A History of the First Bulgarian Empire

A History of the First Bulgarian Empire
Author: Steven Runciman
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2018-08-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0359041434

Sir Steven Runciman tells the story of the First Bulgarian Empire as only he can. Few other historians before or since have been able to tell such a riveting and vibrant tale while maintaining such a high standard of academic rigor. Sir Steven is the rare writer who can engage a popular audience and satisfy the demands of the professional historian at the same time.

The Balkans

The Balkans
Author: D. Hupchick
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2002-01-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0312299133

The tragedies of Bosnia and Kosovo are often explained away as the unchangeable legacy of 'centuries-old hatreds'. In this richly detailed, expertly balanced chronicle of the Balkans across fifteen centuries, Hupchick sets a complicated record straight. Organized around the three great civilizations of the region - Western European, Orthodox Christian and Muslim - this is a much-needed guide to the political, social, cultural and religious threads of Balkan history, with a clear, convincing account of the reasons for nationalist violence and terror.

The Asanids

The Asanids
Author: Alexandru Madgearu
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2016-12-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004333193

In The Asanids. The Political and Military History of the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185-1280), Alexandru Madgearu offers the first comprehensive history in English of a state which played a major role in the evolution of the Balkan region during Middle Ages. This state emerged from the rebellion of two peoples, Romanians and Bulgarians, against Byzantine domination, within a few decades growing to a regional power that entered into conflict with Byzantium and with the Latin Empire of Constantinople. The founders were members of a Romanian (Vlach) family, whose intention was to revive the former Bulgarian state, the only legitimate political framework that could replace the Byzantine rule.

Bulgaria

Bulgaria
Author: R. J. Crampton
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 532
Release: 2007-02-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780191513312

Tracing the evolution of the Bulgarian state and its people, from the beginning of the Bulgarian national revival in the middle of the nineteenth century to the entry of the country into the European Union, Richard Crampton examines key political, social, and economic developments, revealing the history of a country which evolved from a backward and troublesome Balkan state to become a modern European nation. The formation of the first modern Bulgarian state in 1878 played a major role in Bulgaria's evolution, determining its stance in the two World Wars. Seeing the collapse as well as the establishment and evolution of communist rule, Bulgaria survived an often painful journey from monolithic authoritarianism to representative democracy and the market system. This book follows this journey, and analyses the development of Bulgaria's political culture, examining the emergence of radical movements, both agrarian and socialist, as well as looking at the role of religion and the position of minorities. Crampton highlights the problems and dilemmas created by the country's position situated between east and west, problems which might not be entirely solved by the country's admission to the EU.

A Concise History of Bulgaria

A Concise History of Bulgaria
Author: R. J. Crampton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2005-11-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1139448234

Bulgaria became a member of the European Union in 2007, yet its history is amongst the least well known in the rest of the continent. R. J. Crampton provides here a general introduction to this country at the cross-roads of Christendom and Islam. The text and illustrations trace the rich and dramatic story from pre-history, through the days when Bulgaria was the centre of a powerful medieval empire and the five centuries of Ottoman rule, to the cultural renaissance of the nineteenth century and the political upheavals of the twentieth, upheavals which led Bulgaria into three wars. This updated edition includes the years from 1995 to 2004, a vital period in which Bulgaria endured financial meltdown, set itself seriously on the road to reform, elected its former King as prime minister, and finally secured membership of NATO and admission to the European Union.

East of the West

East of the West
Author: Miroslav Penkov
Publisher: Bond Street Books
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2011-07-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385676018

A brilliant debut from a rising talent praised by Salman Rushdie, among others. A grandson tries to buy the corpse of Lenin on eBay for his Communist grandfather. A failed wunderkind steals a golden cross from an orthodox church. A boy meets his cousin (the love of his life) once every five years in the waters of the river that divides their village into East and West. These are some of the strange, unexpectedly moving events in talented newcomer Miroslav Penkov's vision of his home country, Bulgaria, and they are the stories that make up his extraordinary debut collection. In East of the West Penkov writes with great empathy about 800 years of tumult in troubled Eastern Europe; his characters mourn the way things were and long for things that will never be. But even as the characters wrestle with the weight of history, the debt to family, and the pangs of exile, the stories themselves are light and deft, animated by Penkov's unmatched eye for the absurd. In 2008, Salman Rushdie chose Penkov's story "Buying Lenin" (which appears in this collection) for that year's Best American Short Stories, citing its heart and humour. East of the West reveals the full realization of the brilliant potential that Rushdie recognized.

