The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 by Jacob Gould Schurman

in Modern Historians / by Admin / on February 17, 2008 at 5:00 am /

The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 originally published by the Princeton University Press in 1914

Causes of the First Balkan War

What was the occasion of the war between Turkey and the Balkan states in 1912 The most general answer that can be given to that question is contained in the one word Macedonia. Geographically Macedonia lies between Greece, Servia, and Bulgaria. Ethnographically it is an extension of their races.

page 30

Racial Propaganda in Macedonia

Of all perplexing subject in the world few can be more baffling than the distribution of races in Macedonia. The Turks classify the population, not by language or by physical characteristics, but by religion. A Greek is a member of the Orthodox Church wor recognizes the patriarch of Constantinople; a Bulgarian, on the other hand, is one of the same religious faith who recognizes the exarch; and since the Servians in Turkey have no independent church but recognize the patriarchage they are often, as opposed to Bulgarians, called Greeks….A Macedonian may be a a Greek to-day, a Bulgarian to-morrow, and a Servian next day.

page 79-80

The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913
C. 2005 Cosimo, Inc.

Jacob Gould Schurman (May 22, 1854 - August 12, 1942), American educationist, was born at Freetown, Prince Edward Island of Dutch descent, his Loyalist ancestors having left New York in 1784.

While a student at Acadia College, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, in 1875, he won the Canadian Gilchrist scholarship in the University of London, from which he received the degree of BA in 1877 and that of MA in 1878, and in 1877-1880 studied in Paris, Edinburgh and (as Hibbert Fellow) in Heidelberg, Berlin and GÃ¶ttingen.

He was professor of English literature, political economy and psychology at Acadia College in 1880-1882, of metaphysics and English literature at Daihousie College, Halifax, NS, in 1882-1886, and of philosophy (Sage professor) at Cornell University in 1886-1892, being Dean of the Sage School of Philosophy in 1891-1892. In 1892 he became the third president of Cornell University, a position he kept until 1920.

He was chairman of the First United States Philippine Commission in 1899, and wrote (besides a part of the official report to Congress) Philippine Affairs-A Retrospect and an Outlook (1902). With J. E. Creighton and James Seth he founded in 1892 The Philosophical Review. He also wrote Kantian Ethics and the Ethics of Evolution (1881); The Ethical Import of Darwinism (1888); Belief in God (1890), and Agnosticism and Religion (1896).

Schurman served as United States Ambassador to China between 1921 and 1925, and then as Ambassador to Germany between 1925 and 1929. He retired to Bedford Hills, New York in 1930.