ABSTRACT
The years 1876 through 1880 were a period of unusually intense activity in the field of international human rights fact-finding. Both the “Great Eastern Crisis” of the Balkans’ break away from the Ottoman Empire and the Russo-Turkish War (1877–8) saw numerous acts of “barbarity” and “atrocity” that captured European public imagination and challenged the diplomatic status quo. This essay examines the efforts to make known by international investigation the status of victims and the causes of their oppression in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, and Eastern Roumelia. It also traces the legal and political maneuvers of the individual commissioners and the states they represented as they worked to either ensure or obscure accountability.
