Chapter 01 · c. 500 BCE – 1018 CE
Thracians, Asparukh's Khanate and the First Bulgarian Empire
Before Bulgaria there were the Thracians; then in 681 Khan Asparukh founded a state south of the Danube that Byzantium was forced to recognise, and which rose under Simeon the Great to a golden age.
The oldest civilisation of the Bulgarian lands was that of the Thracians, the Indo-European peoples described by Herodotus as among the most numerous in the world. They left no enduring state but a wealth of gold treasure and monumental tombs, two of which, the painted Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak from the late fourth century BCE and the Thracian Tomb of Sveshtari from the third century BCE, are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as masterpieces of Hellenistic-era funerary art. Over the centuries the region passed under Macedonian, then Roman and Byzantine rule, and from the sixth century CE it was settled by Slavic tribes.
In 681 the Bulgars, a Turkic people led by Khan Asparukh, crossed the Danube, defeated the army of the Byzantine emperor Constantine IV and forced Constantinople to recognise their realm and to pay tribute, the act conventionally taken as the founding of the Bulgarian state. Asparukh built his capital of stone at Pliska and a cult centre at nearby Madara. A decisive turn came under Boris I, who in 864 accepted Christianity in its Eastern, Orthodox form, binding Bulgaria to Constantinople rather than Rome and giving his Slav and Bulgar subjects a common faith. When the disciples of Saints Cyril and Methodius were expelled from Moravia, Boris welcomed them, and in the literary schools of Preslav and Ohrid they refined the Slavonic letters into the Cyrillic alphabet, a Bulgarian gift to the Orthodox Slavic world.
The empire reached its summit under Boris's son Simeon I, called the Great, whose reign of 893 to 927 is remembered as the golden age of Bulgarian culture. A Byzantine-educated ruler, Simeon extended Bulgaria toward three seas, fought repeated wars for Constantinople itself, and assumed the title of tsar, raising the Bulgarian church to a patriarchate. After his death the state weakened; in a long series of campaigns the Byzantine emperor Basil II, remembered as the Bulgar-Slayer, broke Bulgarian resistance, and in 1018 the First Bulgarian Empire was extinguished and absorbed into Byzantium.
“Boris I gave asylum to the disciples of Cyril and Methodius, and in the schools of Preslav and Ohrid the Cyrillic alphabet took shape, Bulgaria's gift to the Slavic world.”
— On the Christianization and the birth of Cyrillic
Turning points
- 4th–3rd c. BCECulture & Ideas
- 681Formation
- 864Religion
- c. 886–900Culture & Ideas
- 893–927Politics & Power
- 1018War & Rupture
Byzantine conquest of the First Empire
After long wars the Byzantine emperor Basil II, the 'Bulgar-Slayer', destroyed Bulgarian resistance and annexed the realm, ending the First Bulgarian Empire and absorbing it into Byzantium.
See the data
Figures of the era
Khan Asparukhc. 640 – c. 701
Founder of the First Bulgarian Empire
Leader of the Bulgars who in 681 crossed the Danube, defeated Constantine IV and forced Byzantium to recognise a Bulgarian state south of the river, establishing his capital at Pliska and founding the realm Bulgarians regard as the birth of their nation.
Boris Iruled 852 – 889
Khan and prince who Christianized Bulgaria
Boris I adopted Eastern Orthodox Christianity in 864 and sheltered the disciples of Cyril and Methodius, whose work in Bulgaria produced the Cyrillic script and a Slavonic literature, making his reign foundational for Bulgarian and wider Slavic civilisation.
Chapter sources: Bulgaria: The first Bulgarian empire, Boris I, Simeon I, History of Bulgaria, About Bulgaria: History, Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak, Thracian Tomb of Sveshtari
Chapter 02 · 1185 – 1396
The Second Bulgarian Empire and the Ottoman Conquest
A revolt at Tarnovo restored Bulgarian statehood and a second golden age of medieval art, before the Ottoman advance overwhelmed the country and inaugurated nearly five centuries of foreign rule.
Byzantine rule was thrown off in 1185, when the boyar brothers Asen and Peter raised a revolt in the northeast that within a year forced Constantinople to recognise a restored Bulgarian realm. They made their capital at Tarnovo, a fortress city on the Yantra river that became the heart of the Second Bulgarian Empire. Under the Asen dynasty, and above all under Ivan Asen II in the early thirteenth century, Bulgaria again became a leading Balkan power, its territory reaching toward the Aegean and Adriatic and its court a centre of Orthodox culture.
