American Ceylon Mission - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The American Ceylon Mission (ACM) to Jaffna

Jaffna

Jaffna is the capital city of the Northern Province, Sri Lanka. It is the administrative headquarters of the Jaffna district located on a peninsula of the same name. Jaffna is approximately six miles away from Kandarodai which served as a famous emporium in the Jaffna peninsula from classical...

, Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

started with the arrival in 1813 of missionaries sponsored by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions

American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was the first American Christian foreign mission agency. It was proposed in 1810 by recent graduates of Williams College and officially chartered in 1812. In 1961 it merged with other societies to form the United Church Board for World...

(ABCFM). The British colonial office in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

and Ceylon restricted the Americans to the relatively small Jaffna Peninsula

Jaffna Peninsula

The Jaffna Peninsula is an area in Northern Province, Sri Lanka. It is home to the capital city of the province, Jaffna and comprises much of the former land mass of the ancient Tamil kingdoms of the Nagas and the medieval Jaffna kingdom. The peninsula is mostly surrounded by water, connected to...

for geopolitical reasons for almost 40 years. The critical period of the impact of the missionaries was from the 1820s to early 20th century. During this time, they engaged in original translations from English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

to Tamil

Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...

, printing, and publishing, establishing primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions and providing health care for residents of the Jaffna Peninsula. These activities resulted in many social changes amongst Sri Lankan Tamils that survive even today. They also led to the attainment of a lopsided literacy level among residents in the relatively small peninsula

Peninsula

A peninsula is a piece of land that is bordered by water on three sides but connected to mainland. In many Germanic and Celtic languages and also in Baltic, Slavic and Hungarian, peninsulas are called "half-islands"....

that is cited by scholars as one of the primary factors contributing to the recently ended civil war

Sri Lankan civil war

The Sri Lankan Civil War was a conflict fought on the island of Sri Lanka. Beginning on July 23, 1983, there was an on-and-off insurgency against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam , a separatist militant organization which fought to create an independent Tamil state named Tamil...

. Many notable educational and health institutions within the Jaffna Peninsula owe their origins to the missionary activists from America. Missionaries also courted controversy by publishing negative information about local religious practices and rituals.

Background information

The minority

Minority group

A minority is a sociological group within a demographic. The demographic could be based on many factors from ethnicity, gender, wealth, power, etc. The term extends to numerous situations, and civilizations within history, despite the misnomer of minorities associated with a numerical statistic...

Sri Lankan Tamil-dominated Jaffna Peninsula ruled by the Jaffna Kingdom

Jaffna Kingdom

The Jaffna kingdom , also known as Kingdom of Aryacakravarti, of modern northern Sri Lanka was a historic monarchy that came into existence around the town of Jaffna on the Jaffna peninsula after the invasion of Magha, who is said to have been from Kalinga, in India...

, which is hardly 15 by 40 miles, came under the direct jurisdiction of colonial

Colonialism

Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...

power from Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

after the 1591 demise of Puviraja Pandaram

Puviraja Pandaram

Puviraja Pandaram ruled the Jaffna Kingdom during a period of chaos during and after the death of his father Cankili I in 1565. He became the King in 1561 when due to a local uprising against Cankili 1. Although he was the nominal King, Cankili I wielded real power behind the throne until his...

, a local king, at the hands of the Portuguese

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

. He had led a rebellion against Portuguese influence and was defeated. After establishing their rule through kings who were nominally Catholic

Catholic

The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...

, the Portuguese encouraged and coerced conversion of the locals to the Catholic faith

Catholicism

Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....

. After the defeat and death of the last king Cankili II

Cankili II

Cankili II was the self-proclaimed last king of the Jaffna kingdom and was a usurper who came to throne with a palace massacre of the royal princess and the regent Arasakesari in 1617. His regency was rejected by the Portuguese colonials in Colombo, Sri Lanka...

in 1619, most prominent Hindu temples were razed to the ground and restrictions on observance of native religious rituals were instituted.

