Bulgarian Millet

Ethnic map of the Balkans from 1861, by Guillaume Lejean. Bulgarians are marked with light green.

Territoried under the jurisdiction of the Bulgarian Exarchate (1870-1913).

Map of European Turkey after the Treaty of Berlin. Macedonia and Adrianople areas, which were given back from Bulgaria to the Ottomans are shown with green frontiers.

Bulgarian Millet or Bulgar Millet was an ethno-religious and linguistic community within the Ottoman Empire from the mid-19th to early 20th century. Initially as Millet were recognized the Bulgarian Uniates, and then the Bulgarian Orthodox Christians (Eksarhhâne-i Millet i Bulgar).^[1] At that time the classical Ottoman Millet-system began to degrade with the continuous identification of the religious creed with ethnic identity and the term millet was used as a synonym of nation.^[2] In this way, in the struggle for recognition of a separate Church, the modern Bulgarian nation was created.^[3] The establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870, meant in practice recognition of a separate Bulgarian nationality,^[4] and in this case the religious affiliation became a consequence of national allegiance.^[5] The founding of an independent church, along with the revival of Bulgarian language and education, were the crucial factors that strengthened the national consciousness and revolutionary struggle, that led to the creation of an independent nation-state in 1878.

History

Background

All Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire were subordinated to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which was dominated by Greek Phanariotes. The Orthodox Christians were included into the Rum Millet. The belonging to this Orthodox community became more important to the common people than their ethnic origins and the Balkan Orthodox people identified themselves simply as Christians. Nevertheless, ethnonymes never disappeared and some form of ethnic identification was preserved as evident from a Sultan's Firman from 1680, which lists the ethnic groups in the Balkan lands as follows: Greeks (Rum), Albanians (Arnaut), Serbs (Sirf), Vlachs (Eflak) and Bulgarians (Bulgar).^[6] During the late 18th century, the Enlightenment in Western Europe provided influence for the initiation of the National awakening of the Bulgarian people. The rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century brought opposition to this situation. The Bulgarian nationalists then considered the Bulgarians to be oppressed as an ethnic community not only by the Turks, but also by the Greeks. They considered the Greek Patriarchal clergy as their main oppressor. The clergy oppressed the Bulgarians by forcing them to educate their children in Greek schools and by imposing Church services exclusively in Greek in order to Hellenize the Bulgarian population. The typical Bulgarians then, were considered to be the farmers. They seldom went to the towns to do small business, and if so they risked being Hellenised, while the urban Christian culture was Greek. From the Greek point of view the Bulgarian movement was an intruder into an society dominated by the Greek urban community. The Greeks were wary of the Bulgarian movement and feared it as a potential source of communal division.

School and Church struggle

During the early nineteenth century, national elites used ethno-linguistic principles to differentiate between “Bulgarian” and “Greek” identity into the Rum millet. The Bulgarian Slavs, wanted to create their own schools in a common modern literary standard.^[7] By the middle of the century, Bulgarian activists shifted their attention from language to religion and started debate on the establishment of a separate Bulgarian church.^[8] As result until the 1870s the Bulgarian National Revival was focused on the struggle for a Bulgarian Church, independent from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In the Ottoman state, cultural, administrative and even political independence from the Patriarchate could only be obtained through the establishment of a separate millet or nation. The coordinated actions, carried out by Bulgarian national leaders supported by the majority of the Slavic population in today Bulgaria, Eastern Serbia, Republic of Macedonia and Northern Greece in order to be recognized as a separate millet constituted the so-called "Church struggle". Significantly, in their confrontations with the Patriarchists, the Bulgarians often relied on the Ottoman authorities as allies. In this way by the Bulgarians, the growth of national identity previously took the form of a religious schism within the Rum millet. In 1847, a Sultan Firman was issued, in which the name Bulgarian millet appeared for the first time.^[9] As result in 1849, the Sultan had granted the Bulgarian millet the right to construct its own church in Istanbul,^[10] where on Easter Sunday 1860, the Bulgarian Orthodox church independent of the Patriarchate was virtually declared.^[11] The problem now became its recognition by the Ottoman authorities.