The medieval renaissance of the Second Empire is preserved most vividly in the Boyana Church on the outskirts of Sofia, whose frescoes of 1259, with their strikingly individualised faces, are among the finest achievements of eastern European medieval painting and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The age also produced the rock-hewn churches of Ivanovo and sustained the monastic life of Rila Monastery, founded in the tenth century around the cell of the hermit Saint John of Rila and revered as a spiritual heart of the Bulgarian people.
From the mid-thirteenth century the empire was weakened by Mongol pressure, internal division and the rise of rival lords. As Bulgaria fragmented, a new and formidable power advanced from Anatolia: the Ottoman Turks. They took the Bulgarian lands piece by piece across the second half of the fourteenth century; Tarnovo fell in 1393, and with the subjection of the last Bulgarian territories by 1396 the Second Empire ceased to exist. Bulgaria disappeared from the map of independent states for nearly five hundred years.
“The frescoes of the Boyana Church, painted in 1259, are among the most complete and finely preserved monuments of medieval eastern European art.”
— UNESCO World Heritage Centre
Turning points
- 1185–1186Formation
- 1218–1241Politics & Power
Ivan Asen II and the Second Empire's apogee
Under Tsar Ivan Asen II Bulgaria reached its greatest extent and prosperity, dominating the Balkans and patronising an Orthodox cultural flowering centred on Tarnovo.
- 1259Culture & Ideas
The frescoes of the Boyana Church
The second-layer frescoes of the Boyana Church near Sofia, painted in 1259, rank among the masterpieces of medieval European art and are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- 1393War & Rupture
Fall of Tarnovo to the Ottomans
The Ottoman army captured the Bulgarian capital of Tarnovo, breaking the heart of the Second Empire as the Ottomans absorbed the Bulgarian lands.
See the data - 1396War & Rupture
Ottoman conquest completed
With the subjection of the last Bulgarian territories by 1396, the Second Bulgarian Empire ended and Bulgaria passed under Ottoman rule that would last nearly five centuries.
See the data
Figures of the era
Ivan Asen IIruled 1218 – 1241
Tsar of the Second Bulgarian Empire
The greatest ruler of the Asen dynasty, Ivan Asen II extended Bulgaria to its widest medieval bounds, dominated the Balkans and presided over a flowering of Orthodox culture and trade centred on his capital, Tarnovo.
Saint John of Rilac. 876 – 946
Hermit and patron saint of Bulgaria
An ascetic whose cell in the Rila mountains became, after his canonisation, the nucleus of Rila Monastery, the most important monastic centre of Bulgaria and a guardian of national culture through the centuries of foreign rule.
Chapter sources: History of Bulgaria, About Bulgaria: History, Bulgaria: Ottoman rule, National Revival and the end of the 19th century, Boyana Church, Rila Monastery
Chapter 03 · 1396 – 1878
Ottoman Rule and the National Revival
Nearly five centuries under the sultans tested but did not extinguish Bulgarian identity; a National Revival rekindled it, and the bloody April Uprising of 1876 brought the great powers and a war of liberation.
For nearly five hundred years the Bulgarian lands were a province of the Ottoman Empire. The medieval nobility was destroyed or absorbed, and the country had no native state, yet Bulgarian identity survived in the village, in folk tradition and above all in the Orthodox Church and its monasteries, which kept alive the language, the faith and the memory of the medieval empires. The monks of Rila, Mount Athos and other foundations preserved manuscripts and learning through the long centuries when Bulgaria itself had ceased to exist as a polity.
From the eighteenth century a National Revival stirred. Its symbolic beginning is the Slavonic-Bulgarian History written in 1762 by the monk Paisius of Hilendar, which urged Bulgarians to take pride in their language and their medieval past. Over the following century the revival built Bulgarian schools, a printed literature and, in 1870, an autonomous Bulgarian Exarchate that detached the national church from Greek control. Revolutionaries such as Vasil Levski and the poet Hristo Botev organised secret networks aimed at armed liberation.
