,” Haigazian Armenological Review 26 (2006), 141–156; and Matthias Bjørnlund, “Karen Jeppe, Aage Meyer Benedictsen, and the Ottoman Armenians: National Survival in Imperial and Colonial Settings,” Haigazian Armenological Review 28 (2008), 9–43, here 25.
- 29.
Matthias Bjørnlund, “Recording Death and Survival: Karen Marie Petersen, Missionary Witness to Genocide,” http://www.armeniansgenocide.am/images/menus/555/Matias%202012.pdf (last accessed 05.11.2018), 321.
- 30.
Matthias Bjørnlund, “Harput-Missionaries. Danish Missionaries in the Kharpert Province: A Brief Introduction,” 2015, https://www.houshamadyan.org/mapottomanempire/vilayetofmamuratulazizharput/harputkaza/religion/missionaries.html (last accessed 05.11.2018); Maria Småberg, “Mission and Cosmopolitan Mothering. Saving Armenian Mothers and Orphans, 1902–1947,” Social Science and Missions 30, no. 1–2 (2017), 44–73; Maria Småberg, “Witness Narrative as Resistance and Recovery – Alma Johansson and the 1915 Armenian Genocide,” in Anders Ahlbäck and Fia Sundevall, eds., Gender, War and Peace. Breaking up the Borderlines (Joensuu: University Press of Eastern Finland, 2014); Inger Marie Okkenhaug, “Scandinavian Missionaries, Gender and Armenian Refugees during World War I. Crisis and Reshaping of Vocation,” Social Sciences and Missions 23, no. 1 (2010), 63–93.
- 31.
Småberg, “Witness Narrative as Resistance and Recovery”.
- 32.
I thank Esther Möller for this comment.
- 33.
Samuel Martinez and Kathryn Libal, “Introduction: The Gender of Humanitarian Narrative,” Humanity 10 (2014), 161–170, here 161.
- 34.
Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 2012), 3–4.
- 35.
Lerna Ekmekçioğlu, Recovering Armenia. The Limits of Belonging in Post-Genocide Turkey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016), 49.
- 36.
Richard G. Hovannisian, The Republic of Armenia. Volume 1. The First Year, 1918–1919 (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1974), 135.
- 37.
In addition to more than a 100,000 refugees spread across the region in Palestine and Jordan, Iraq, Iran and Egypt. Migliorini, (Re)constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria, 32.
- 38.
The number of native Armenians in Lebanon was 1550 and in Syria ca. 35,000. The Armenian communities of Lebanon and Syria were formed as a direct consequence of the inflow of refugees, as pointed out by historian Nicola Migliorini. Ibid.
- 39.
Ellen Marie Lust-Okar, “Failure of Collaboration: Armenian Refugees in Syria,” Middle Eastern Studies 32, no. 1 (1996), 53–68, here 59, 61; Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens. Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 11.
- 40.
During the General Strike, which paralyzed the country for two months from January to March in 1936, Scandinavian aid included a soup kitchen for needy Armenians ran by the Karen Jeppe’s institution. The soup kitchen had been running in the years before, feeding up to 500 people with soup and bread. During the Strike, this number increased to 750. The Norwegians participated in this relief work, by financing food stamps to Armenian women that gave access to the soup kitchen. Letter from Alette Andreassen, 28.02.1936, in Kvartalshilsen 2 (1936), 4.
- 41.
Ibid.
- 42.
Barbara J. Merguerian, “‘Missions in Eden’: Shaping an Educational and Social Program for the Armenians in Eastern Turkey (1855–1895),” in Heleen Murre-van den Berg, ed., New Faith in Ancient Lands. Western Missions in the Middle East in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 241–261, here 253.
- 43.
See Ekmekçioğlu, Recovering Armenia.
- 44.
Kvartalshilsen 4 (1910), 28.
- 45.
Merguerian, “‘Missions in Eden’,” 272.
- 46.
See Razmik Panossian, The Armenians. From Kings and Priests to Merchants and Commissars (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).
- 47.
Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking, 116.
- 48.
Migliorini, (Re)constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria, 53.
- 49.
Ibid., 47. “The constitutional and political formula that resulted created favorable conditions for the Armenians; the community seized them.”
- 50.
Ibid., 50.
- 51.
World Council of Churches, “Union of the Armenian Evangelical Churches in the Near East,” https://www.oikoumene.org/en/member-churches/union-of-the-armenian-evangelical-churches-in-the-near-east (last accessed 05.11.2018).
- 52.
Migliorini, (Re)constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria, 52.
- 53.
Ibid., 52.
- 54.
There is little information available regarding the background of Marjam Tschaghlassian, but she was most likely educated at one of the many Protestant (missionary) institutions that offered girls education in the pre-war Ottoman Empire. Here she would have been made familiar with the Protestant faith and its stress on individual belief and reformation. At some point in the late 1930s, Varter succeeded Marjam Tschaghlassian as Bible woman. Varter Minagossian was a middle-aged widow and mother of five children. She was likewise educated at Protestant mission schools in the Ottoman Empire in Zeitun and Marasch and also a genocide survivor. Kvartalshilsen 4 (1939), 4.
- 55.
Okkenhaug, “Religion, Relief, and Humanitarian Work,” 8.
- 56.
Letter from Varter Minagossian, Kvartalshilsen 2 (1938), 7.
- 57.
Kvartalshilsen 3 (1928), 7.
- 58.
Inger Marie Okkenhaug, “Refugees, Relief and the Restoration of a Nation: Norwegian Mission in the Armenian Republic, 1922–1925,” in Hilde Nielssen et al., eds., Protestant Mission and Local Encounters in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 207–232, here 226–227. See also Donald E. Miller and Lorna T. Miller, Survivors. An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1999), 121–122.
- 59.
Letter from Varter Minagossian, Kvartalshilsen 2 (1938), 7.
- 60.
Alette Andreassen, Kvartalshilsen 4 (1936), 3.
- 61.
Alette Andreassen, Kvartalshilsen 2 (1936), 5.
- 62.
Kvartalshilsen 2 (1936), 5.
- 63.
Kvartalshilsen 4 (1936), 4.
- 64.
Ibid., 4.
- 65.
Kvartalshilsen 4 (1939), 6.
- 66.
Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking, 127.
- 67.
Fassin, Humanitarian Reason, 3–4.
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Okkenhaug, I.M. (2020). Protestant Missionaries, Armenian Refugees and Local Relief: Gendered Humanitarianism in Aleppo, 1920–1939. In: Möller, E., Paulmann, J., Stornig, K. (eds) Gendering Global Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century. Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44630-7_3
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