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History of Bulgaria
The history of Bulgaria spans from the first settlements on the lands of modern Bulgaria to its formation as a nation-state and includes the history of the Bulgarian people and their origin.
The earliest human remains discovered on what is today Bulgaria date from 44,000 BC.
Around 5000 BC, a sophisticated civilization already existed and produced some of the first pottery and jewelry in the world.
After 3000 BC, the Thracians appeared on the Balkan peninsula. Around 500 BC, they formed the powerful Odrysian Kingdom, which subsequently declined and Thracian tribes fell under Macedonian, Celtic and Roman domination.
This mixture of ancient peoples was assimilated by the Slavs, who permanently settled on the peninsula after 500 AD.
Meanwhile in 632 the Bulgars, originally from Central Asia, formed an independent state north of the Black sea that became known as Great Bulgaria under the leadership of Kubrat.
Pressure from the Khazars led to the disintegration of Great Bulgaria in the second half of the 7th century.
One of the Kubrat's successors, Asparukh, migrated with some of the Bulgar tribes to the area around the Danube delta, and subsequently conquered Scythia Minor and Moesia Inferior from the Byzantine Empire, expanding his new kingdom further into the Balkan Peninsula.
A peace treaty with Byzantium in 681 and the establishment of a permanent Bulgarian capital at Pliska south of the Danube mark the beginning of the First Bulgarian Empire.
The new state brought together Thracian remnants and Slavs under Bulgar rule, and a slow process of mutual assimilation began.
In the following centuries Bulgaria established itself as a powerful empire, dominating the Balkans through its aggressive military traditions, which led to development of distinct ethnic identity.
Its ethnically and culturally diverse people united under a common religion, language and alphabet which formed and preserved the Bulgarian national consciousness despite foreign invasions and influences
In the 11th century, the First Bulgarian Empire collapsed under Rus' and Byzantine attacks, and became part of the Byzantine Empire until 1185.
Then, a major uprising led by two brothers - Asen and Peter of the Asen dynasty, restored the Bulgarian state to form the Second Bulgarian Empire.
After reaching its apogee in the 1230s, Bulgaria started to decline due to a number of factors, most notably its geographic position which rendered it vulnerable to simultaneous attacks and invasions from many sides.
A peasant rebellion, one of the few successful such in history, established the swineherd Ivaylo as a Tsar.
His short reign was essential in recovering - at least partially - the integrity of the Bulgarian state.
A relatively thriving period followed after 1300, but ended in 1371, when factional divisions caused Bulgaria to split into three small Tsardoms.
By 1396, they were subjugated by the Ottoman Empire.
Following the elimination of the Bulgarian nobility and clergy by the Turks, Bulgaria entered an age of oppression, intellectual stagnation and misgovernment that would leave its culture shattered and isolated from Europe for the next 500 years.
Some of its cultural heritage found its way to Russia, where it was adopted and developed.
With the decline of the Ottoman Empire after 1700, signs of revival started to emerge.
The Bulgarian nobility had vanished, leaving an equalitarian peasant society with a small but growing urban middle class.
By the 19th century, the Bulgarian National Revival became a key component of the struggle for independence, which would culminate in the failed April uprising in 1876, which prompted the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 and the subsequent Liberation of Bulgaria.
The initial Treaty of San Stefano was rejected by the Western Great Powers, and the following Treaty of Berlin limited Bulgaria's territories to Moesia and the region of Sofia.
This left many ethnic Bulgarians out of the borders of the new state, which defined Bulgaria's militaristic approach to regional affairs and its allegiance to Germany in both World Wars.
Bulgaria under Ottoman rule
(1396–1878)
In 1393, the Ottomans captured Tarnovo, the capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire, after a three-month siege.
In 1396, the Vidin Tsardom fell after the defeat of a Christian crusade at the Battle of Nicopolis.
With this the Ottomans finally subjugated and occupied Bulgaria.
A Polish-Hungarian crusade commanded by Władysław III of Poland set out to free the Bulgaria and the Balkans in 1444, but the Turks emerged victorious at the battle of Varna.
The Battle of Varna by Stanislav Chelebowski.
Turkish authorities destroyed most of the medieval Bulgarian fortresses to prevent rebellions.
Large towns and the areas where Ottoman power predominated remained severely depopulated until the 19th century.
The Ottoman Turks did not normally force the Christians to become Muslims, and they appeared remarkably tolerant toward the church.
Nevertheless, there were many cases of forced individual or mass islamization, especially in the Rhodopes.
Bulgarians who converted to Islam, the Pomaks, retained Bulgarian language, dress and some customs compatible with Islam.
The origin of the Pomaks remains a subject of debate.
Ottoman governance
The Ottoman system began declining by the 17th century and at the end of the 18th had all but collapsed.
