Bulgarian millet () was an ethno-religious and linguistic community within the Ottoman Empire from the mid-19th to early 20th century.
The semi-official term, was used by the Sultan for the first time in 1847, and was his tacit consent to a more ethno-linguistic definition of the Bulgarians as a nation. This resulted in the rise of a Bulgarian St. Stephen Church in the Ottoman capital Constantinople in 1851. Officially as a separate millet in 1860 were recognized the Bulgarian Uniates, and then in 1870 the Bulgarian Orthodox Christians (Eksarhhâne-i millet i Bulgar).Evolutionary Theory and Ethnic Conflict Praeger Series in Political Communication, Patrick James, David Goetze, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001, , pp. 159–160. 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.Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict: Shadows of Modernity, Andreas Wimmer, Cambridge University Press, 2002, , pp. 171–172.
The establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870, meant in practice official recognition of a separate Bulgarian nationality,A Concise History of Bulgaria, R. J. Crampton, Cambridge University Press, 2005, , p. 74.The Making of a Nation in the Balkans: Historiography of the Bulgarian Revival, Rumen Daskalov, Central European University Press, 2004, , p. 1. and in this case the religious affiliation became a consequence of national allegiance.Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 1870–1895, Duncan M. Perry, Duke University Press, 1993, , p. 7. 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 a Bulgarian nation-state in 1878.Dale F. Eickelman and Simeon Evstatiev as ed. (2022) Islam, Christianity, and Secularism in Bulgaria and Eastern Europe. Brill; , pp. 5-6.
The ideas of Bulgarian nationalism grew up in significance, following the Congress of Berlin which took back the regions of Macedonia and Thrace under Ottoman control. So the Bulgarian nationalist movement proclaimed as its aim the inclusion of most of Macedonia and Thrace under Greater Bulgaria. At the eve of the 20th century a series of conflicts arose into Ottoman regions outside the Bulgarian principality between Greeks and Serbs from one side and Bulgarians from another. The local Slavic villagers were forced to declare themselves for either of the sides, thus became divided into Bulgarophiles, Grecomans and Serbomans. After the Balkan Wars the Bulgarian millet was limited finally to the boundaries of the Bulgarian state, despite the nominally much larger previous territory of the Bulgarian Exarchate.Tomasz Kamusella (2018) Ethnic Cleansing During the Cold War. The Forgotten 1989 Expulsion of Turks from Communist Bulgaria. Taylor & Francis, , p. 192.
History
Background
All Orthodox Christians, including Bulgarians, in the Ottoman Empire were subordinated to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which was dominated by Greek Phanariotes by the end of the 19th century. The Orthodox Christians were included into the Rum millet. Belonging to this Orthodox community grew 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 or Ullah) and Bulgarians (Bulgar).История на българите. Късно средновековие и Възраждане, том 2, Георги Бакалов, TRUD Publishers, 2004, , стр. 23. (Bg.)
During the late 18th century, the Enlightenment in Western Europe provided influence for the initiation of the National awakening of the Bulgarian people. The awakening process met opposition with the rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century. According to the proponents of Bulgarian national awakening, Bulgarians were oppressed as an ethnic community not only by the Turks, but also by the Greeks. They considered the Greek Patriarchal clergy to be the main oppressor. forced Bulgarians to educate their children in Greek schools and imposed Church services exclusively in Greek in order to Hellenize the Bulgarian population.
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. Bulgarians wanted to create their own schools in a common modern literary standard.Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia Historical Dictionaries of Europe, Dimitar Bechev, Scarecrow Press, 2009, , p. 134. In the Balkans, Bulgarian education stimulated nationalist sentiments in the middle of the 19th century. Most wealthy Bulgarian merchants sent their children for a secular education, turning some of them into Bulgarian national activists. At that time secular Bulgarian schools were spreading throughout Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia, aided by modern classroom methods. This expanding set of Bulgarian schools began to come into contact with Greek schools setting the stage for nationalist conflict.
