It's just impossible for Bulgaria to be a major German-level power with a POD less than 1,000 years ago. The population of Germany in 1914 was 67 million, or several times greater than the entire population of the Balkans. Historical Bulgaria's in 1914 was 4.5M.
You'd probably need Bulgar domination of the Balkans in the Byzantine era - perhaps even the absorption of Byzantium into the Bulgarian Empire.
For your information it was calling the shots east of Vienna as late as the 1320s. The time and the reason when Serbia has risen to power is the period when Bulgaria was taking the brunt of the fighting against the turkic invasion. Meanwhile the rump of the Byzantine Empire was really pathetic. As much as I am OK with Turks and am perfectly comfortable with you being our neighbours, of Turkey entering the EU etc. (hell, I am an ethnic Bulgarian and my best friend is a bulgarian Turk) you just need to STOP with that bullsh*t of how you came here and the sun has risen high for us, how the Ottoman Empire was oh so powerfull militarily, and how all the people living in it, regardless of race or religion benefited of that huge market, that was booming and how Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians etc. should actually thank the Turks for that. Seriously, you gotta cut it out. The facts are simple. At the time the Bulgarian Empire ceased to exist around 1393 the territories of Bulgaria and England were relatively equal and populations were also about the same - about 1,1 - 1,3 million. Around 1878 the population of England was about 11-12 million, that of Bulgaria - about 2.2 million. You can tell it wasn't because of that good life you tend to vision. Even more so, concidering some additional points:
- the rural bulgarian people were never serfs, were way better fead than the western europeans, more healthy, as the levels of urbanization were incomparable, the level of literacy was much higher (one comes to think they should have had the time free to learn at least how to read and write)
- the epidemics in Western Europe wiped out most of the population on numerous ocasions throughout the Higher Middle Ages and the Age of Enlightment, malnourishment and its results at the time in the populations of the western european countries has been the case of study for tons of works by western historians, especially of how "the sheep in England ate the food of the people" or how ever mounting percentage of agricultural lands were turned to pastures...
- at the time Britain has risen to a dominant colonial power, so many people left for the colonies, so the demographic boost was even higher
Abdul Hadi Pasha said:
No oil, limited hard coal, a good amount of brown coal. Some iron. In the late Ottoman period Bulgaria was entering a proto-industrial state when it was lost and regressed to an agrarian country.
Please! No european industrial power was self-dependant on it's own resources. And about the fairy tales of the "proto-industrial age" in the latter XIX century Ottoman Empire, don't even get me started. The close to 500 years of genocide against the bulgarian population, relaxed at the end to some kind of segregation regime (not very eased one either, considering the attrocities of the 1876 Uprising, do some study read the comments of Januarius MacGahan, William Gladstone, Eugene Schuyler, Victor Hugot, Giuseppe Garibaldi and many others for a clearer perspective).
The first task of the Russian administration was to get the Bulgarians understand the ways the modern state, the municipal power, the judicial system actually work, because the general perception for some 480 years to that time was that "you're Bulgarians, you're Christians, for that you cannot possibly expect just treatment by the state, human rights, just trial, education, health care, economic initiatives and all of that things, be happy that you have the head on your shoulders, for that might change the very next moment". What? This is not true? And what about Batak???
When we won our freedom there was NOTHING HERE. A railroad between Ruse and Varna, teh construction of which lead to such horrible level of corruption, demanded by the ottoman officials that the railroad construction was actually stalled for the next 20 years. Another railroad in construction in Southern Bulgaria by Baron Hirsch, for the same reason (you got it, he payed pretty well to acquire his monopoly), no modern harbours, no roads (in fact even during the war of 1877-1878 tens of thousands of people were mobilized to build roads to make good for hundreds of years of utterly negligence), handfull of factories built without any government aid, no hospitals whatsoever, with a school in every village, built by the population on own expences, without any government air whatsoever... I could carry on for hours. But long story short is that in the 25 years to the turn of the century the newly reestablished state achieved a pure miracle. Did we have the resources for that then?
Small, poor, hopeless Bulgaria had back then more Leipzig- and Vienna- and Berlin- and Paris- and Zurich-educated doctors and engineers and lawyers and financial experts than those specialists in the doing-so-well Ottoman Empire, which as it seems Bulgaria only lost by secessing from. Really? Open your eyes.
The biggest problem of the south-east european people is their jealousy towards one another. But don't tell me how the Ottoman Empire came to being and put an end to those feuds. The facts are that we were doing fairly well on our own. As I mentioned the level of literacy in Eastern Europe was higher, than in the west. The science was at a higher level here as a consequence of th einteraction of the Eastern Roman Empire with the Arabs and the chinese inovations brought by chinese merchants on the Silk Road. This is what "Ex oriente lux" stands for.
Then we have the fact that these lands were much wealthier. We all know how the crusaders were soo devoted to freeing the Holy Lands for the Christianity and somehow incidentaly after conquering the wealthy East Roman Empire they instantaniously had other issues on they mind, issues like staying there for example and looting its treasures. Combining all these factors also lead to some processes of feudalism starting to fall apart on these lands way earlier than in the west. Western Europe was at that time by no means superior.
And then Eastern Europe fell to the turkic invasion and the cards were reshuffled. The Silk and Spices Road was closed, so there was the need for a new route so this is how the collonization commenced. The byzantine nobility fled to Italy and this is how the Rennaissance started. Some minor parts of the byzantine, bulgarian and serbian nobilities fled to Muscovy where they mixed with the russian nobility and built up the Russian Empire. Then of course comes the wealth from the Great Geographic Discoveries to enforce Spain, the Netherlands, the Catholic Church etc, to further emphasize the conflict between spiritual and secular authority etc. etc. etc.
And all of a sudden the world as our forefathers knew it was gone. Who once was wealthy now is poor, who once was powerfull now is weak and so on.
With all do respect Abdul Hadi Pasha don't take is as a personal insult or as a "I'm right, you're wrong!" situation, but don't go and analyze how Bulgaria couldn't possibly have the potential to be a powerfull state, when in reality it actually was.
I say just send the wave of the turkic invasion in another direction and the case of "
Bulgaria as a great European power" is solved. But then the world would be facing a utterly different global situation.