The Portuguese were ousted by the Dutch East India Company

Dutch East India Company

The Dutch East India Company was a chartered company established in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia...

company in 1658. During the Duct colonial period the popular Nallur Kandaswamy temple

Nallur Kandaswamy temple

-External links:****]]** requires silverlight...

was rebuilt during the 1750s. This was also a period of revival of local literary activity. Local laws such as Thesavalamai

Thesavalamai

Thesavalamai is the traditional law of the Sri Lankan Tamil inhabitants Jaffna peninsula, codified by the Dutch during their colonial rule in 1707. The Thesawalamai is a collection of the Customs of the Malabar Inhabitants of the Province of Jaffna and given full force by the Regulation of 1806...

were codified during this period, and the history of the previous Jaffna Kingdom

Jaffna Kingdom

under the name of Yalpana Vaipava Malai

Yalpana Vaipava Malai

Yalpana Vaipava Malai is a book written by a Tamil poet called Mayilvagana Pulavar 1736 AD. This book contains historical facts of the early Tamil city of Jaffna. The book which may have been written around 1736 during the Governorship of Jan Maccara, the then Dutch Governor of Jaffna. It was...

was put to print. The Dutch were replaced by the British in 1796. Although the British did not officially espouse any policy regarding religious conversions, they encouraged missionary activities in the Maritime Provinces except in the interior erstwhile Kandyan kingdom, where they had agreed to maintain the local Buddhist religion as part of the 1815 takeover of the kingdom.

For geopolitical reasons, the British saw fit to restrict the American missionaries to the Jaffna Peninsula. There were many denominations present such as the Methodist, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians

Episcopal Church (United States)

The Episcopal Church is a mainline Anglican Christian church found mainly in the United States , but also in Honduras, Taiwan, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, the British Virgin Islands and parts of Europe...

where as the British missionaries of the Methodist, Baptist

Baptist

Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...

and Anglican sects were present in the rest of the island. Even when this restriction was removed, the initial divisions between North Ceylon and South Ceylon missions were maintained.(see Wesleyan Methodist Mission, North Ceylon

Wesleyan Methodist Mission, North Ceylon

Wesleyan Methodist Mission, North Ceylon was formed as part of the Wesleyan Methodist Mission of Ceylon, the oldest Weslyan Mission to be established in East in 1813...

) By the early 19th century there were nine mission stations within the small peninsula.

The American involvement

The seeds for the American involvement in Jaffna were laid by The Rev. Samuel Newell in 1813. He and his wife Harriet Newell

Harriet Newell

Harriet Newell was born Harriet Atwood at Haverhill, Massachusetts in Oct 1793. She was part of the first wave of Christian missionaries to go overseas from the United States. She died less than a year into her journey and became a hero and role model for Christians during the Nineteenth Century...

were sent out by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission in India in 1813. As it was just after the Anglo-American war of 1812

War of 1812

The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire. The Americans declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions because of Britain's ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant...

, the suspicious British authorities in Calcutta asked them to leave. The Newells were then asked to go to Mauritius

Mauritius

Mauritius , officially the Republic of Mauritius is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about east of Madagascar...

but Samuel Newell lost his only child and wife in Mauritius. From there he left for British-held Ceylon, now known as Sri Lanka. He landed in Galle

Galle

Galle is a city situated on the southwestern tip of Sri Lanka, 119 km from Colombo. Galle is the capital city of Southern Province of Sri Lanka and it lies in Galle District....

and ended up in Jaffna

Jaffna

city. Although he spent most of his career in India, particularly Bombay he was instrumental in starting up the American missionary involvement in Jaffna.
He was followed by other missionary families such as Rev. Edward Warren, who arrived in July 1816. He took special interest in educating the people of the area in both English

English language

and their native Tamil language

Tamil language

. He started the first American missionary school in Tellipalai in 1816. By 1848, 105 Tamil schools and sixteen English schools were founded. Mission centers were soon opened in nine locations.

Other New England

New England

New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

ers also took important steps to provide educational opportunities for women. Harriet Winslow

Harriet Winslow

Harriet Winslow born in Norwich, Connecticut, was a prominent missionary attached to American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. She was married at the age of twenty three to fellow missionary Rev. Miron Winslow. They were both deputed to Ceylon now Sri Lanka as part of the American...

, a great-great-grandmother of the late Secretary of State John Foster Dulles

John Foster Dulles

John Foster Dulles served as U.S. Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959. He was a significant figure in the early Cold War era, advocating an aggressive stance against communism throughout the world...

, founded the Uduvil Girls' School in 1824, the first Girls’ boarding school in Asia.Eliza Agnew

Eliza Agnew

Eliza Agnew was an American Presbyterian missionary. She was born in New York City to James and Jane Agnew.-Background:...

from Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

was a teacher there for 42 years. Missionaries also made efforts to provide collegiate level education by founding the Batticota Seminary at Vaddukoddai in 1823 with Rev. Dr. Daniel Poor

Daniel Poor

Daniel Poor was a Presbyterian missionary and educator, founder of the first English School in Jaffna, Sri Lanka....

as its first principal.

