Eastern Rumelia or
Eastern Roumelia (; -
Rumeli-i Şarkî;
Modern Turkish:
Doğu Rumeli, ,
Anatoliki Romylia) was an autonomous province (
vilayet) in the
Ottoman Empire from 1878 to 1908, however it was under Bulgarian control from 1885, when it de facto
annexed by the
Principality of Bulgaria. Bulgaria itself at the time was nominally within the Ottoman Empire, but had been self-governing since 1878. Ethnic Bulgarians in turn composed the absolute demographic majority within Eastern Rumelia. Its capital was
Plovdiv (Filibe). Today, Bulgaria continues to hold the whole of Eastern Rumelia (the largest part of
Northern Thrace).
History
Eastern Rumelia was created as an autonomous province within the Ottoman Empire by the
Treaty of Berlin in 1878. It encompassed the territory between the
Balkan Mountains, the
Rhodope Mountains and
Strandzha, a region known to all its inhabitants
Bulgarians,
Greeks and
Ottoman Turksas
Northern Thrace. The artificial name, Eastern Rumelia, was given to the province on the insistence of the
British delegates to the
Congress of Berlin: the Ottoman notion of
Rumelia refers to all European regions of the empire, i.e. those that were in Antiquity under the
Roman Empire. Some twenty
Pomak (
Bulgarian Muslim) villages in the Rhodope Mountains refused to recognize Eastern Rumelian authority and formed the so-called
Republic of Tamrash.
According to the Treaty of Berlin, Eastern Rumelia was to remain under the political and military jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire with significant administrative autonomy (Article 13). The head of the province was a Christian
Governor-General appointed by the
Sublime Porte with the approval of the
Great Powers. Eastern Rumelia consisted from the sanjaks of
Plovdiv (Filibe),
Pazardzhik (Tatarpazarcığı),
Haskovo (Hasköy),
Stara Zagora (Eski Zağra),
Sliven (İslimye) and
Burgas (Burgaz), in turn divided into 25 kazas.
The predominantly Bulgarian character of Eastern Rumelia is well evidenced by the outcome of the first Regional Assembly elections of
17 October 1879. Of the 36 elected deputies, 31 were Bulgarians (86.1%), 3 were Greeks (8.3%) and 2 were Turks (5.6%).
The province is remembered today by
philatelists for having issued
postage stamps from 1880 on. See the main article,
Postage stamps and postal history of Eastern Rumelia.
Governors-General
The first Governor-General was the Bulgarian prince
Alexander Bogoridi (1879–1884) who was acceptable to both Bulgarians and Greeks in the province. The second Governor-General was
Gavril Krastevich (1884–1885), a famous Bulgarian historian. Before the first Governor-General,
Arkady Stolypin was the Russian Civil Administrator from
9 October 1878 to
18 May 1879.
During the period of Bulgarian annexation
Georgi Stranski was appointed as a
Commissioner for South Bugaria (
9 September 1885 -
5 April 1886), and when the province was restored to nominal Ottoman sovereignty, but still under Bulgarian control, the Prince of Bulgaria was recognized by the Sublime Porte as the Governor-General.
Unification with Bulgaria
After a bloodless
revolution on
6 September 1885, the province was annexed by the tributary
Principality of Bulgaria. After the Bulgarian victory in the subsequent
Serbo-Bulgarian War, the
status quo was recognized by the Porte with the
Tophane Act of
24 March 1886. With the Tophane Act,
Sultan Abdülhamid II appointed the Prince of Bulgaria (without mentioning the name of the incumbent prince
Alexander of Bulgaria) as Governor-General of Eastern Rumelia. The Pomak Republic was reincorporated in the
Ottoman Empire. The province was nominally under Ottoman suzerainty until Bulgaria became
de jure independent in 1908.
6 September,
Unification Day, is a
national holiday in Bulgaria.
The Greek population of the region was largely exchanged in the aftermath of the
Balkan Wars and
World War I. Several thousand Bulgarians of Greek descent still inhabit the region, as do the
Sarakatsani transhumant shepherds.
