What if "Bulgaria" stayed centered on "Romania" through Middle Ages

raharris1973

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Take a look at this map of Bulgaria as of 814 AD:

francia814a.gif


Notice how the outline of "Bulgaria" at this stage resembles to a great degree the modern shape of Romania. To a degree its like an enlarged Romania with the northern half of modern Bulgaria, a corner of northeast Serbia and alot of eastern Hungary.

The Bulgars eventually lost the territories to the north, they were conquered at one point by the Byzantines and in their later incarnations they occupied territories further south, either closely tracking with modern Bulgaria or with modern Serbia and Macedonia, depending on the century.

What if the Bulgarians kept most of their territory north of the Danube, at a minimum Wallachia, Dobruja, Moldavia and Transylvania until at least 1400 AD? If the Byzantines do a counteroffensive, it never takes away their territories north of the Danube.

How would the Bulgarian language of the ATL compare and contrast with OTL Bulgarian?

In OTL the Bulgars were a conquering Turkic speaking people who merged ethnolinguistically with slavic people they ruled, leading to Bulgarian becoming a basically south Slavic language.

If the medieval core of Bulgaria remained north of the Danube, would Bulgarian have remained a turkic language? Or would it have absorbed more romance elements from Romanian/Aromanian? Or would it be about as slavic as OTL Bulgarian?
 
It seems to me that this would essentially require "Bulgaria" to remain a steppe empire in the manner of the original Bulgars. The process of transition into a settled, agriculturalist, Slavicized state necessarily meant that Paristrion/Upper Macedonia would be the heart of the county; it was where the people were. Such settled states, however, had difficulty with new nomads from the east. Pannonia, Moldavia, and Wallachia were lost precisely because they are basically the westernmost extensions of the Pontic Steppe, thinly populated and highly vulnerable to nomadic incursions. For an increasingly settled Bulgarian state to hang on to them for basically the entirety of the medieval period (to 1400!) seems like a fairly difficult proposition.

The best way to approach this, IMO, is to start before the date of your map and have the Bulgars basically be proto-Magyars and settle in Pannonia. This would involve taking on and destroying the Avar Khaganate around 700 or so and retaining a semi-nomadic lifestyle on the Pannonian plan, while continuing to dominate Wallachia and Moldavia. In this scenario, what we consider "Bulgaria" IOTL is instead a peripheral Slavic tributary of a Pannonian-centered steppe empire.

That said, I don't think there's much of a chance of that state lasting until 1400, especially since the Bulgars themselves are a relatively small elite. They're either going to assimilate and settle, like the OTL Magyars, in which case they'll be hard pressed to keep all that steppe land from the nomads; or they'll get obliterated by a settled empire like the Avars or Pechenegs ultimately did. In the grand scheme of things, not many empires last for 600-700 years, and you've picked a particularly difficult part of the map to hang on to.
 
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Vuru

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There was another thread which mentioned something about deep ploughs making Eastern Europe pretty much the most powerful (and not nomadic) countries to exist simply by the population they could support, transforming the entire Pontic Steppe into a filthy rich agricultural region much earlier
 

raharris1973

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There was another thread which mentioned something about deep ploughs making Eastern Europe pretty much the most powerful (and not nomadic) countries to exist simply by the population they could support, transforming the entire Pontic Steppe into a filthy rich agricultural region much earlier

I'm curious what's the threads name?

It seems to me that this would essentially require "Bulgaria" to remain a steppe empire in the manner of the original Bulgars. The process of transition into a settled, agriculturalist, Slavicized state necessarily meant that Paristrion/Upper Macedonia would be the heart of the county; it was where the people were. Such settled states, however, had difficulty with new nomads from the east. Pannonia, Moldavia, and Wallachia were lost precisely because they are basically the westernmost extensions of the Pontic Steppe, thinly populated and highly vulnerable to nomadic incursions. For an increasingly settled Bulgarian state to hang on to them for basically the entirety of the medieval period (to 1400!) seems like a fairly difficult proposition.

The best way to approach this, IMO, is to start before the date of your map and have the Bulgars basically be proto-Magyars and settle in Pannonia. This would involve taking on and destroying the Avar Khaganate around 700 or so and retaining a semi-nomadic lifestyle on the Pannonian plan, while continuing to dominate Wallachia and Moldavia. In this scenario, what we consider "Bulgaria" IOTL is instead a peripheral Slavic tributary of a Pannonian-centered steppe empire.

That said, I don't think there's much of a chance of that state lasting until 1400, especially since the Bulgars themselves are a relatively small elite. They're either going to assimilate and settle, like the OTL Magyars, in which case they'll be hard pressed to keep all that steppe land from the nomads; or they'll get obliterated by a settled empire like the Avars or Pechenegs ultimately did. In the grand scheme of things, not many empires last for 600-700 years, and you've picked a particularly difficult part of the map to hang on to.

A well-reasoned response. It's tough to hunker down in the Romanian flatlands.

Still, the alternative you suggest is interesting, and it gets us partway there.

The Pannonian based "Bulgaria" might get obliterated like the Avars or Pechenegs, or it might stabilize into "Hungary". If fortunate, they can retain control of all of the St. Stephen's lands for a millennium, while keeping their domination over Moldavia and Wallachia from 814 up to a later period like 1014 or 1114.
 
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