This book centers on the Report of the International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars, published in Washington in the early summer of 1914 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The volume was born from the conviction that the full assessment of the significance of the Carnegie Report—one of the first international non-governmental fact-finding missions with the intention to promote peace—requires a deeper exploration of the context of its birth.

The authors examine how the countries involved in the wars handled the inquires of the Carnegie Commission and the role of the report in the remembrance of the wars in the respective states. Although the report considered both the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan nation-states insufficiently civilized to wage wars within the limits of the codes of conduct of international law, this orientalist conclusion can in part be explained by the liberal internationalist strategy of the Carnegie Endowment, and of the commission members’ professional, political, and ethnic background. Overshadowed by the outbreak of World War I, the Carnegie Report’s direct impact on international arbitration or international criminal law was limited, yet—in the authors’ opinion—it ultimately contributed to the further juridification of international relations

The Balkan Wars and the Carnegie Report: Historiography and Significance for International Law; An Introduction
Dietmar Müller

Part One: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Philanthropy and Internationalism in the Twentieth Century

International Law and Conciliation under Pressure: Political Profiles of the Carnegie Men behind the Balkan Report c. 1910–1919
Helke Rausch

“The International Law of the Future”: The Carnegie Endowment and the Sovereign Limits of International Jurisdiction, 1910s–1960s
Isabella Löhr

Shaping International Minds: Education for Peace and International Cooperation after the Great War in the United States
Katja Castryck-Naumann

Part Two: Biographical Approaches: The Commission

The Balkan Carnegie Commission of 1913: Origins and Features
Nadine Akhund-Lange

Macedonia as a Lifelong Topic: Henry Noël Brailsford
Stefan Troebst

History and Politics: Macedonia in the Assessment of Pavel N. Milyukov
Thomas M. Bohn

Part Three: The Carnegie Commission on the Spot and its Legacies

The 1913 Carnegie Commission of Inquiry: Background, Fact-Finding, and International Reactions
Ivan Ilčev

Doomed to Fail: The Carnegie Commission in Greece
Adamantios Theodor Skordos

The Carnegie Commission Reports and Serbia: Balkan Wars and their Legacies
Stefan Djordjević

The Balkan Wars in Memory: The Carnegie Report and Trotsky’s War Correspondence
Maria Todorova

Diana Mishkova, Centre for Advanced Study Sofia

There has been a drift of late to fathom the Balkans as a precursor of, and its history as anticipating, larger political trends in the rest of Europe and the world. This volume takes that trail in an unsuspected direction. As the articles gathered here suggest, the historian studying modern international law on national self-determination, nation-state formation, and minority rights must start first with the 1912–13 Balkan Wars and the 1914 Carnegie Report and only then seek reverberations in later twentieth-century institutional innovations on the European and global scale. The contributions to the volume, carried out with dexterity and insight, advance a coherent set of interpretations that throw into relief unexplored and hidden aspects of the making of international law and international organizations.

Richard Crampton, St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford

Short wars can cast long shadows. That the Balkan wars did so is amply proved in this impressive collection of essays by distinguished scholars from a large variety of countries. They show not only that the internal dynamics of that troubled peninsula are still conditioned by the events of 1912–13, but also that these events affected the operation of international agencies dealing with the area and its problems. The book will be of great value to anyone concerned with or interested in the Balkans.

Theodora Dragostinova, Ohio State University

While the 1913 Carnegie Report features prominently in histories of modern warfare, ethnic cleansing, and human rights, this volume breaks new ground by foregrounding its importance in the evolution of international law. The book offers incredible breadth and depth: from the complex legal and philanthropic contexts of the report’s making to the fascinating biographies of the men who wrote it to its uneven and politicized reception in the Balkans and beyond, we learn a plethora of captivating information about its origins and impact in a truly global perspective. A must read for scholars and students of international law and organizations, human rights, and Balkan, European, and global history.