Philanthropy, Conflict Management and International Law: The 1914 Carnegie Report on the Balkan Wars of 1912/13

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 Reportone of the first international non-governmental fact-finding missions with the intention to promote peacerequires 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 Reports direct impact on international arbitration or international criminal law was limited, yetin the authors opinionit ultimately contributed to the further juridification of international relations