Bulgaria
From Genealogy
- For other uses, see Bulgaria (disambiguation).
Bulgaria (Template:LangWithNameNoItals
, Bălgariya,[1] pronounced IPA: [bɤlˈgarijə]), officially the Republic of Bulgaria (Template:LangWithNameNoItals
, Republika Bălgariya, pronounced IPA: [rɛˈpubliˌkə bɤlˈgarijə]), a state in Southeastern Europe
, borders five other countries; Romania to the north (mostly along the Danube), Serbia and the Republic of Macedonia to the west, and Greece and Turkey to the south. It is bordered by the Black Sea to the east.
Bulgaria comprises the classical regions of Thrace, Moesia, and Macedonia and has a civilized history spanning more than 6600 years.[2] It is the sovereign successor of a powerful European medieval empire, the First Bulgarian Empire, which at times covered most of the Balkans and spread its culture and literature among the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe. Centuries later, during the decline of the Second Bulgarian Empire, the country fell under five centuries of Ottoman rule. Bulgaria was re-established as a constitutional monarchy in 1878, also known as the birth of the Third Bulgarian Kingdom. After World War II, Bulgaria became a communist state and part of the Eastern Bloc.
Today, Bulgaria functions as a democratic, unitary, constitutional republic, a member of the European Union and of NATO. It has a population of approximately 7.7 million, with Sofia as its capital and largest city.
[edit] Geography
Geographically and in terms of climate, Bulgaria features notable diversity, with the landscape ranging from the Alpine snow-capped peaks in Rila, Pirin and the Balkan Mountains to the mild and sunny weather of the Black Sea coast, from the typically continental Danubian Plain (ancient Moesia) in the north to the strong Mediterranean climatic influence in the valleys of Macedonia and the lowlands in the southernmost parts of Thrace.
Bulgaria comprises portions of the regions known in Classical Greece as Thrace, Moesia, and Macedonia. The mountainous southwest of the country has two alpine ranges — Rila and Pirin — and further east stand the lower but more extensive Rhodope Mountains. Rila mountain includes the highest peak of the Balkan Peninsula, peak Musala at 2,925 meters (9,596 ft); the long range of the Balkan mountains runs west-east through the middle of the country, north of the famous Rose Valley. Hilly country and plains lie in the southeast, along the Black Sea coast in the east, and along Bulgaria's main river, the Danube in the north. Other major rivers include the Struma and the Maritsa river in the south. There are around 260 glacial lakes situated in Rila and Pirin, several large lakes on the Black Sea coast and more than 2,200 dam lakes. Mineral springs are in great abundance located mainly in the south-western and central parts of the country along the faults between the mountains.Bulgaria has a temperate climate, with cool and damp winters, very hot and dry summers, and Mediterranean influence along the Black Sea coast. The barrier effect of the Balkan Mountains influences climate throughout the country: northern Bulgaria gets slightly cooler and receives more rain than the southern regions. Average precipitation in Bulgaria is about 630 millimetres per year. The driest areas are Dobrudzha and the northern coastal strip, while the higher parts of the mountains Rila and Stara Planina receive the highest levels of precipitation. In summer, temperatures in the south of Bulgaria often exceed 40 degrees Celsius, but remain cooler by the coast. The highest recorded temperature is 46.7c near Plovdiv.
The country possesses relatively rich mineral resources, including vast reserves of lignite and anthracite coal; non-ferrous ores such as copper, lead, zinc and gold. It has large deposits of manganese ore in the north-east. Smaller deposits exist of iron, silver, chromite, nickel and others. Bulgaria has abundant non-metalliferous minerals such as rock-salt, gypsum, kaolin, marble.
The Balkan peninsula derives its name from the Balkan or Stara Planina mountain-range, which runs through the centre of Bulgaria and extends into eastern Serbia.
Bulgaria's larger cities include:
- Sofia
(1,380,406 inhabitants)
- Plovdiv (376,918)
- Varna (346 944)
- Burgas (209,985)
- Rousse (176,118)
- Stara Zagora (163,193)
- Pleven (121,700)
- Dobrich (115,861)
- Sliven (106,434)
- Shumen (103,016)
Bulgaria operates a scientific base on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands off Antarctica.
[edit] History
[edit] Prehistory
- Further information: {{wp|{{{1|[[Example}}}}}]] and Bronze Age Europe
Prehistoric cultures of Bulgaria include the neolithic Hamangia culture and Vinča culture (6th to 3rd millennia BC), the eneolithic Varna culture (5th millennium BC, see also Varna Necropolis), and the Bronze Age Ezero culture. The Karanovo chronology serves as a gauge for the prehistory of the wider Balkans region.
[edit] Antiquity
- See this link for the Panagyurishte Treasure, which ranks among the most splendid achievements of the Thracian culture.
