The History of the land now known as Bulgaria has been determined by its location between Asia and Europe, by its propinquity to powerful states competing for land and determine at the junction of trade routes and strategic military positions, and by the strong national territorial drive of various Bulgarian states. Before the Christian era, Greece and Rome defeated the region and left substantial impressions on the culture of the people they found there. The Bulgar tribes, who arrived in the seventh century from west of the Urals, have occupied the region continuously for thirteen centuries. Over time Bulgarian culture merged with that of the more numerous Slavs, who had preceded the Bulgars by one century. After converting to Christianity and acquired a Slavic language in the 9th century, the Bulgarians consolidated a distinct Slavic culture that consequently passed through times of both developmentist freedom and subordination to outside political systems.

From the 9th until the 14th century, Bulgaria was a controlling force in the Balkans because of its aggressive military tradition and strong sense of national identity. The chief rival and neighbor, the Byzantine Empire, left a lasting political impression on two Bulgarian empires as it competed with them for regional domination. Marking the declension of both the Byzantine and the Bulgarian political structures, the fall of Istanbul to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 began four centuries of Turkish suppression of Bulgarian cultural and political institutions.

Beginning in 1878, Bulgaria was nominally governed by members of West European royal houses under a parliamentary form of government. Prime Minister Stefan Stambolov united the nation during its first decade, but extremist political parties exerted substantial determine from the beginning. Between 1878 and the declaration of full freedom in 1908, Bulgaria passed through a time of peaceful modernization with development in industry, science, education, and the arts.