Lubnani,Libanais, Lebanese: Missionary Education, Language Policy and Identity Formation in Modern Lebanon

Abstract

This article examines language instruction and religious and socio-political identity formation in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American Protestant and French Jesuit missionary institutions in Lebanon. It compares French, English and Arabic language education policies at Saint Joseph University (Université Saint-Joseph), Syrian Protestant College (now the American University in Beirut) and the American Syria Mission schools under the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the USA. The article considers the mutual transformations in the encounter between missionaries and Lebanese students and addresses the relationship between language learning and educational, literary and nationalist development in the Middle East. Emphasising the agency of Arabic-speaking Ottoman subjects and their reciprocal relationship with missionaries, it argues that before the turn of the century, those individuals who acquired a foreign language and excelled in literary Arabic charted the course toward social, cultural and political change in the twentieth century.