Missionary involvement with the Simele massacre in 1933: the end of American sympathy for the Assyrians

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Simele massacre of 1933 in Iraq, in which over 600 Assyrian Christians lost their lives, is an important part of Assyrian national history and is one of the few well-known events in twentieth-century Iraqi history where Christians are involved. While there was a general outcry in Western Europe and the United States against the Iraqi government following the massacre, the American missionaries present locally of the United Mission in Mesopotamia/Iraq did not support the Assyrians following the massacre despite the generally humanitarian approach of their mission and their support for the Assyrian cause in the early years after the First World War. In this article, I argue that apparent apathy from the side of the missionaries was largely the result of a radical change in thinking about missionary involvement in political debates concerning the future of non-Muslim minorities in the Middle East.