The Thracians, the earliest known people to inhabit the present-day territory of Bulgaria, have left traceable marks among all the Balkan region despite its tumultuous history of many conquests.[4][5] The Thracians lived divided into numerous separate tribes until King Teres united most of them around 500 BC in the Odrysian kingdom, which peaked under the kings Sitalkes and Cotys I (383-359 BC). In 188 BC, the Romans invaded Thrace, and the wars with them continued to 45. Thrace was never conquered: The Romans reached a ceasefire with the Thracians which allowed them to keep all their privileges and religious freedoms in exchange of accepting the Roman administration.
"The Great Bulgaria in Roman times had been called Moesia and had a mixed population of Thracians, Greeks and Dacians, most of whom spoke either Greek or a sub-Latin language known as Romance." This region "had been overrun by the Slavs in the mid 7th century.[6]
[edit] Old Great Bulgaria
In 632 the Bulgars, led by Khan Kubrat, formed an independent state called Great Bulgaria, bounded by the Danube delta to the west, the Black Sea to the south, the Caucasus to the southeast, and the Volga River to the east. Byzantium recognized the new state by treaty in 635.
Pressure from the Khazars led to the loss of the eastern part of Great Bulgaria in the second half of the seventh century. Some of the Bulgars from that territory later migrated to the northeast to form a new state called Volga Bulgaria (around the confluence of the Volga and Kama Rivers), which lasted until the thirteenth century.
In the 8th century Hungarians have entered the Carpathian Basin through Transylvania, ruled by Bulgarian leaders at the time. Bulgaria's borders were pushed lower to the southern Carpahian Mountains.
[edit] First Bulgarian Empire
, in which the Bulgarians defeated the Byzantines: one of the bloodiest battles of the Middle Ages.[7]
Kubrat’s successor, Khan Asparuh, migrated with some of the Bulgarian tribes to the lower courses of the rivers Danube, Dniester and Dniepr (known as Ongal), and conquered Moesia and Scythia Minor (Dobrudzha) from the Byzantine Empire, expanding Great Bulgaria further into the Balkan Peninsula. Historians consider the peace-treaty with Byzantium in 681 and the establishment of the new Bulgar capital of Pliska south of the Danube as marking the beginning of the First Bulgarian Empire. At the same time one of Asparuh's brothers, Kuber, settled with another Bulgar group in present-day Macedonia.
In 718 the Bulgarians raised the Arab siege of Constantinople, killing some 40,000 to 60,000 Arab soldiers.[8]
Contemporaries referred to the Bulgarian Khan Tervel as "The Saviour of Europe". For centuries afterward Bulgarians and their allies saw themselves as the angel warriors of Europe.
The influence and territorial expansion of Bulgaria increased further during the rule of Khan Krum,
[9]
who in 811 won a decisive victory against the Byzantine army led by Nicephorus I in the Battle of Pliska.
[10]
In 864 Bulgaria accepted the Orthodox faith.
[11]
The country became a major European power in the ninth and the tenth centuries, while fighting with the Byzantine Empire for the control of the Balkans. This happened under the rule of Boris I. During his reign, the Cyrillic alphabet originated in Preslav and Ohrid,[12]
adapted from the Glagolitic alphabet invented by the monks Saints Cyril and Methodius.[13]
The Cyrillic alphabet became the basis for further cultural development. Centuries later, this alphabet, along with the Old Bulgarian language, fostered the intellectual written language (lingua franca) for Eastern Europe, known as Church Slavonic. The greatest territorial extension was reached under Simeon I, the first Bulgarian Tsar,son of Boris I,[14] covering most of the Balkans. However, his greatest achievement was that at that time Bulgaria developed rich, unique Christian Slavonic culture, which became an example for the other Slavonic peoples in Eastern Europe and ensured the continued existence of the Bulgarian nation regardless of the centrifugal forces that threatened to tear it into pieces throughout its long, rich and war-ridden history.
Following a decline in the mid-tenth century (worn out by wars with Croatia, by frequent Serbian rebellions sponsored by Byzantine gold, and by disastrous Magyar and Pecheneg invasions[15]), Bulgaria collapsed in the face of an assault of the Rus' in 969-971.[16] The Byzantines then began campaigns to conquer Bulgaria. In 971, they seized the capital Preslav and captured Emperor Boris II[17]. Resistance continued under Tsar Samuil in the western Bulgarian lands for nearly half a century. The country managed to recover and defeated the Byzantines in several major battle taking the control of the most of the Balkans and in 991 invaded the Serbian state.[18] However, the state was completely destroyed by the Byzantines led by Basil II (Basil the Bulgar-Slayer) in 1018 after their victory at Kleidion.[19]
[edit] Byzantine Bulgaria
In the first decade after the establishment of Byzantine rule, no evidence remains of any major attempt at resistance or any uprising of the Bulgarian population or nobility. Given the existence of such irreconcilable opponents to Byzantium as Krakra, Nikulitsa, Dragash and others, such apparent passivity seems difficult to explain. Some historians [20] explain this fact by concessions that Basil II granted the Bulgarian nobility in order to gain their obedience. In the first place, Basil II guaranteed the indivisibility of Bulgaria in its former geographic borders and did not abolish officially the local rule of the Bulgarian nobility that now became part of Byzantine aristocracy as archons or strategs. Second, special charters (royal decrees) of Basil II recognised the autocephaly of the Bulgarian Archbishopric of Ohrid and set up its boundaries, dioceses, property and other privileges.