In April 1876 these networks launched the April Uprising. It was crushed with great brutality: Ottoman irregulars massacred civilians at Batak, Perushtitsa and other towns, killings that the European press reported as the 'Bulgarian Horrors' and that turned public opinion across the continent. The outcry helped push Russia into the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 to 1878, which ended Ottoman rule. By the Treaty of San Stefano of March 1878 a large Bulgarian state was reborn, and Bulgarians mark 3 March, the date of that treaty, as their national Liberation Day.
“Reports of the massacres that followed the April Uprising, known across Europe as the 'Bulgarian Horrors', enlisted European sympathies to the cause of Bulgaria.”
— On the road to liberation, 1876
Turning points
- 1396–1878Politics & Power
- 1762Culture & Ideas
- 1870Religion
Creation of the Bulgarian Exarchate
An Ottoman decree established an autonomous Bulgarian Exarchate, separating the national church from Greek ecclesiastical control and giving institutional form to the awakening nation.
- Apr 1876War & Rupture
The April Uprising and the 'Bulgarian Horrors'
A rising organised by Bulgarian revolutionaries was crushed with massacres of civilians at Batak and elsewhere; reported across Europe as the 'Bulgarian Horrors', it inflamed opinion and helped precipitate the Russo-Turkish War.
See the data - 1877–1878Independence
Russo-Turkish War and liberation
Russia's war against the Ottoman Empire ended Ottoman rule over Bulgaria; the Treaty of San Stefano of 3 March 1878 restored a Bulgarian state, a date Bulgarians commemorate as Liberation Day.
See the data
Figures of the era
Paisius of Hilendar1722 – 1773
Monk and father of the National Revival
A monk of the Hilendar monastery on Mount Athos whose 'Slavonic-Bulgarian History' of 1762 exhorted Bulgarians to cherish their language and glorious medieval past, igniting the cultural and national revival that led to liberation.
Vasil Levski1837 – 1873
Revolutionary, 'Apostle of Freedom'
The organiser of a network of secret revolutionary committees across Bulgaria, Levski sought a national rising against Ottoman rule. Captured and hanged by the Ottomans in 1873, he became the foremost martyr and hero of the Bulgarian liberation movement.
Chapter sources: Bulgaria: Ottoman rule, National Revival and the end of the 19th century, History of Bulgaria, Bulgarian Revolt Against the Ottoman Empire, Treaty of San Stefano, San Stefano, Treaty of (1878)
Chapter 04 · 1878 – 1912
San Stefano, Berlin and the Making of Modern Bulgaria
The Greater Bulgaria of San Stefano was dismembered within months by the Treaty of Berlin, the founding grievance of Bulgarian nationalism, before unification and independence restored much of what was lost.
The Treaty of San Stefano, signed on 3 March 1878 to end the Russo-Turkish War, created a large, autonomous Bulgarian principality stretching from the Danube to the Aegean and including most of Macedonia, the 'Greater Bulgaria' of national imagination. The prospect of so large a Russian-aligned state alarmed Britain and Austria-Hungary, and within months the great powers convened the Congress of Berlin to revise it. The Treaty of Berlin of July 1878 dismembered the San Stefano state: it left only a small autonomous Principality of Bulgaria north of the Balkan range, created a separate autonomous Ottoman province of Eastern Rumelia to the south, and returned Macedonia to direct Ottoman rule.
The partition at Berlin was a profound shock, and the recovery of the San Stefano frontiers, above all Macedonia, became the central, abiding ambition of Bulgarian foreign policy, the foundational grievance of modern Bulgarian irredentism. The first step came quickly: in September 1885, a bloodless revolution in Plovdiv united Eastern Rumelia with the principality. Bulgaria defended the union by defeating Serbia in a short war, and the powers accepted the new reality.
Full sovereignty followed a generation later. On 22 September 1908, exploiting a crisis in the Ottoman Empire, Prince Ferdinand proclaimed Bulgaria's complete independence at the medieval capital of Tarnovo and assumed the title of tsar, severing the last bonds of Ottoman suzerainty. The United States, which had opened diplomatic relations with Bulgaria in 1903, recognised the new kingdom's independence in 1909.
“The Treaty of Berlin split the Greater Bulgaria of San Stefano into three, leaving Macedonia under the sultan, a partition that became the abiding grievance of Bulgarian nationalism.”
