Education and civilization in the Third Republic: The University Saint-Joseph, 1875--1914 (Syria, France)

This dissertation examines the religious and moral aspect of Imperialism through the prism of Jesuit missionaries in Ottoman Syria, specifically through their University of Saint-Joseph. It argues that French domestic politics and increasing European competition for influence in the Ottoman Empire encouraged a reappraisal of the Jesuit mission by both the government and the order. As a result of both domestic and international pressure the Jesuits gradually redefined their mission from one that emphasized evangelism to a politicized Catholicism attached to nationalism.; A central assertion of this dissertation, therefore, is that political and religious categories were open to interpretation, reinterpretation, and synthesis. Terms such as Republican, clerical, anti-clerical, and French were negotiated by the Jesuits and French officials and Parisian ministries in Ottoman Syria. The creation of the University of Saint-Joseph medical school, coupled with Catholic organs such as the Oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi, gave Jesuits a platform from which to affirm, assert and reconfigure French patriotism. With the creation of the University, and most specifically its medical school, French Jesuits, who came to dominate the congregation numerically, asserted their role as specifically French agents of civilization.