Central government weakened over the decades and this had allowed a number of local Ottoman holders of large estates to establish personal ascendancy over separate regions.
During the last two decades of the 18th and first decades of the 19th centuries the Balkan Peninsula dissolved into virtual anarchy.
Bulgarian tradition calls this period the kurdjaliistvo: armed bands of Turks called kurdjalii plagued the area.
In many regions, thousands of peasants fled from the countryside either to local towns or (more commonly) to the hills or forests; some even fled beyond the Danube to Moldova, Wallachia or southern Russia.
The decline of Ottoman authorities also allowed a gradual revival of Bulgarian culture, which became a key component in the ideology of national liberation.
Conditions gradually improved in certain areas in the 19th century.
Some towns — such as Gabrovo, Tryavna, Karlovo, Koprivshtitsa, Lovech, Skopie — prospered.
The Bulgarian peasants actually possessed their land, although it officially belonged to the sultan. The 19th century also brought improved communications, transportation and trade.
The first factory in the Bulgarian lands opened in Sliven in 1834 and the first railway system started running (between Rousse and Varna) in 1865.
Bulgarian nationalism was emergent in the early 19th century under the influence of western ideas such as liberalism and nationalism, which trickled into the country after the French Revolution, mostly via Greece.
The Greek revolt against the Ottomans which began in 1821 also influenced the small Bulgarian educated class.
But Greek influence was limited by the general Bulgarian resentment of Greek control of the Bulgarian Church and it was the struggle to revive an independent Bulgarian Church which first roused Bulgarian nationalist sentiment.
In 1870, a Bulgarian Exarchate was created by a Sultan edict and the first Bulgarian Exarch, Antim I, became the natural leader of the emerging nation.
The Constantinople Patriarch reacted by excommunicating the Bulgarian Exarchate, which reinforced their will for independence.
A struggle for political liberation from the Ottoman Empire emerged in the face of the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee and the Internal Revolutionary Organisation led by liberal revolutionaries such as Vasil Levski, Hristo Botev and Lyuben Karavelov.
April Uprising and Russo-Turkish War
(1870s)
In April 1876, the Bulgarians revolted in the April Uprising.
The revolt was poorly organized and started before the planned date.
It was largely confined to the region of Plovdiv, though certain districts in northern Bulgaria, in Macedonia and in the area of Sliven also took part in it.
The uprising was crushed by the Ottomans, who also brought irregular Ottoman troops (bashi-bazouks) from outside the area.
Countless villages were pillaged and tens of thousands of people were massacred, the majority of them in the insurgents towns of Batak, Perushtitsa and Bratsigovo in the area of Plovdiv.
The massacres aroused a broad public reaction led by liberal Europeans such as William Ewart Gladstone, who launched a campaign against the "Bulgarian Horrors".
The campaign was supported by a number of European intellectuals and public figures.
The strongest reaction, however, came from Russia.
The enormous public outcry which the April Uprising had caused in Europe provoked the 1876–77 Constantinople Conference of the Great Powers.
Turkey's refusal to implement the conference decisions gave the Russians a long-waited chance to realise their long-term objectives with regard to the Ottoman Empire.
Having its reputation at stake, Russia declared war on the Ottomans in April 1877.
The Bulgarians also fought alongside the advancing Russians.
The Coalition was able to inflict a decisive defeat on the Ottomans at the Battle of Shipka Pass and at Pleven and by January 1878 they had liberated much of the Bulgarian lands.
Third Bulgarian State
(1878–1944)
The Treaty of San Stefano was signed on 3 March 1878 and set up an autonomous Bulgarian principality on the territories of the Second Bulgarian Empire, including the regions of Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia, though the state was de jure only autonomous but de facto functioned independently.
However, trying to preserve the balance of power in Europe and fearing the establishment of a large Russian client state on the Balkans, the other Great Powers were reluctant to agree to the treaty.
As a result, the Treaty of Berlin (1878), under the supervision of Otto von Bismarck of the German empire and Benjamin Disraeli of Britain, revised the earlier treaty, and scaled back the proposed Bulgarian state. The new territory of Bulgaria was limited between the Danube and the Stara Planina range, with its seat at the old Bulgarian capital of Veliko Turnovo and including Sofia.
This revision left large populations of ethnic Bulgarians outside the new country and defined Bulgaria's militaristic approach to foreign affairs and its participation in four wars during the first half of the 20th century.
Bulgaria entered a war against Serbia in 1885, only seven years after its restoration.
The war resulted in a Bulgarian victory and incorporation of the semi-autonomous Ottoman territory of Eastern Rumelia into the Principality.
Bulgaria emerged from Turkish rule as a poor, underdeveloped agricultural country, with little industry or tapped natural resources.
