ADAM H. BECKER. Revival and Awakening: American Evangelical Missionaries in Iran and the Origins of Assyrian Nationalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. xviii + 357 pages, notes, bibliography, index. Paper US$32.50 ISBN 978-0-2261-4528-0.

Abstract

Adam H. Becker provides a richly detailed and eloquent account of the process by which American evangelical missionary activity in northwestern Iran and the eastern portions of the Ottoman Empire (now southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq) during the nineteenth century fostered the development of national consciousness among indigenous Syriac Christian students and associ-ates, which enabled the creation of a modern Assyrian nationalism in the twentieth century. Becker ’ s complex and nuanced work adds to the ranks of recent studies on nationalism in the Middle East, most notably Reza Zia Ebrahimi ’ s, The Emergence of Iranian Nationalism: Race and the Politics of Dislocation (Columbia University Press, 2016) that are theoretically sophisticated and reflect a refined understanding of the impact of Orientalist knowledge on indigenous interlocutors and their own agency in the process of forging and reifying new nationalist narratives based on selective reading and interpreta-tion of the past. Since these essentially modernist studies identify the recent inventedness of newly re-imagined national communities, locate the formative role of Western scholarship in their development, and analyze the autoethno-graphic process of indigenous self-identification as ancient nations undergoing revival, their arguments and conclusions are inherently in conflict with the nationalist, primordialist narratives that they systematically unpack. Like Ebrahimi, Becker remains conscious of the likely potential to ruffle some nationalist feathers while demonstrating both empathy and scholarly bravery in his persistence to interpret his sources faithfully and to abundantly illustrate and rigorously support his analysis and conclusions. Becker ’ s introduction simultaneously establishes the chronological, geo-graphical, and social terrain to be considered in the book ’ s eight chapters