Protectorate of missions is a term for the right of protection exercised by a Christian power in a Muslim or other non-Christian country with regard to the persons and establishments of the missionaries. The term does not apply to all protection of missions, but only to that permanently exercised in virtue of an acquired right, usually established by a treaty or convention (either explicit or tacit), voluntarily consented to or accepted by the non-Christian power after more or less compulsion. The object of the protectorate may be more or less extensive, as it may embrace only the missionaries who are subjects of the protecting power or apply to the missionaries of all nations or even to the native Christians who are their recent converts.
This article deals with a historical approach to the 'legitimation' of protectorates by the need to facilitate the 'holy' duty of spreading the Christian faith, as invoked by Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant colonial/imperial powers.
Background
Both Einhard and Notker the Stammerer refer to envoys traveling between the courts of Charlemagne, king of the Franks, and Harun al-Rashid. They mention the exchange of gifts and friendly discussions about Christian access to holy sites. This exchange of embassies was due to the fact that they both were interested in subduing the Umayyad emirs of Córdoba. Charlemagne and his successors made use of any concessions to establish pious and charitable foundations there, to protect the Christian inhabitants and pilgrims, and to ensure the availability of Christian worship.
The destruction of the Arab Empire by the Turks put an end to this first protectorate, and for reasons that were not purely religious, led to the Crusades, as a result of which Palestine was conquered from the Saracens and became a Latin, French-speaking kingdom. The Christian rule was later replaced by that of Islam, but during the three centuries of Crusades, which had been undertaken and supported mainly by France, the Christians of the East had grown accustomed to look to that country for assistance in oppression or to gain more leverage in their dealings with the Ottomans, while France valued its increasingly important role in the region and its accompanying geopolitical benefits.
France in the Levant
The protectorate began to assume a contractual form in the sixteenth century, in the treaties concluded between the kings of France and the Ottoman Sultans, which are historically known as Capitulations. At first this name designated the commercial agreement conceded by the Sublime Porte to Latin merchants (first to Italians, starting with Genoese in 1453), and arose from the fact that the articles of these agreements were called capitoli ('chapters' in the Italian redaction).
Francis I was the first king of France who sought an alliance with the Ottomans. The pretext used by Francis was the protection of the Christians in Ottoman lands. The objective was to find an ally against the House of Habsburg. By compelling Austria to spend its forces in defense against the Ottomans in the East, he hoped to weaken it and render it unable to maintain its power in the West.
As early as 1528, Francis I had appealed to Suleiman the Magnificent to restore to the Christians of Jerusalem a church which the Ottomans had converted into a mosque. The Sultan refused on the plea that his religion would not permit alteration of the purpose of a mosque, but he promised to maintain the Christians in possession of all the other places occupied by them and to defend them against all oppression. The Franco-Ottoman alliance caused quite a scandal in the Christian world, but endured for many years, since it served the objective interests of both parties.
Henry IV continued the policy of a Franco-Ottoman alliance and received an embassy from Sultan Mehmed III in 1601. In 1604, a "Peace Treaty and Capitulation" was signed between Henry IV and the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I. It granted numerous advantages to France in the Ottoman Empire. The capitulations were made to entice and encourage commercial exchange with Western merchants. According to their terms traders entering the Ottoman Empire were exempt from local prosecution, local taxation, local conscription, and the searching of their domicile. Ahmed expanded the capitulations given to France, specifying that merchants from Spain, Ragusa, Genoa, Ancona and Florence could trade under the French flag. In the capitulations of 20 May 1604 appear two clauses relative to the protection of pilgrims and of the religious in charge of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in consideration of and for the honor and friendship of the French king.