Bulgaria
bool-ga'ri-a, a kingdom of Europe. It is situated on the south bank of the Danube and extends from Servia to the Black Sea. Its area is 38,080 square miles,-twice that of Switzerland. The population in 1905 was 4,035,632, three times that of Louisiana, New Orleans included. The capital is Sofia.
Bulgaria is a seat of ancient culture. Formerly a part of the Roman Empire, it was occupied by the Slavs. It was the first Slavonic territory to accept Christianity. The Christianity of the Russians was the result of missionary work emanating from this district. The Russian language assumed a fixed literary form here. The earliest Russian books were written in Bulgaria. Latterly the people were corrupted by the infusion of Tartar blood and were degraded by centuries of Turkish domination.
In 1878 Bulgaria, assisted by Russia, established its independence. A nominal tribute was paid to Turkey. In 1885 Eastern Rumelia was "confided" to the prince of Bulgaria and has since been a part of that country. In 1908 Bulgaria asserted entire independence. Progress has been rapid. Legislative authority is vested in a national assembly of one house. Universal manhood suffrage prevails. Any man thirty years old who can read and write, and who is not a priest or an active soldier, may become a candidate. The national faith is Orthodox Greek, but the church is independent. Freedom of worship prevails. Clergymen of all denominations are paid by the state. They are supported in large measure, however, by fees received for services at weddings, burials. etc.
The country is traversed by the Vienna-Constantinople Railway and has the advantage of navigation on the Danube. Telephone and telegraph lines have been established. A university is maintained at Sofia. The common schools are free. Attendance between the ages of eight and twelve is obligatory.
The surface of Bulgaria varies from mountain to plain. All minerals belong to the state. The people live in villages. The plow land is held, theoretically, by the state. It is leased in small farms of five or six acres, the lease descending from father to son. A rent of one-tenth of the produce is paid by way of taxes. The villages or communes own the pasture and woodland, but pay no taxes. Each villager has grazing and wood-cutting rights. The soil is rich and productive. Wheat, fruit, and vegetables are raised in abundance. Attar of roses, wine, silk, tobacco, carpets, hosiery, and ribbons are exported. Metals, coal, building stone, and timber are at hand.
So much has been heard lately of the Bulgarians as being in our times the special victims of the Turk that some people may find it strange to hear who the original Bulgarians were. They were a people more or less nearly akin to the Turks, and they came into Europe as barbarian conquerors who were as much dreaded by the nations of Southeastern Europe as the Turks themselves were afterwards. The old Bulgarians were a Turanian People, who settled in a large part of the Southeastern peninsula, in lands which had been already occupied by Slavs. They came in as barbarian conquerors; but, exactly as happened to so many conquerors in western Europe, they were presently assimilated by their Slavonic subjects and neighbors. They learned the Slavonic speech; they gradually lost all traces of their foreign origin. Those whom we now call Bulgarians are a Slavonic people speaking a Slavonic tongue, and they have nothing Turanian about them except the name which they borrowed from their Turanian masters . . . . . The Bulgarians entered the Empire in the seventh century, and embraced Christianity in the ninth. They rose to great power in the Southeastern lands, and played a great part in their history. But all their later history, from a comparatively short time after the first Bulgarian conquest, has been that of a Slavonic and not that of a Turanian people. The history of the Bulgarians therefore shows that it is quite possible, if circumstances are favorable, for a Turanian people to settle among the Aryans of Europe and to be thoroughly assimilated by the Aryan nation among whom they settled.-E. A. Freeman, The Ottoman Power in Europe.