Eastern Rumelia Източна Румелия (Bulgarian) Ανατολική Ρωμυλία (Greek) روم ايلئ شرقى (Ottoman Turkish)
Autonomous Province of Ottoman Empire (in personal union with Bulgaria from 1886)
1878–1885
Principality of Bulgaria (dark green) and Eastern Rumelia (light green) after the Berlin Congress in 1878, formally in personal union from 1886.   Eastern Rumelia   Principality of Bulgaria
Capital	Plovdiv
Population
• 1884	975,030
Government
• Type	Autonomous Province
Governor-General
• 1879–1884	Aleksandar Bogoridi
• 1884–1885	Gavril Krastevich
• 1886	Aleksandar I
• 1887–1908	Ferdinand I
History
• Established	1878
• Treaty of Berlin	13 July 1878
• United with Bulgaria	6 September 1885
Preceded by Succeeded by Adrianople Vilayet Principality of Bulgaria
Today part of	Bulgaria

Eastern Rumelia (Bulgarian: Източна Румелия, romanized: Iztochna Rumeliya; Ottoman Turkish: روم الی شرقى‎, romanized: Rumeli-i Şarkî; Greek: Ανατολική Ρωμυλία, romanized: Anatoliki Romylia) was an autonomous province (oblast in Bulgarian, vilayet in Turkish) of the Ottoman Empire with a total area of 32,978 km², which was created in 1878 by virtue of the Treaty of Berlin and de facto ceased to exist in 1885, when it was united with the Principality of Bulgaria, also under nominal Ottoman suzerainty.^[1] It continued to be an Ottoman province de jure until 1908, when Bulgaria declared independence. Ethnic Bulgarians formed a majority of the population in Eastern Rumelia, but there were significant Turkish and Greek minorities. Its capital was Plovdiv (Ottoman Filibe, Greek Philippoupoli). The official languages of Eastern Rumelia were Bulgarian, Greek and Ottoman Turkish.^[2]

History

Eastern Rumelia was created as an autonomous province within the Ottoman Empire by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. The region roughly corresponded to today's southern Bulgaria, which was also the name the Russians proposed for it; this proposal was rejected by the British.^[3] It encompassed the territory between the Balkan Mountains, the Rhodope Mountains and Strandzha, a region known to all its inhabitants—Bulgarians, Ottoman Turks, Greeks, Roma, Armenians and Jews—as Northern Thrace. The artificial^[4] name, Eastern Rumelia, was given to the province on the insistence of the British delegates to the Congress of Berlin: the Ottoman notion of Rumelia refers to all European regions of the empire, i.e. those that were in Antiquity under the Roman Empire. Some twenty Pomak (Bulgarian Muslim) villages in the Rhodope Mountains refused to recognize Eastern Rumelian authority and formed the so-called Republic of Tamrash.

The province is remembered today by philatelists for having issued postage stamps from 1880 on. See the main article, Postage stamps and postal history of Eastern Rumelia.

Unification with Bulgaria

After a bloodless revolution on 6 September 1885, the province was annexed by the Principality of Bulgaria, which was de jure an Ottoman tributary state but de facto functioned as independent. After the Bulgarian victory in the subsequent Serbo-Bulgarian War, the status quo was recognized by the Porte with the Tophane Agreement on 24 March 1886. With the Tophane Act, Sultan Abdul Hamid II appointed the Prince of Bulgaria (without mentioning the name of the incumbent prince Alexander of Bulgaria) as Governor-General of Eastern Rumelia, thus retaining the formal distinction between the Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia^[5] and preserving the letter of the Berlin Treaty.^[6] However, it was clear to the Great Powers that the union between the Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia was permanent, and not to be dissolved.^[7] The Republic of Tamrash and the region of Kardzhali were reincorporated in the Ottoman Empire. The province was nominally under Ottoman suzerainty until Bulgaria became de jure independent in 1908. 6 September, Unification Day, is a national holiday in Bulgaria.

Government

According to the Treaty of Berlin, Eastern Rumelia was to remain under the political and military jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire with significant administrative autonomy (Article 13). The law frame of Eastern Rumelia was defined with the Organic Statute which was adopted on 14 April 1879 and was in force until the Unification with Bulgaria in 1885.^[8] According to the Organic Statute the head of the province was a Christian Governor-General appointed by the Sublime Porte with the approval of the Great Powers. The legislative organ was the Provincial Counsel which consisted of 56 persons, of which 10 were appointed by the governor-general, 10 were permanent and 36 were directly elected by the people.

Arkady Stolypin was the Russian civil administrator from 9 October 1878 to 18 May 1879. The first governor-general was Prince Alexander Bogoridi (1879–1884), a Bulgarian aristocrat, who was acceptable to both Bulgarians and Greeks in the province. The second governor-general was Gavril Krastevich (1884–1885), a Bulgarian historian.

During the period of Bulgarian annexation Georgi Stranski was appointed as a commissioner for South Bulgaria (9 September 1885 – 5 April 1886), and when the province was restored to nominal Ottoman sovereignty, but still under Bulgarian control, the prince of Bulgaria was recognized by the Sublime Porte as the governor-general in the Tophane Agreement of 1886.

Governors-general

No.	Portrait	Name (Birth–Death)	Term of office
			Took office	Left office	Duration
1		Knyaz Aleksandar Bogoridi (1822–1910)	18 May 1879	26 April 1884	4 years, 344 days
2		Gavril Krastevich (1813–1898)	26 April 1884	18 September 1885	1 year, 145 days
3		Knyaz Aleksandar I of Bulgaria (1857–1893)	17 April 1886	7 September 1886	143 days
4		Knyaz Ferdinand I of Bulgaria (1861–1948)	7 July 1887	5 October 1908	21 years, 90 days

Administrative divisions

Eastern Rumelia consisted of the departments (called in Bulgarian окръзи okrazi, in Ottoman terminology sanjaks) of Plovdiv (Пловдив, Filibe), Tatarpazardzhik (Татарпазарджик, Tatarpazarcığı), Haskovo (Хасково, Hasköy), Stara Zagora (Стара Загора, Eski Zağra), Sliven (Сливен, İslimye) and Burgas (Бургас, Burgaz), in turn divided into 28 cantons (equivalent to Bulgarian околии okolii, Ottoman kazas).^[9]

The cantons were:

• Department of Plovdiv: Plovdiv, Konush (the canton seat was in Stanimaka), Ovchi Halm (seat in Golyamo Konare), Stryama (seat in Karlovo), Sarnena Gora (seat in Brezovo) and Rupchos (seat in Chepelare)^b
• Department of Pazardzhik: Pazardzhik, Peshtera, Panagyurishte and Ihtiman
• Department of Haskovo: Haskovo, Hadzhi Eles, Harmanli and Kardzhali^c
• Department of Stara Zagora: Stara Zagora, Kazanlak, Chirpan, Nova Zagora and Tarnovo Seymen
• Department of Sliven: Sliven, Yambol, Kazalagach, Kavakli and Kotel
• Department of Burgas: Burgas, Anhialo, Karnobat and Aytos

Population and ethnic demographics

Pre 1878

The following is a district-by-district population extract from the 1876 Ottoman salname for the Vilayet of Adrianople, which is in turn based on the vilayet-wide census of 1875.^[10][11] As is common for Ottoman statistics, figures refer to males only (figures at the bottom are male-female aggregated estimates):