The Patriotic Spirit of the Bulgarian Army in the First Balkan War presented in the Reports of Major Gheorghe A. Dabija
The Patriotic Spirit of the Bulgarian Army in the First Balkan War presented in the Reports of Major Gheorghe A. Dabija

Summary/Abstract: The companion of the 19th and 20th centuries found the Balkan nations in the fullness of the generative process for the legitimation of identity and international recognition. The destiny of becoming a nation has destined those peoples to be truly grumpy and warlike, with territorial claims beyond the limits of the violence allowed by public sensibilities in a prosperous and emancipated Europe. Territorial conquests, followed by expulsions and purifications, of forced cultural assimilation, made the Balkans the “gunpowder barrel” of Europe, detonated by the great European powers in the competition for the Ottoman heritage. Geographically positioned at the periphery of the Balkan world, Romania’s national project was focused more on Central and Eastern Europe, where several million Romanians lived under the rule of the Austro–Hungarian and Russian Empires. However, the threatening Russian expansion into the Straits led Carol I to opt for an alliance with the Central Powers. Therefore, during this period the official nationalist rhetoric was focused on the issue of the Balkan Romanians. Context in which the army, together with the other institutions of the Romanian state, was mobilized in the effort to define and affirm the historical right of the Romanian nation in the Balkans, receiving the mission to identify and inform on realities and political–military, economic–social and cultural activities south of the Danube, facts that we bring to attention from the perspective of military documents.

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