AH Challenge: Greater Bulgaria

[Herr Frage]

The challene should you chose to accept it is to make the Kingdom of Bulgaria the preminient nation in the Blakans.

Requiremernts are as follows,

1. No PoD before July 7th, 1887. For Better or worse you have to deal with Prince Fredinand.

2. The Royal House of Bulgaria must remain on the throne up to present day. Though the amount of power wielded is open.

3. For a period of no less than 25 years Bulgaria to be the preminent power in the Balkans.

4. Bulgaria to fare better on the fronts of mlitary, economics, and culture.

5. No Asbs, I am curious to see what the actual potential of this oft overlooked nation is.

 

[Dan1988]

Maybe if it accepts Ottoman suzeiranity?

(it's a joke, people)

Seriously, though, for such a scenario I'd be careful - Greece would be envious regardless of what happens (because of Macedonia).

 

[Herr Frage]

Sadly I must agree. For Bulgaria to achieve dominance the Greek sun would havr to be eclipsed, perhaps forestalled?

Nein, too late for the second. What could be done from the PoD to handicap the Greeks but help the Bulgarians. The Ottomans are toomuch a double edged sword I think, their contiuned presence in the Balkans would threaten Bulgaria even more than Greece.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

1887 is really too late to make Bulgaria predominant in the Balkans. By that point the Ottomans were hard-pressed to resist Russian demands to invade it. The most that could really be hoped for is to gain Macedonia and perhaps a few other scraps of territory. That would make it greater than in OTL, but I don't really see potential for dominating the Balkans at this late date.

 

[NomadicSky]

What about that huge Bulgaria that was scaled down, I don't know much about their history but I've seen maps of a proposed Bulgaria and it was HUGE. It had much of Serbia, parts of Greece and all of Macedonia, and Albania.

Let that pass and it would be a major player.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

What about that huge Bulgaria that was scaled down, I don't know much about their history but I've seen maps of a proposed Bulgaria and it was HUGE. It had much of Serbia, parts of Greece and all of Macedonia, and Albania.

Let that pass and it would be a major player.

That was 1878 - the original post says no earlier than 1887. It didn't have Albania, and was drawn to include areas with large Bulgarian and Macedonian populations. It was largely based upon the Ottoman Bulgarian Exarchate.

In this map, the red line is the huge Bulgaria Russia tried to create in 1878, and the green is the area under the administration of the Bulgarian Exarchate - this was created by the Ottomans to separate Bulgarian-speaking Christians into a separate millet from the Greek-speakers, by whom they felt oppressed; the Serbs remained in the Greek Orthodox millet.

 

[Zyzzyva]

Yeah - the post-Russo-Turkish War POD is a bit of an issue. My guess is that the best way to do this is to have some kind of a disastrous Russo-Turk II (Well, technically Russo-Turk XVI, but who's counting?). The obvious problem with that is that the Austrians won't take it lying down, and they'll be backed by the Germans, which means that the Russians need France and probably Britain onside, which brings us to WWI...

Alternately, you could have the Bulgarians pull off a handwavium-powered victory in Balkan II; it would definately make them the preeminent power in the Balkans, although you would then have to avoid WWI to give them their 25 years in the sun. All in all, a pretty tough challenge.