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.Miranda Vickers, The Albanians: a modern history (p. 72)
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. 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.
Reception According to Mark Levene, the report is "thoroughly documented and still highly regarded". 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:
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,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]. 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.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. 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.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. Although he documented atrocities from all sides, Dutton ended up being mostly critical of Bulgarian conduct.
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.
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'.
Members of the Commission
Josef Redlich (Austria-Hungary, professor of law at the University of Vienna) Walther Schücking (Germany, professor of public international law, the first German judge at the Permanent Court of International Justice in The Hague) Francis Wrigley Hirst (United Kingdom, editor of The Economist) Henry Noel Brailsford (United Kingdom, journalist) Paul-Henri-Benjamin Balluet d'Estournelles (France, senator, winner of the 1909 Nobel Peace Prize) Justin Godart (France, politician, French National Assembly) Pavel Milyukov (Russia, historian, member of State Duma) Samuel Train Dutton (Columbia University, United States).
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