The American Mission started the first printing press in Jaffna in 1820 and, in 1841, the island's second oldest newspaper.– Morning Star – and the first Tamil-language newspaper, Utayatarakai. In 1862, Rev. Miron Winslow

Miron Winslow

Miron Winslow was an American Congregational missionary. He was born at Williston, Vt., graduated at Middlebury College, 1815, and at Andover Theological Seminary, 1818. In 1819 he went to Ceylon, as a missionary of the American Board's American Ceylon Mission, and served there in southern...

published a Comprehensive Tamil-English Dictionary

Dictionary

A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...

.

ACM also provided medical missionaries starting in 1820. The first medical center was managed by Dr. John Scudder

John Scudder, Sr.

Rev. Dr. John Scudder, Sr. , M.D., D.D., founded the first Western Medical Mission in Asia at Ceylon and later became the first American medical missionary in India...

. He founded what is considered to be the first Western Medical Mission in Asia at Panditeripo in Jaffna District

Jaffna District

Jaffna district is one of the 25 administrative districts of Sri Lanka. The district is administered by a District Secretariat headed by a District Secretary appointed by the central government of Sri Lanka. The headquarters is located in Jaffna city. Parts of the district were transferred to...

. He served there for nineteen years in the dual capacity of clergyman and physician. His most important service was the establishment of a large hospital, of which he was physician in chief. He was especially successful in the treatment of cholera

Cholera

Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...

and yellow fever

Yellow fever

Yellow fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic disease. The virus is a 40 to 50 nm enveloped RNA virus with positive sense of the Flaviviridae family....

. He also founded several native schools and churches. He and his wife Harriet had 6 surviving sons and 2 daughters who all became medical missionaries and worked in South India

South India

South India is the area encompassing India's states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu as well as the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry, occupying 19.31% of India's area...

.
Dr. Scudder was followed by Dr. Nathan Ward in 1836, who was replaced in 1846 by Dr. Samuel Fisk Green

Samuel Fisk Green

Samuel Fisk Green was an American medical missionary. He graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York city. He served with the American Ceylon Mission in Jaffna, Sri Lanka during the period when it was the British colony of Ceylon...

, who began a thirty-year medical practice and training program. By the 1850s, he had translated more than 1,000 pages of medical texts into Tamil. He founded in Manipai what later became Green Memorial Hospital

Green Memorial Hospital

The Green Memorial Hospital is a non-profit hospital in Manipay, Sri Lanka. It was founded by Dr Samuel Fisk Green in 1848. It is a charitable hospital run by Jaffna Diocese of the Church of South India . This hospital was first medical school in Ceylon , and was used by Dr...

. This fledgling hospital was also used to train more than 60 locals in western medicine as fully fledged doctors. Of the first batch of 10 students only two by the name of Evarts and Ira Gould passed successfully. It was Sri Lanka’s first medical school as well as the only school until the present day to teach medicine in a local language.

The Batticotta experience

Batticotta Seminary was founded as a seminary

Seminary

A seminary, theological college, or divinity school is an institution of secondary or post-secondary education for educating students in theology, generally to prepare them for ordination as clergy or for other ministry...

for the best students from all other seminaries across the peninsula. It was intended to provide a tertiary level education equivalent a College in New England

New England

New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

. The pioneering missionary at the Batticotta Seminary was Rev. Dr. Daniel Poor. Under him the American congregational missionaries became the pioneers of formal English and Tamil education in northern Sri Lanka. Although the initial aim was to convert Hindus to Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

, it came to impart Biblical, English and European sciences on par with New England

New England

New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

community colleges.

The seminary undertook to research and published pioneering books in the Tamil language in local literature, logic, algebra, astronomy and general science. One of the prominent alumni was C. W. Thamotharampillai

C. W. Thamotharampillai

C.W. Thamotharampillai also sometimes the initials are used as S.V , devoted his energies to the work of editing and publishing some of the oldest works of classical Tamil poetry and grammar.Pillai along with his contemporaries such as U. V...

, who was also the first graduate (1857) of the University of Madras

University of Madras

The University of Madras is a public research university in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. It is one of the three oldest universities in India...

in India

India

.

