BETWEEN SCIENCE AND NATIONAL EMANCIPATION: BULGARIAN GEOGRAPHY TEXTBOOKS ON THE KINGDOM OF GREECE AND GREEKS (BEFORE THE CRIMEAN WAR)
BETWEEN SCIENCE AND NATIONAL EMANCIPATION: BULGARIAN GEOGRAPHY TEXTBOOKS ON THE KINGDOM OF GREECE AND GREEKS (BEFORE THE CRIMEAN WAR)

Summary/Abstract: The article analyzes the presentation of the Kingdom of Greece and of the Greeks inhabiting the Ottoman European provinces in the first six modern Bulgarian geography textbooks that were published in the period 1835 – 1853. Influenced by foreign Russian, Serbian, Greek and ultimately Western European geography sources, as well as by their own ideas, Bulgarian authors presented a very affirmative vision of the adjacent southern national community peacefully coexisting and even intermingling with Bulgarians in some regions and towns. The Ottoman provinces of Macedonia and Thrace were portrayed as mixed domain of Bulgarians, Greeks, Turks and other nationalities such as Vlachs or Jews. The favourable attitude to the neighbouring Greeks and the Kingdom of Greece was combined and incorporated into the general pattern that facilitated the national emancipation of Bulgarians as a separate imagined national community. This affirmative attitude altered only later, after the start of the Bulgarian struggle for church independence, and mainly after the Crimean War, when the negative outlook to Greece started to gain ascendance.

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