Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt: ... PREFACE J5i. (cOlS (f of Off This book has been written at the request of many friends of Robert College. It embodies a history of the College from its foundation to the close of its fortieth year, 1903. I have chosen to make it a record of personal recollections, because this seemed to be the only way in which I could write freely of events and personalities as they appeared to me at the time, without compromising the present administration of the College or making it responsible in any way for my opinions or actions. It has been my purpose to make it as far as possible a history of the College, but the picture of a college in Constantinople during these years could not be drawn without a background of incidents, personalities and events, such as would have no place in the story of a college in America. On the other hand, it did not seem wise to make the background more attractive than the picture, or even to set the latter in the frame of a detailed history of the Turkish Empire. The Introduction is a review of the events of the last fifty years which have led to the recent revolution in Constantinople. INTRODUCTION Constantinople has long been the queen city of Europe. It has been an imperial city for sixteen hundred years; once the chief city of Christendom, the centre of Christian missions, but since 1453 the capital of the Turkish Empire and of the Mohammedan world; for centuries the one defense of Europe against the advance of the Moslem hordes of Arabia; for three centuries the terror of the Christian world; during the last century the chief battle-ground of European diplomacy over the Eastern Question. When I first knew it, in 1856, it was no longer the city of Suleiman the Magnificent, or of Mahmoud II, the great refor