ddition to Thrace, which
was valued because it provided access to the sea, was the primary motive
for Bulgaria's role not only in the two Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 but
also in the two world wars.

Bulgaria was not only struggling for power throughout its history; it
was also a pawn in the power struggles of the so-called great powers.
Before the Christian era the area was conquered first by Greece and
later by Rome and was influenced strongly by both of these early
cultures. Later, when the Slavs and Bulgars succeeded in forming a
united state, the country was still besieged by both Byzantium and
Rome. Although the Romans eventually lost their hold over Bulgaria, the
Byzantine Empire took both political and religious control of the
country for two centuries. When Bulgaria managed to reassert its
autonomy in the time of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom, independence was
short lived, and the country again fell under alien control, this time
to the Ottoman Turks. The Turks dominated Bulgaria for five centuries,
until liberation by the Russians temporarily gave the country full
sovereignty. Before each of the two world wars of the twentieth century,
Bulgaria was actively courted by both sides as a potentially strategic
ally. Realizing Bulgaria's territorial aspirations, Germany played upon
Bulgarian irredentism in order to gain its collaboration in the wars,
and both times Bulgaria emerged on the losing side. When World War II
ended for Bulgaria in 1944, it fell under Soviet influence, where it has
remained ever since.

EARLY HISTORY

The history of the country that became modern Bulgaria can be traced
back many hundreds of years before the time of Christ, predating by
fifteen or more centuries the arrival of the people known as Bulgars,
from whom the country ultimately took its name. The earliest people to
have a viable political organization in the area were the Thracians,
whose loosely organized tribes occupied and controlled much of the
Balkan Peninsula. Later, when their society began to disintegrate, the
Thracians fell under Greek influence and joined forces with Athens to
overrun neighboring Macedonia. In the fourth century B.C., however,
Philip of Macedon, competing with the Greeks in a power struggle over
Thrace, conquered Thrace and made the Thracians a subject people.

This invasion was followed in the second century B.C. by a Roman
invasion of Macedonia and a subsequent conquest of Thrace. By the first
cen