The Medieval Manichee

The Medieval Manichee
Author: Steven Runciman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 234
Release: 1982-09-16
Genre: History
ISBN:

A reissue of Sir Steven Runciman's classic account of the Dualist heretic tradition in Christianity from its Gnostic origins, through Armenia, Byzantium, and the Balkans to its final flowering in Italy and Southern France. The chief danger that early Christianity had to face came from the heretical Dualist sect founded in the mid-third century AD by the prophet Mani. Within a century of his death Manichaean churches were established from western Mediterranean lands to eastern Turkestan. Though Manichaeism failed in the end to supplant orthodox Christianity, the Church had been badly frightened; and henceforth it gave the hated epithet of 'Manichaean' to the churches of Dualist doctrines that survived into the late Middle Ages.

Byzantium and Bulgaria, 775-831

Byzantium and Bulgaria, 775-831
Author: Panos Sophoulis
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2011-10-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004206965

This innovative survey of Byzantium's relations with pre-Christian Bulgaria in the late eighth and early ninth century offers an entirely new framework for understanding the developments that shaped one of the most turbulent periods in the history of the early Medieval Balkans. Unlike previous studies, it integrates the surviving literary sources with the ever-growing archaeological record to construct a comprehensive narrative account of the Byzantine-Bulgar conflict for political mastery in the region. Moreover, the analysis of the changing socio-political structures of Bulgaria provides a basis for understanding its transformation from a loose tribal confederation into a stable monarchy. While this is primarily a regional study, focusing on the territories and peoples controlled by the two competing powers, it is also of interest to students of the Frankish, Arab and steppe-nomad worlds, since the relations between Byzantium and Bulgaria are put into a wider international context.

The Legend of Basil the Bulgar-Slayer

The Legend of Basil the Bulgar-Slayer
Author: Paul Stephenson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2003-08-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780521815307

The reign of Basil II (976-1025), the longest of any Byzantine emperor, has long been considered as a 'golden age', in which his greatest achievement was the annexation of Bulgaria. This, we have been told, was achieved through a long and bloody war of attrition which won Basil the grisly epithet Voulgartoktonos, 'the Bulgar-slayer'. In this new study Paul Stephenson argues that neither of these beliefs is true. Instead, Basil fought far more sporadically in the Balkans and his reputation as 'Bulgar-slayer' was created only a century and a half later. Thereafter the 'Bulgar-slayer' was periodically to play a galvanizing role for the Byzantines, returning to centre-stage as Greeks struggled to establish a modern nation state. As Byzantium was embraced as the Greek past by scholars and politicians, the 'Bulgar-slayer' became an icon in the struggle for Macedonia (1904-8) and the Balkan Wars (1912-13).

The Bulgarian-Byzantine Wars for Early Medieval Balkan Hegemony

The Bulgarian-Byzantine Wars for Early Medieval Balkan Hegemony
Author: Dennis P. Hupchick
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2017-07-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 3319562061

This book provides an interpretive narrative of the wars fought by Bulgaria against the Byzantine Empire for dominant control of the Balkan Peninsula during the early medieval era. Over a span of two centuries, from the early ninth through the early eleventh, and under the leadership of the Bulgarian rulers Krum, Simeon I, and Samuil, those conflicts evolved from simple confrontations for territorial possession into a life-or-death struggle for imperial precedence within the Orthodox world then emerging in Eastern Europe—a struggle that the Bulgarians ultimately lost. The primary focus is on Bulgaria, rather than Byzantium, and an effort is made to provide a historically reliable chronology of the assorted campaigns. The various belligerents’ military organizations, defensive technologies, armaments, and tactics are surveyed in an introduction to the main narrative. A prelude chapter sets the stage for the hegemonic conflict, which was divided into three distinct phases by interludes of relative peace between the contending parties, during which Bulgaria’s domestic, foreign, and cultural developments shaped the nature and conduct of the fighting in each successive phase.