Disputing the history of Ottoman violence: an American missionary and an original counternarrative of the Bulgarian atrocities of 1876

Without the earliest reports of Edwin Pears, Eugene Schuyler, Walter Baring, Januarius MacGahan, and William Gladstone there would not be a historiography of the Bulgarian Atrocities of 1876. Their reports were formative for not one but three historiographic traditions: the dominant English-Western tradition, but also the Bulgarian and Turkish nationalist traditions. For each of these, even those whose outlook is revisionist, the earliest reports function determinatively.

The heretofore unconsidered counternarrative of the Bulgarian Atrocities by American missionary Henry O. Dwight proves upsetting, therefore, both to the earliest reports and to the century and a half of historiographic development since. Written contemporaneously and predicated upon eyewitness testimony––a feature shared only by Schuyler, Baring, and MacGahan––Dwight’s counternarrative credibly challenged the popular narrative on six points: (1) By copying the structure of the other eyewitness reports Dwight takes aim at these reports in particular, deliberately setting the stage for a confrontation––one ultimately avoided when Dwight decided against publishing his report; (2) By exhibiting the same anti-Turkish bias as his opponents, Dwight inadvertently lends credibility to his pro-Turkish conclusions, which are not easily explained by his bias; and (3–6) By contradicting the claims of the popular narrative on four integral themes, Dwight disputes the authority of the other earliest reports. These themes are (3) the historicity of the April Uprising; (4) the role of the American missionaries in the earliest reporting of the Ottoman violence; (5) the total death toll; and (6) the methodological foundation for ascertaining this figure.

Dwight’s counternarrative thus strikes at the very foundation of the popular narrative as it was predicated upon the earliest reports of Pears, Schuyler, Baring, MacGahan, and Gladstone. Further still, it upsets the historical assumptions about the Bulgarian Atrocities that continue to prop up the Western historiographic tradition, as well as the Bulgarian and Turkish nationalist traditions. Therefore, for the earliest reports and the secondary literature, Dwight’s counternarrative is remedial and invites both the careful reconsideration of the Bulgarian Atrocities themselves as well as that of the literature that continues to form around these events.