— On the treaties of 1878
Turning points
- 3 Mar 1878Independence
Treaty of San Stefano creates 'Greater Bulgaria'
The Russo-Ottoman treaty created a large autonomous Bulgarian principality reaching from the Danube to the Aegean and embracing most of Macedonia, an expansive state soon known as Greater Bulgaria.
See the data - Jul 1878Politics & Power
- Sep 1885Formation
- 1903Politics & Power
Diplomatic relations with the United States
The United States established diplomatic relations with Bulgaria in 1903, the first US diplomatic agent presenting his credentials in Sofia on 19 September of that year.
- 22 Sep 1908Independence
Proclamation of independence
Prince Ferdinand proclaimed Bulgaria's full independence at Tarnovo and took the title of tsar, ending Ottoman suzerainty; the United States recognised the kingdom's independence in 1909.
See the data
Figures of the era
Ferdinand I1861 – 1948
Prince and Tsar of Bulgaria
Elected prince in 1887, Ferdinand proclaimed Bulgaria's full independence in 1908 and assumed the title of tsar. His pursuit of the San Stefano frontiers drew Bulgaria into the Balkan Wars and the First World War, after which he abdicated.
Stefan Stambolov1854 – 1895
Statesman and prime minister
A revolutionary of the liberation era who became the dominant statesman of the young principality, Stambolov consolidated the 1885 union with Eastern Rumelia and steered Bulgaria toward independence before his fall and assassination.
Chapter sources: Treaty of San Stefano, San Stefano, Treaty of (1878), Bulgaria: Treaties of San Stefano and Berlin, Bulgaria: Ottoman rule, National Revival and the end of the 19th century, About Bulgaria: History, A Guide to the United States' History of Recognition, Diplomatic, and Consular Relations: Bulgaria
Chapter 05 · 1912 – 1944
The Balkan Wars, the World Wars and the Saving of the Jews
Victory over the Ottomans turned to catastrophe in a war over Macedonia; allied to the Axis, Bulgaria regained Southern Dobruja and yet refused to surrender its own Jewish citizens to the Holocaust.
In 1912 Bulgaria joined Serbia, Greece and Montenegro in the Balkan League and, in the First Balkan War, drove the Ottomans almost out of Europe. But the victors fell out over the spoils, above all over Macedonia, the territory Bulgaria had been denied at Berlin. In June 1913 Bulgaria attacked its former allies in the Second Balkan War and was swiftly defeated by the combined forces of Serbia, Greece, Romania and the Ottomans. The Treaty of Bucharest left most of Macedonia to Serbia and Greece, and Bulgaria also lost Southern Dobruja to Romania, a national disaster that fixed the 'Macedonian Question' at the centre of Bulgarian grievance. The dispute over Macedonian identity, history and language still strains Bulgaria's relations with North Macedonia today.
Seeking to recover these losses, Bulgaria allied with the Central Powers in the First World War and was again defeated. The pursuit of revision drew it once more toward Germany, and in March 1941 Bulgaria joined the Axis. This alliance brought a rare lasting gain: by the German- and Italian-brokered Treaty of Craiova of 7 September 1940, Romania ceded Southern Dobruja back to Bulgaria, a border that, uniquely among the Axis-era settlements, survived the war and stands to this day.
Bulgaria's wartime record is also marked by an act of moral courage. Under German pressure it passed anti-Jewish laws and, in March 1943, deported more than 11,000 Jews from the territories it occupied in Greek Thrace and Yugoslav Macedonia to the Treblinka killing centre. But when the deportation of Jews from Bulgaria proper was scheduled, a protest led by the deputy speaker of the National Assembly, Dimitar Peshev, together with the Orthodox Church and public opinion, forced Tsar Boris III to cancel the orders. As a result, the roughly 48,000 Jews of the old kingdom were not deported, and Bulgaria's Jewish population at war's end was about the same as before it.
“When the deportation of the Jews of Bulgaria proper was scheduled, protest forced Tsar Boris to cancel it, and the country's roughly 48,000 Jews were not deported.”
— United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Turning points
- 1912War & Rupture
First Balkan War
Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro of the Balkan League drove the Ottoman Empire almost entirely out of Europe, with Bulgarian armies bearing the heaviest fighting in Thrace.
See the data - Jun–Aug 1913War & Rupture
Second Balkan War and the loss of Macedonia
Bulgaria attacked its former allies over the division of Macedonia and was crushed by Serbia, Greece, Romania and the Ottomans; the Treaty of Bucharest left most of Macedonia to its rivals and Southern Dobruja to Romania.
