Bulgaria became a member of the European Union in 2007, yet its history is amongst the least well known in the rest of the continent. R. J. Crampton provides here a general introduction to this country at the cross-roads of Christendom and Islam. The text and illustrations trace the rich and dramatic story from pre-history, through the days when Bulgaria was the centre of a powerful medieval empire and the five centuries of Ottoman rule, to the cultural renaissance of the nineteenth century and the political upheavals of the twentieth, upheavals which led Bulgaria into three wars. This updated edition includes the years from 1995 to 2004, a vital period in which Bulgaria endured financial meltdown, set itself seriously on the road to reform, elected its former King as prime minister, and finally secured membership of NATO and admission to the European Union.

Focusing upon a region in Southern Bulgaria, a region that has been the crossroads between Europe and Asia for many centuries, this book describes how former Ottoman Empire Muslims were transformed into citizens of Balkan nation-states. This is a region marked by shifting borders, competing Turkish and Bulgarian sovereignties, rival nationalisms, and migration. Problems such as these were ultimately responsible for the disintegration of the dynastic empires into nation-states. Land that had traditionally belonged to Muslims—individually or communally—became a symbolic and material resource for Bulgarian state building and was the terrain upon which rival Bulgarian and Turkish nationalisms developed in the wake of the dissolution of the late Ottoman Empire and the birth of early republican Turkey and the introduction of capitalism. By the outbreak of World War II, Turkish Muslims had become a polarized national minority. Their conflicting efforts to adapt to post-Ottoman Bulgaria brought attention to the increasingly limited availability of citizenship rights, not only to Turkish Muslims, but to Bulgarian Christians as well.

"The book contains a presentation and critical consideration of the ideas of historians on the major problems, processes, events, and personalities of the era of the Bulgarian (national) Revival. It is dominated by the effort to understand how the Bulgarian Revival has been conceived of and imagined while keeping a certain distance from the various views presented, whether critical, ironic, or simply that inherent in the presentation of another person's view."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Cover -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Table of Contents -- Introduction -- CHAPTER 1 Stambolov, the Russophiles, and the Russophobes in Bulgaria -- Initial Interpretations of the Stambolov Era -- The Marxist Historians on Stambolov's Regime -- Towards Stambolov's Rehabilitation -- After the Fall of the Communist Regime -- CITED LITERATURE -- CHAPTER 2 The Rule of the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union and the "Worker-Peasant Alliance"--The Road to Power -- Agrarian Rule: Ideology and Reforms -- Interpretation and Assessments -- Aleksandŭr Stamboliiski -- The Agrarian Union and the "Unity of Action" with the Bulgarian Communist Party -- CITED LITERATURE -- CHAPTER 3 The Debate on Fascism and the Anti-fascist Struggles -- The Long Fascism and the Breaches in It -- "Monarcho-Fascism" -- Bulgaria and Hitler's Germany -- Anti-Fascism and the Struggle against Fascism -- After Communism -- CITED LITERATURE -- CHAPTER 4 September Ninth, "People's Democracy" and Socialism -- September Ninth -- "People's Democracy" (1944-1948) -- Socialism in Progress -- After Socialism, about Socialism: September Ninth Revisited -- The People's-Democratic Transition -- Georgi Dimitrov -- The Macedonian Question -- The Repressions -- Bulgarian Totalitarianism -- The Zhivkov Era and Descriptions of the System -- Socialist Modernization -- Aspects of the System -- CITED LITERATURE -- CONCLUSION The Truth and Objectivity Question in Bulgarian Historical Scholarship -- CITED LITERATURE -- Transliteration.

This volume offers the first comprehensive collection of medieval Bulgarian sources in English translation. It includes literary works, documents, inscriptions on stone and metal, graffiti, as well as coins, seals and medallions, produced during the Middle Ages by and for Bulgarians of all walks of life.