Most of the land was owned by small farmers, with peasants comprising 80% of the population of 3.8 million in 1900.
Agrarianism was the dominant political philosophy in the countryside, as the peasantry organized a movement independent of any existing party.
In 1899, the Bulgarian Agrarian Union was formed, bringing together rural intellectuals such as teachers with ambitious peasants.
It promoted modern farming practices, as well as elementary education.
The government promoted modernization, with special emphasis on building a network of elementary and secondary schools.
By 1910, there were 4,800 elementary schools, 330 lyceums, 27 high schools, and 113 vocational schools.
From 1878 to 1933, France funded numerous libraries, research institutes, and Catholic schools throughout Bulgaria.
In 1888, a university was established. It was renamed the University of Sofia in 1904, where the three faculties of history and philology, physics and mathematics, and law produced civil servants for national and local government offices. It became the center of German and Russian intellectual, philosophical and theological influences.
The first decade of the century saw sustained prosperity, with steady urban growth.
The capital of Sofia grew by a factor of 600% - from 20,000 population in 1878 to 120,000 in 1912, primarily from peasants who arrived from the villages to become laborers tradesman and office seekers.
Macedonians used Bulgaria as a base, beginning in 1894, to agitate for independence from the Ottoman Empire.
They launched a poorly planned uprising in 1903 that was brutally suppressed, and led to tens of thousands of additional refugees pouring into Bulgaria.
The Balkan War
Balkan League of 1912
The partition of territories in the Balkans by the Great Powers without regard to ethnic composition led to a wave of discontent not only in Bulgaria, but also in its neighbouring countries.
In 1911, Nationalist Prime Minister Ivan Geshov formed an alliance with Greece and Serbia to jointly attack the Ottomans and revise the existing agreements around ethnic lines.
In February 1912, a secret treaty was signed between Bulgaria and Serbia and in May 1912, a similar agreement was sealed with Greece. Montenegro was also brought into the pact.
The treaties provided for the partition of Macedonia and Thrace between the allies, although the lines of partition were left dangerously vague.
After the Ottoman Empire refused to implement reforms in the disputed areas, the First Balkan War broke out in October 1912 at a time when the Ottomans were tied down in a major war with Italy in Libya.
The allies easily defeated the Ottomans and seized most of its European territory.
Bulgaria sustained the heaviest casualties of any of the allies and in any case tried to seize the largest share of the spoils.
The Serbs in particular did not agree and refused to vacate any of the territory they had seized in northern Macedonia (that is, the territory roughly corresponding to the modern Republic of Macedonia), saying that the Bulgarian army had failed to accomplish its pre-war goals at Adrianople (to capture it without Serbian help) and that the pre-war agreement on the division of Macedonia had to be revised.
Some circles in Bulgaria inclined toward going to war with Serbia and Greece on this issue.
In June 1913, Serbia and Greece formed a new alliance against Bulgaria.
The Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pasic told Greece it could have been Thrace if Greece helped Serbia keep Bulgaria out of the Serbian gains in Macedonia and the Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos agreed.
Seeing this as a violation of the pre-war agreements, and discreetly encouraged by Germany and Austria-Hungary, Tsar Ferdinand declared war on Serbia and Greece and the Bulgarian army attacked on June 29.
The Serbian and Greek forces were initially on the retreat on the western border, but soon took the upper hand and forced Bulgaria to retreat.
The fighting was very harsh, with many casualties, especially during the key Battle of Bregalnitsa.
Soon Romania entered the war and attacked Bulgaria from the north.
The Ottoman Empire saw this as an opportunity to regain its lost territories and also attacked from the south-east.
The Second Balkan War was now lost for Bulgaria, which sued for peace.
It was forced to relinquish most of Macedonia to Serbia and Greece, while the revived Ottomans retook Adrianople. Romania took southern Dobruja.
The two Balkan wars had greatly destabilised Bulgaria, stopping its steady economic progress and costing 58,000 dead and over 100,000 wounded.
However, the revanchist demand to recover the bulk of Macedonia remained powerful.
The Pantheon of National Revival Heroes
(Bulgarian: Пантеон на възрожденците)
is a Bulgarian national monument and an ossuary, located in the city of Rousse.
The remains of 39 famous Bulgarians are interred there, including:
Lyuben Karavelov,
Zahari Stoyanov,
Stefan Karadzha,
Panayot Hitov,
Tonka Obretenova,
Nikola Obretenov,
Panayot Volov,
Angel Kanchev,
and others; 453 other participants in Botev's detachment,
the Chervena Voda detachment in the April uprising, and other revolutionaries have been honored by inscription of their names in the interior.
An eternal fire burns in the middle under the gold-plated dome.
The Pantheon is one of the 100 Tourist Sites of Bulgaria.
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