Bulgaria

Bulgaria. R.J. Crampton. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]35.00. xxii + 507 pages. ISBN 978-0-19-820514-2. This addition to the Oxford History of Modern Europe emphasises the 'fluidity' surrounding Bulgarian history as the country has grown or shrunk during the centuries. Prof. Crampton eschews social and cultural history to concentrate on the political, especially on the period after the 1820s when the restructuring of the Ottoman Empire began and the Janissaries lost power. This was the beginning of the Bulgaria we know today. (There are only two chapters devoted to the period before the 1820s.) Prof. Crampton writes clearly and gives us a text well grounded in wide research. He excels in showing how the development of Bulgaria as a modern nation was part of the complex web of Balkan politics and of the power struggles among the Ottoman Empire, the Russians and what would now be called the Western Powers. He carries his story up to the fall of Communism and the country's entry to the EU which, he wonders, might end once and for all the instability caused by the country's geographic location. Time will tell. (A.C.T.)

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