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Report of the International Commission on the Balkan Wars

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Report of the International Commission on the Balkan Wars

The Report of the International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars is a document published in Washington D.C. in 1914 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The International Commission consisted of university professors and other prominent individuals from France, Great Britain, United States, Germany, Austria and Russia. Among the members of the Commission there were three Nobel Prize winners.[1]

The Commission went to the participating countries at the beginning of August 1913 and remained until the end of September. After returning to Paris all the material was processed and released in the form of a detailed report. The report speaks of the numerous violations of international conventions and war crimes committed during the Balkan Wars.[2][3] The information collected was published by the Endowment in the early summer of 1914, but was soon overshadowed by the beginning of the First World War.[4]

Reception

According to Mark Levene, the report is "thoroughly documented and still highly regarded".[5] On the other hand, Albanian–Turkish academic Enika Abazi and French–Albanian historian Albert Doja write that, although the report is "often taken to offer a detailed and well-documented description of what happened in the 1912–1913 Balkan Wars", they contest this view and produce a detailed criticism of the report:[6]

However, the Carnegie Inquiry was based on problematic fieldwork. Time for preparation had been short and the commission immediately encountered problems and was stopped and delayed several times. Thus, Serbian officials protested that one of members was anti-Serbian and pro-Bulgarian and expelled them all, while Greek officials allowed them to stay but offered them no assistance and again they formally declined to receive one of them, who was also expelled from the hotel. Another member arrived after the group had left, and instead of sending a telegram to ask where they were, he gave up and retraced his steps. Due to various issues, and to great disappointment, the commission was reduced to four members on the ground and only two of them could understand some Slavic languages. There was even a question whether the commission should persist in the inquiry at all. It was decided to continue the work, but to separate. When the members met in Sofia, their reception could not have been more useful than in Serbia and Greece, since Bulgarian officials prepared all documents and witness testimony for them. In addition, the report required considerable rewriting and editing. Many of the chapters were problematic in multiple ways, especially as it was deeply unwise for the member who had done the least field research to end up with most of the writing. Most of the members never concealed their openly pro-Bulgarian positions or anti-Serbian and anti-Greek opinions, which obviously limited the credibility of their writing and the facts they reported, or even discredited the content of some aspects of the report and allowed government officials of participating countries to use their unsubstantiated comments and one-sided opinions to protest. Finally, the report was neither adequately substantiated nor impartial, and it cannot reasonably be considered a credible and valuable source on the Balkan Wars.

From the "four members on the ground", two of them (Milyukov, Brailsford) were considered by contemporaries, and are considered by historians, to have been partisanly pro-Bulgarian and anti-Greek/anti-Serbian,[7] while one of them (Godart) was later accused of, and is today considered by historians, to have been partisanly pro-Albanian and anti-Greek/anti-Serbian.[8] The fourth member, Dutton, was the only member who is considered to have been sufficiently impartial and he questioned the selection of Milyiukov and Brailsfold.[9] Although he documented atrocities from all sides, Dutton ended up being mostly critical of Bulgarian conduct.[9]

After the report was published, organizers of the Carnegie mission, in private, were uncomfortable with what seemed to be a pro-Bulgarian bias within the final report. Meanwhile, critics in Britain attacked the report for underplaying Greek grievances and overstating the claims of their enemies.[10]

The Carnegie Endowment reissued the report uncritically in 1993, leading some to criticise the decision for anachronism and reinforcing the stereotype of 'Balkan violence'. Maria Todorova has discussed the reissued report (and its introduction by George Kennan) as an example of 'Balkanism'.[11]

Members of the Commission

References

  1. ^ Miranda Vickers, The Albanians: a modern history (p. 72)
  2. ^ "GREEK AND BULGAR BOTH HELD GUILTY; Balkan Combatants Denounced by Carnegie Commission for Their Atrocities; All Laws of War Broken; Turkish Influence Held Responsible: Nations' Duty to the Balkans Outlined". The New York Times: 3. 18 May 1914.
  3. ^ "Greeks Denounce Carnegie Board: Commission's Report on Balkan War Atrocities Grossly Unfair, Legation Declares; Greeks Alone Condemned; Hellenic Government Takes Exception to Excuse That Bulgarians Had Provocation for Their Butcheries". The New York Times: 3. 8 June 1914.
  4. ^ The Other Balkan Wars: A 1913 Carnegie Endowment Inquiry in Retrospect with A New Introduction and Reflections on the Present Conflict by George F. Kennan. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 1993 – via Internet Archive.
  5. ^ Levene, Mark (2020). "Through a Glass Darkly: The Resurrection of Religious Fanaticism as First Cause of Ottoman Catastrophe: The thirty-year genocide. Turkey's destruction of its Christian minorities, 1894–1924, by Benny Morris and Dror Ze'evi, Cambridge, MA, and London, Harvard University Press, 2019, 672 pp. (hardcover), ISBN 9780674916456". Journal of Genocide Research. 22 (4): 553–560. doi:10.1080/14623528.2020.1735560.
  6. ^ Abazi, Enika; Doja, Albert (2017). "The past in the present: time and narrative of Balkan wars in media industry and international politics". Third World Quarterly. 38 (4): 1012–1042. doi:10.1080/01436597.2016.1191345. ISSN 0143-6597.
  7. ^ See: Bohn, T. M. (2014). Geschichte und Politik. Makedonien im Kalkül des russischen Historikers und Dumaabgeordneten Pavel N. Miljukov. Comparativ, 24(6), 52–67; Akhund-Lange, N. (2012). The two Carnegie reports: From the Balkan expedition of 1913 to the Albanian trip of 1921—A comparative approach. Balkanologie, 14(1–2); Troebst, S. (2014). Makedonien als Lebensthema: Henry Noël Brailsford. Comparativ, 24(6), 68–79; Akhund-Lange, N., Müller, D., & Troebst, S. (Eds.). (2022). Philanthropy, conflict management and international law: The 1914 Carnegie Report on the Balkan Wars of 1912/13. Central European University Press; Hristova, E. (2022). Finding new roads towards peace: The report of the Carnegie Commission on the Balkan Wars 1912–1913 [Doctoral dissertation, Trent University].
  8. ^ See: Baerlein, H. (1922). The birth of Yugoslavia (Vol. 2). Leonard Parsons; Grant-Smith, U. (1922). The Minister in Albania to the Secretary of State. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1922. U.S. Department of State; Akhund-Lange, N. (2012). The two Carnegie reports: From the Balkan expedition of 1913 to the Albanian trip of 1921—A comparative approach. Balkanologie, 14(1–2) Akhund-Lange, N. (2022). The Balkan Carnegie Commission of 1913. In D. Müller & S. Troebst (Eds.), Philanthropy, conflict management and international law: The 1914 Carnegie Report on the Balkan Wars of 1912/13 (pp. 129–143). Central European University Press.
  9. ^ a b See: Levenson, J. C. (1918). Samuel Train Dutton: A biography. The Pilgrim Press; Akhund-Lange, N. (2022). The Balkan Carnegie Commission of 1913. In D. Müller & S. Troebst (Eds.), Philanthropy, conflict management and international law: The 1914 Carnegie Report on the Balkan Wars of 1912/13 (pp. 129–143). Central European University Press.
  10. ^ Giannakopoulos, Georgios (2025). The interpreters: British internationalism and empire in southeastern Europe, 1870–1930. Manchester University Press. doi:10.7765/9781526160140. ISBN 978-1-5261-6014-0.
  11. ^ Todorova, Maria (2009-04-15). Imagining the Balkans (1st ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 4–5. ISBN 9780195387865.
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