Recognition and restoration of Bulgaria

Then, some of the Bulgarian leaders even went so far, about the year 1860, as to negotiate with Rome for the establishment of a Bulgarian Uniate Church. Every effort was made to reduce the influence of the Greek clergy appointed to Bulgarian sees, and there was a series of insurrectionary movements. The movement for union with Rome led to the initial recognition of a separate Uniat Millet by the Sultan in 1860.^[12] The struggle between the Bulgarians and the Phanariotes intensified throughout the 1860s. After much controversy, the Turkish autorities granted in 1870 one Orthodox Millet also. As result, two armed struggle movements started to develop as late as the beginning of the 1870s: the Internal Revolutionary Organisation and the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee. Their armed struggle reached its peak with the April Uprising which broke out in 1876. It resulted into the Russo-Turkish War from 1877–1878, and led to the foundation of the third Bulgarian state after the Treaty of San Stefano. The treaty set up a Principality Bulgaria which territory included the awide area between the Danube and the Balkan mountain range, most of today Eastern Serbia, Northern Thrace, parts of Eastern Thrace and nearly all of Macedonia. At that time the clergy’s shifts from the Orthodox to the Catholic Church and vice versa were symptomatic of the foreign powers’ game that the clergy got involved after the 1878 Berlin Treaty, that partititioned the stipulated territory of the new Principality. Thus, in the interplay between the Orthodox and the Uniat doctrine, Bulgaria supported the Orthodox Exarchate. Russia supported Bulgaria. The Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople supported the Greek national idea. France and the Habsburg Empire supported the Uniats. The Ottoman Empire’s attitude was depending on how it had to balance its own interests in the game with the Great Powers.

Thrace and Macedonia

The ideas of Bulgarian nationalism grew up in significance, following the Congress of Berlin which took back the regions of Macedonia and Southern Thrace, returning them under the control of the Ottoman Empire. Also an autonomous Ottoman province, called Eastern Rumelia was created in Northern Thrace. Аs a consequence, the Bulgarian nationalist movement proclaimed as its aim the inclusion of most of Macedonia and Thrace under Greater Bulgaria. Eastern Rumelia was annexed to Bulgaria in 1885 through bloodless revolution. During the early 1890s, two pro-Bulgarian revolutionary organizations active in Macedonia and Southern Thrace were founded: the Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committees and the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee. The Macedonian Slavs then, were regarded and self-identified predominantly as Macedonian Bulgarians.^[13][14] In 1903 they participated together with the Thracian Bulgarians in the unsuccessful Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising against the Ottomans in Macedonia and the Adrianople Vilajet. That was followed by series of conflicts between Greeks and Bulgarians into both regions. The tension were result of the different concepts of nationality. The Slavic villages became divided into followers of the Bulgarian national movement and so-called grecomans. The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 restored the Ottoman Parliament, which had been suspended by the Sultan in 1878. After the Revolution armed factions laid down their arms and joined the legal struggle. The Bulgarians founded the Peoples' Federative Party (Bulgarian Section) and the Union of the Bulgarian Constitutional Clubs and participated in Ottoman elections. Soon, the Young Turks turned increasingly Ottomanist and sought to suppress the national aspirations of the various minorities in Macedonia and Thrace.

Dissolution

The effect of the Balkan Wars in 1912-1913 was the partition of Ottoman empire territories in Europe, which was followed by an anti-Bulgarian campaign in areas of Macedonia and Thrace, came under Serbian and Greek administration. The Bulgarian churchmen were expelled, the Bulgarian schools were closed and the Bulgarian language was prohibited there.^[15] The Slavic population was proclaimed either as "Southern Serbs" or as "Slavophone Greeks".^[16] In the Adrianople region, that the Ottomans managed to keep, the whole Thracian Bulgarian population was put to ethnic cleansing. As a consequense many Bulgarians fled from the territories of present-day Greece, Republic of Macedonia and European Turkey to what is now Bulgaria. Subsequently, the Ottoman Empire lost virtually all of its possessions in the Balkans, which put de facto to end the community of the Bulgarian millet.

References and notes

Sources

• Balkan cultural commonality and ethnic diversity. Raymond Detrez (Ghent University, Belgium).

See also

• Bulgarian nationalism
• Bulgarian National Revival
• National awakening of Bulgaria