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.From Rum millet to Greek and Bulgarian Nations: Religious and National Debates in the Borderlands of the Ottoman Empire, 1870–1913, Theodora Dragostinova, Ohio State University, 2011, Columbus, OH. As a consequence, until the 1870s, the focus of the Bulgarian National Revival switched to the struggle for a Bulgarian Church, independent from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. 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 aimed at the recognition of a separate millet constitute the so-called "Church Struggle". The actions were carried out by Bulgarian national leaders and supported by the majority of the Slavic population in modern-day Bulgaria, Eastern Serbia, North Macedonia and Northern Greece.
Bulgarians often relied on the Ottoman authorities as allies in their confrontations with the Patriarchists. The Sultan Firman of 1847 was the first official document was issued, in which the name Bulgarian millet was mentioned.History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe, Marcel Cornis-Pope, John Neubauer, John Benjamins Publishing, 2004, , p. 403. In 1849 the Sultan granted the Bulgarian millet the right to construct its own church in Istanbul,The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804–1920, Charles Jelavich, Barbara Jelavich, University of Washington Press, 1986, , p. 132. The church subsequently hosted the Easter Sunday of 1860 when the autocephalous Bulgarian Exarchate was first de facto proclaimed.A Short History of Modern Bulgaria, R. J. Crampton, CUP Archive, 1987, , p. 16.
Recognition of the Bulgarian millet and Bulgarian schism In the meantime, some Bulgarian leaders tried to negotiate the establishment of a Bulgarian Uniate Church. The movement for union with Rome led to the initial recognition of a separate Bulgarian Catholic millet by the Sultan in 1860.Bulgaria, Oxford history of modern Europe, R. J. Crampton, Oxford University Press, 2007, , p. 74–77. The Sultan issued a special decree (irade) for that occasion.Anna Krŭsteva, Communities and Identities in Bulgaria, Longo, 1998, , p. 308. Although the movement initially gathered some 60,000 adherents, the subsequent establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate reduced their number with some 75%.
The Bulgarian "Church Struggle" was resolved finally with a Sultan decree in 1870, which established the Bulgarian Exarchate.Eastern Orthodox Encounters of Identity and Otherness: Values, Self-Reflection, Dialogue, Andrii Krawchuk, Thomas Bremer, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, , p. 55. The act also instituted the Bulgarian Orthodox millet – an entity combining the modern notion for a nation with the Ottoman principle of millet. It also turned the Bulgarian Exarch into both a religious leader and an administrative head of the millet. The new entity enjoyed internal cultural and administrative autonomy. However, it excluded non-Orthodox Bulgarians and, thus, failed to embrace all representatives of the Bulgarian ethnos. Scholars argue that the millet system was instrumental to transforming the Bulgarian Exarchate into an entity that promoted ethnoreligious nationalism amongst Orthodox Bulgarians.
On 11 May 1872 in the Bulgarian St. Stephen Church in Constantinople, which had been closed by the Ecumenical Patriarch's order, the Bulgarian hierarchs, celebrated a liturgy, whereafter the autocephaly of the Bulgarian Church was declared. The decision on the unilateral declaration of autocephaly by the Bulgarian Church was not accepted by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In this way, the term phyletism was coined at the Holy pan-Orthodox Synod that met in Istanbul on 10 August. The Synod issued an official condemnation of ecclesiastical nationalism, and declared on 18 September the Bulgarian Exarchate schismatic.
Independence of Bulgaria
Having achieved religious independence, Bulgarian nationalists focused on gaining political independence as well. Two revolutionary movements started to develop in the beginning of the 1870s: the Internal Revolutionary Organization and the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee. Their armed struggle reached its peak with the April Uprising which broke out in 1876. It resulted in the Russo-Turkish War of 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 wide area between the Danube and the Balkan Mountains, 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 partitioned 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. As 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.