See the data - 7 Sep 1940Politics & Power
- Mar 1941War & Rupture
Bulgaria joins the Axis
Bulgaria adhered to the Tripartite Pact in March 1941 and joined the German-led attack on Yugoslavia and Greece, occupying parts of Macedonia and Thrace it had long claimed.
See the data - Mar–May 1943War & Rupture
Deportations and the rescue of Bulgaria's Jews
Bulgaria deported over 11,000 Jews from occupied Thrace and Macedonia to Treblinka, but protests led by Dimitar Peshev and the Orthodox Church forced Tsar Boris III to cancel the deportation of the roughly 48,000 Jews of Bulgaria proper, who survived.
See the data
Figures of the era
Dimitar Peshev1894 – 1973
Deputy speaker of the National Assembly
Peshev led a parliamentary revolt in March 1943 that, with the support of the Orthodox Church and public opinion, forced the government to halt the planned deportation of Bulgaria's Jews to the death camps, helping save tens of thousands of lives; he was later honoured as Righteous Among the Nations.
Boris III1894 – 1943
Tsar of Bulgaria
King during the interwar dictatorship and the Second World War, Boris III aligned Bulgaria with the Axis and regained Southern Dobruja, yet under domestic pressure cancelled the deportation of the kingdom's Jews. He died suddenly in 1943 shortly after meeting Hitler.
Chapter sources: Balkan Wars, Second Balkan War, Treaty of Craiova, Treaty of Craiova and the return of South Dobruja, Bulgaria: World War II, Bulgaria
Chapter 06 · 1944 – present
Communism, 1989 and the Return to Europe
Soviet occupation brought four decades of communist rule under Todor Zhivkov; its peaceful end in 1989 opened a difficult transition that led Bulgaria into NATO and the European Union.
In September 1944, as the Red Army entered the country, a Communist-led Fatherland Front seized power, and in 1946 a referendum abolished the monarchy and proclaimed a People's Republic. Bulgaria became one of the most loyal satellites of the Soviet Union. From 1954 the country was dominated by Todor Zhivkov, whose long rule combined industrialisation and rising living standards with one-party control, censorship and, in its final years, a brutal campaign to force the assimilation of the Turkish minority that drove hundreds of thousands to flee.
The communist order ended with the wider collapse of the Soviet bloc. On 10 November 1989, the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Zhivkov was removed by his own party, and a multi-party system was introduced; Bulgaria held its first free elections since the war in 1990. The transition from a planned to a market economy proved painful, marked by hyperinflation, the collapse of banks and emigration, but democratic institutions took root.
Bulgaria turned firmly toward the West. It joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation on 29 March 2004 and the European Union on 1 January 2007, completing its return to the European family. In the years since it has joined the Schengen area and prepared to adopt the euro, while continuing to wrestle with corruption and with the legacy of the Macedonian Question in its relations with North Macedonia.
“Bulgaria joined NATO in 2004 and the European Union on 1 January 2007, completing a return to the West a century after winning its independence.”
— On the post-communist transition
Turning points
- 9 Sep 1944Politics & Power
- 1946Politics & Power
People's Republic proclaimed
A referendum abolished the monarchy and Bulgaria was proclaimed a People's Republic, a one-party communist state allied to the Soviet Union.
- 10 Nov 1989Politics & Power
- 29 Mar 2004Politics & Power
- 1 Jan 2007Politics & Power
Figures of the era
Todor Zhivkov1911 – 1998
Communist leader of Bulgaria
Bulgaria's dominant figure from 1954, Zhivkov led the country as the Soviet Union's closest ally for over three decades, presiding over industrialisation and repression alike before being swept aside in November 1989.
Zhelyu Zhelev1935 – 2015
First democratically elected president
A dissident philosopher whose book on totalitarianism was banned, Zhelev became Bulgaria's first non-communist head of state in 1990 and its first directly elected president in 1992, guiding the early years of democratic transition.
Chapter sources: Bulgaria: The early communist era, About Bulgaria: History, Enlargement and Article 10 (Bulgaria, 2004), Bulgaria: an EU country, North Macedonia's EU Accession and Bilateral Conditionality with Bulgaria