Macedonia as a Lifelong Topic: Henry Noël Brailsford, 1873-1958

Abstract

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.

Biographical Note

Stefan Troebst (SFB1199 & GWZO Leipzig, Germany)

Stefan Troebst studied history and Slavic studies from 1975 on in Tübingen (then West Germany) and at the Free University of (then West) Berlin, Sofia (Bulgaria), Leningrad (today St. Petersburg, then Soviet Union, today Russian Federation), Skopje (then Yugoslavia, today Macedonia), Bloomington, Indiana (USA). In 1984, he obtained a PhD degree in Russian and East European history and Slavic studies at the Free University of Berlin where he also completed his habilitation in 1995. After terms as assistant and associate professor at the Free University of Berlin, in 1992 he left academia and became a German member in the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) missions of long duration to former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union. In 1996, he was nominated founding director of the Danish-German European Centre for Minority Issues, and in 1999 a full professor at Leipzig University. His research focuses on the history of the subregions of Europe’s eastern half (Southeastern Europe, East-Central Europe, Northeastern Europe and Muscovy/Russia/Soviet Union), on the modern history of Europe, on the history of international relations and international public law, as well as on politics of history and cultures of remembrance in contemporary Europe.

Dietmar Müller (Leipzig University, Germany)

PD Dr. Dietmar Müller lehrt Vergleichende Kultur- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte Europas. Gegenwärtig vertritt er die Professur Kulturgeschichte des östlichen Europa, in der Lehre vorwiegend am Global and European Studies Institute. Er promovierte und habilitierte sich mit vergleichenden Arbeiten zu citizenship und Minderheiten sowie zu Bodeneigentum und Agrarreformen im östlichen Europa. Arbeitsschwerpunkte in Forschung und Lehre: Rechtsstaat und Rechtskultur, Völkerrecht und internationale Organisationen, ländlicher Raum und Entwicklung. Er leitet ein Forschungsprojekt zum ung.-rum. Optantenstreit, ist Teilprojektleiter “Rechtsstaatlichkeitsvorstellungen in Ostmitteleuropa”, Mitglied eines Forschungsprojekts zur Unteren Donau sowie des Jean-Monnet-Spitzenforschungszentrums „Die Europäische Union und ihre ländliche Peripherie in Ostmitteleuropa“.