The people of Bulgaria challenged Byzantine rule several times in the 11th and then again later in the early 12th century. The biggest uprising occurred under the leadership of Peter II Delyan, (proclaimed Emperor of Bulgaria in Belgrade in 1040). In the mid to late 11th century, the Normans, fresh from their recent conquests in southern Italy and Sicily landed in the Balkans and began advancing against the Byzantine Empire. It took the Byzantines until 1185 before the Normans were driven out but until then they posed a constant threat to Byzantine Bulgaria. In 1091 another invasion came in the form of the Pechenegs. However, these too were crushed at Levounion and again in c. 1120 by the Byzantine Empire. After that, the Hungarians made an attempt to increase their influence beyond the Danube river; John Comnenus' campaigns along the Danube eventually drove back the Hungarians as well by c.1140. It would be another 45 years before Bulgaria would attain independence. Until that time, Bulgarian nobles ruled the province in the name of the Byzantine Empire until a rebellion by the last vassal lord led to the establishment of the Second Bulgarian Empire.
[edit] Second Bulgarian Empire
From 1185 the Second Bulgarian Empire once again established Bulgaria as an important power in Europe for two more centuries. With its capital based in Veliko Turnovo and under the Asen dynasty, this empire fought for dominance in the region against the Byzantine Empire, the Crusader states and Hungary, reaching its zenith under Ivan Asen II (1218–1241). Аs a result of the Tatar invasions (beginning in the later 13th century), of internal conflicts and of the constant attacks from the Byzantines and the Hungarians, the power of the country declined until the end of the 13th century. From 1300 under Emperor Theodore Svetoslav Bulgaria regained its strength, but by the end of the fourteenth century the country had disintegrated into several feudal principalities and was eventually conquered by the Ottoman Empire. A Polish-Hungarian crusade under the rule of Władysław III of Poland to free the Balkans was crushed in 1444 in the battle of Varna.
[edit] Ottoman rule
The five centuries of Ottoman rule featured great violence and oppression.[21] The Ottomans decimated the Bulgarian population, which lost most of its cultural relics. Large towns and the areas where Ottoman power predominated remained severely depopulated until the nineteenth century[22].
[edit] The Kingdom of Bulgaria
Following the Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78 (when Russian soldiers together with a Romanian expeditionary force and volunteer Bulgarian troops defeated the Ottoman armies), the Treaty of San Stefano of March 3, 1878, set up an autonomous Bulgarian principality. The Western Great Powers immediately rejected the treaty: they feared that a large Slavic country in the Balkans would serve Russian interests. This led to the Treaty of Berlin (1878) which provided for an autonomous Bulgarian principality comprising Moesia and the region of Sofia. The first Bulgarian prince was Alexander von Battenberg. Most of Thrace was included in the autonomous region of Eastern Rumelia, whereas the rest of Thrace and all of Macedonia was returned under the sovereignty of the Ottomans. After the Serbo-Bulgarian War and unification with Eastern Rumelia in 1885, the principality was proclaimed a fully independent kingdom on October 5 (September 22 O.S.), 1908, during the reign of Ferdinand I of Bulgaria.
Ferdinand, a prince from the ducal family of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, became the Bulgarian Prince after Alexander von Battenberg abdicated in 1886 following a coup d'état staged by pro-Russian army-officers. (Although the counter-coup d'état coordinated by Stefan Stambolov succeeded, Prince Alexander decided not to remain the Bulgarian ruler without the approval of Alexander III of Russia.) The struggle for liberation of the Bulgarians in the Adrianople, Vilayet and Macedonia continued throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries culminating with the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising organised by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization in 1903.
[edit] The Balkan Wars and World War I
In 1912 and 1913 Bulgaria became involved in the Balkan Wars, first entering into conflict alongside Greece, Serbia and Montenegro against the Ottoman Empire. The First Balkan War (1912-1913) proved a success for the Bulgarian army, but a conflict for the division of Macedonia arose amongst the victorious the allies. The Second Balkan War (1913) pitted Bulgaria against Greece and Serbia, joined by Romania and Turkey. After its defeat in the Second Balkan War, Bulgaria lost considerable territory conquered in the first war, as well as Southern Dobruja and parts of the region of Macedonia
During World War I, Bulgaria found itself fighting on the losing side as a result of its alliance with the Central Powers. The defeat led to new territorial losses (the Western Outlands