The Bulgarian Massacres of 1876 Reconsidered Again

Abstract The historiography of the Bulgarian Massacres of 1876 is overwhelmingly dependent upon early English reports. As such, key assumptions need to be challenged by new evidence. “The Suffering in Bulgaria” was written principally for other reasons by two American missionaries, Henry O. Dwight and James F. Clarke, but was also an eyewitness account contemporaneous to the earliest reports of Edwin Pears, Walter Baring, Eugene Schuyler, Januarius MacGahan, and William Gladstone. “The Suffering in Bulgaria” presents heretofore unconsidered evidence for a reduced death toll of the Bulgarian Massacres including a more reliable method than was utilized by the other eyewitnesses for determining this number. Under mistaken pretenses, therefore, the early English reports formed not only the tradition of Western historiography but the trajectory of late Ottoman history itself. This they did on the basis of poorly sourced data, which the American missionaries decisively and effectively disputed. Both the introduction and the conclusion identify two potential avenues for further study in the secondary literature, namely (1) the Bulgarian Massacres of 1876 as an old subject reinvigorated by the missionary sources and (2) the real-world consequences of getting it wrong in 1876 on the history of violence.