Missionary philanthropy to the Middle East was funded by resource-extraction fortunes

Evidence

Both Baroody and Malik had significant personal experience with missionaries. Both men were graduates of the American University of Beirut (AUB), established by Protestant missionaries (originally as the Syrian Protestant College) in 1866. That formative experience shaped Malik’s emphasis on freedom of conscience; in 1923, when he arrived at the AUB, its new president, Baynard Dodge, used his inaugural address to assure his students that the university did not intend to proselytise: ‘To us, Protestantism means religious freedom.’ Yet the AUB was not just an island of religious tolerance; it was also evidence of the tight bond between commerce and Christianity. The university was established using the fortunes of the Dodge family, whose mining interests in the United States had given them a particular interest in the ‘civilising’ of indigenous peoples, upon whose un-ceded land they built mines. Those who built the Dodge fortune also committed themselves to the ‘assimilation and uplift’ of African-Americans in the South during Reconstruction – but only after the failure of their preferred option of resettlement in Liberia. Both Baroody and Malik were products of the Dodges’ civilising mission in the Middle East – but with very different outcomes. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 135

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to my earlier reading on Mission to Civilize — the republican French civilizing mission and its ideological justifications; here a Protestant American counterpart run on private mining wealth. — connects to: Missionary universities funded by mining fortunes were tools of colonial civilising missions. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 135; NGOs function as corporate-funded missionaries serving imperial warfare; American missionaries followed soldiers and merchants, driven by trade and manifest destiny. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 213
• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to the grafting/trees-as-infrastructure article: Dodge family mines on unceded indigenous land parallels the question of extractive economies built on stolen land.

Broader Connections

• Missionary universities funded by mining fortunes were tools of colonial civilising missions. #exemplifies (0.92) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 135
• American missionaries followed soldiers and merchants, driven by trade and manifest destiny. #corroborates (0.75) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 213
• NGOs function as corporate-funded missionaries serving imperial warfare #complicates (0.70)