Events

joint work with Ashrakat ElShehawy

Abstract: A substantial body of literature in economics and political science documents a positive effect of Western missionary schools on economic and political development in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, via their positive effects on the human capital of domestic populations. We argue instead that Western missionaries represented an existential threat to domestic ethno-religious groups, because of their proselytization objective. The consequent inter-group competition over hearts and minds induced domestic elites to increase their provision of (non-state) public modern education, in order to counter the influence of missionaries. We test our argument using the case of Egyptian Coptic Christians, who engaged in rapid development of modern schooling in the 19th and early 20th century as a "counter-mission'' to Western missionaries’ efforts to convert Copts to Catholicism and Protestantism via modern school provision. Employing an original dataset that spans the universe of modern Egyptian schools in 1825--1913, and a dynamic difference-in-difference design that exploits the variation in timing of introduction of Western missionary schools across Egyptian localities, we show that inter-group competition induced by missionaries increased the provision of Coptic modern non-state schools. These effects are highest among American missionaries, followed by French missionaries. We then examine the mechanisms of this effect, including (1) the greater successful conversion of Copts to Protestantism, that is arguably attributable to the higher ideological dedication of American missionaries (in comparison to the French) on conversion, (2) the role of the British colonial authorities in 1882-1913 in facilitating the Protestant missionaries' activities, following the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, (3) the emphasis of Coptic religious and secular elites on spreading modern secular non-sectarian education that is open to all groups (including Muslims), and (4) the withdrawal of the Egyptian state from the provision of modern education in the second half of the 19th century, that continued under British colonial rule after 1882.