Sir Emerson Tennent judged the Batticotta Seminary equal in rank with many a European university. The late Rev. Dr. Sabapathy Kulendran, the first bishop of the Jaffna

Jaffna

Diocese

A diocese is the district or see under the supervision of a bishop. It is divided into parishes.An archdiocese is more significant than a diocese. An archdiocese is presided over by an archbishop whose see may have or had importance due to size or historical significance...

of the Church of South India

Church of South India

The Church of South India is the successor of the Church of England in India. It came into being in 1947 as a union of Anglican and Protestant churches in South India. With a membership of over 3.8 million, it is India's second largest Christian church after the Roman Catholic Church in India...

(JDCSI) observed that the "seminary brought about a tremendous upsurge the like of which has never been seen in the country before or after." Eventually, due to financial reasons, the seminary began to collect an entrance fee; thus, only wealthy families were able to send their children for education. The primary purpose of these families was to assure that their children received a European standard education without converting to Christianity. Thus, a missionary by the name of Rufus Anderson

Rufus Anderson

Rufus Anderson was an American minister who spent several decades organizing overseas missions.-Life:Rufus Anderson was born in North Yarmouth, Maine, on August 17, 1796. His father, also named Rufus Anderson, was Congregationalist pastor of the church in North Yarmouth. His mother was Hannah...

decided that the seminary should be shut down and it was closed in 1855. This led to a seventeen year struggle by local Christians to reopen the seminary. It eventually opened as Jaffna College

Jaffna College

-See also:* List of schools in Northern Province, Sri Lanka* Uduvil Girl's College* Union College-External links:* * * *...

. Although American involvement continues to the current day in missionary activities, the critical age of transformation ended with the turn of the 20th century.

Social impact

Although the missionaries came primarily to convert the locals, in the process they bequeathed all the modern intellectual necessities for a nation. According to N. Sabaratnam a prominent editor of Eelanadu newspaper,

With the amalgamation of North Ceylon Missions into the Church of South India

Church of South India

(CSI), most properties and existing educational institutions are managed by the CSI.

Their intrusion into Jaffna also had other unintended consequence

Unintended consequence

In the social sciences, unintended consequences are outcomes that are not the outcomes intended by a purposeful action. The concept has long existed but was named and popularised in the 20th century by American sociologist Robert K. Merton...

s. The concentration of efficient Protestant mission schools in Jaffna produced a revival movement among local Hindus led by Arumuga Navalar, who responded by building many more schools within the Jaffna peninsula. Local Catholics too started their own schools as a countermeasure. The state also had its share of primary and secondary schools. Thus saturated with educational opportunities, many Tamils became literate. This was used by the British colonial government to hire Tamils as government servants in British-held Ceylon, India, Malaysia and Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

.

By the time Sri Lanka became independent in 1948, about 60% of government jobs were held by Tamils, who formed hardly 15% of the population. The popularly elected leaders of the country saw it as an outcome of a strategy by the British to control the majority

Majority

A majority is a subset of a group consisting of more than half of its members. This can be compared to a plurality, which is a subset larger than any other subset; i.e. a plurality is not necessarily a majority as the largest subset may consist of less than half the group's population...

Sinhalese that needed to be redressed. These measures

Policy of standardization

The policy of standardization was a policy implemented by the Sri Lankan government in 1973 to rectify disparities created in university enrollment in Sri Lanka under Colonial rule.-The reasoning for the law:...

deteriorated the already frail political relationship between the communities and many experts believe it as one of the main causes of the Sri Lankan Civil War

Sri Lankan civil war

Controversy

The primary responsibility of the missionaries was to convert as many people as possible. They used education and medical missionary work to assist them. But they also published ridiculing and insulting material on native religion and practices. The popular deity Lord Murugan

Murugan

Murugan also called Kartikeya, Skanda and Subrahmanya, is a popular Hindu deity especially among Tamil Hindus, worshipped primarily in areas with Tamil influences, especially South India, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Mauritius and Reunion Island. His six most important shrines in India are the...

was specifically targeted. This started the backlash against Christian missionaries. Many early converts like C. W. Thamotharampillai

C. W. Thamotharampillai

and Carol Visvanathapillai came back to Hinduism

Hinduism

Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...

. This also resulted in formation of many Hindu Schools and more political awareness for native Tamils. Today around 10% are Christians with Catholics forming 90% of the Christians in Sri Lanka.

External links

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