British Perceptions of Bulgaria - Prof. Richard Crampton
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- Опубліковано 14 лип 2024
- As part of UK in Bulgaria's '100 Years' celebrations, marking the centenary of the British Ambassador's Residence in Sofia, renowned British historian Professor Richard Crampton, author of the book "A Concise History of Bulgaria", gave a lecture entitled "British Perceptions of Bulgaria -- Some Personal and Professional Reflections".
The event took place on 27 June 2014 at the British Ambassador's Residence in Sofia.
Read more about the 100 Years campaign here: www.gov.uk/government/world-l...
![[HLHW] The Power of One: The Holocaust in Bulgaria with Aaron Cohen](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/GWRJpwQ5n_4/mqdefault.jpg)
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@ Patrick Brigham
you should note the carpet bombing of Sofia did not target military or industrial sites but just general civilian areas. this is not much different from the bombing of Dresden. the germans had largely lost the war by that point as the turning point was about a year earlier.
Yep after the first bombing Churchill was advised about the heavy civilian casualties and devastation and his response was "if the medicine works give more of it"
I life part of my life in Northern Bulgaria - my Bulgarian neighbours are not saints but they are the most generous and hospitable people I have lived among. I wish I could say the same about my 'compatriots' who also live in the same village and who are also guests in another culture and territory. Most (not all) suffer from Post-Brexititis a seemingly terminal condition the symptoms of which include lingering post-colonial hubris(despite being born at a time when it had almost completely ended), blatant racialised Tourrets Syndrone and a delusional estimatimation of others valuation of current UK 'cultural capital'. I am trying to understand the rich and complex history of Bulgaria but am not looking forward to discovering yet more of the extent of our past war crimes particulary the one you mention.
@@markpovell hi Mark. Coming from an expat bulgarian in us. I have to say you are a bit harsh on your compatriots. Generally i find the brits to be nice people. Definitely warmer and more interesting than the average american. Also I'd say you are likely exposed to a less urban environment in bulgaria. People are nicer there. My father always said that his best friends are brits although he is in academia so things may be a bit different there.
I am Bulgarian and i think that professor is one idea brighter than the sleeping 'audience' and the 'çommenting' here.
Well he is a professor after all...
@@thatisme3thatisme38 Your point being?
The geographical regions of Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia have been inhabited since ancient times by the Thracians, who are the ancestors of the Bulgarians. The so-called "Macedonians" are 100% ethnic Bulgarians, who speak Bulgarian and have Bulgarian customs and traditions. Currently, about 10% of the so-called "Macedonians" have Bulgarian citizenship, and tens of thousands of Macedonian Bulgarians are in the process of obtaining Bulgarian citizenship, because the citizenship of the Macedonian Bulgarians was illegally taken away after the end of the Second World War, during which the territory of today's state of Macedonia returns to Bulgaria for a short time and the dream of uniting the Macedonian, Thracian and Moesian Bulgarians into one state is carried out.
Bulgars are Asiatic people that invaded our peninsula in the 9th century and their offsprings speak a dialect of the Old Church Slavonic/Macedonian which Cyril and Methodius used (Thessalonian dialect of Macedonian) to spread Christianity to the fellow Slavs. Bulgars have no such place in European history except that they are still trespassers claiming to be Slav and all. Macedonians always existed in the Balkan peninsula even if they got Slavicized, and their tradition, language, literature and music are the only real history Bulgars will ever have.
Macedonia has Always been Bulgarian, is, and always will BE!
In order to be true friends and allies, Macedonia needs to get rid of the lies and propaganda left from Communist Yugoslavia in their text history books about Bulgaria.
Macedonia is Bulgarian land 🇧🇬
@@mihailnikoloff2554
Oh my God how we hate the Bulgarian people !
But they like us !
Only to rehabilitate them that their name is not Tatarian !
we still have respect for Baucher in Bulgaria,i live near street Baucher,we saved our 50000 bulgarian citizen jews,didn;t save other sorry,but we saved many armenians to,i have armenian frends since kinder garden and many white russians,i know many old peoples wich start cry,when they hear their songs.Bulgarians have nothing to regret . God save our nation,and we try to repay him in those dark times,no need you to judge us hihihiHealt and happynes for all
An excellent lecture steering us away from the usual massaging of Balkan history. It also introduced the audience to events around 1943 and the 'Dirty War,' as it became known. Waged mainly from Brindisi in Italy, by the RAF and the USAF the carpet bombing of Sofia did however cause a rift between the Bulgarians and their Axis allies, causing them to join forces with the Russians. Congratulations to the British Embassy and Richard Crampton!
I don't believe the bombing caused any rift between Bulgaria and the Axis. Bulgaria was unwilling participant in WW2 to begin with and was waiting for an opportunity to switch sides. Unfortunately because of the untimely death of King Boris III the opportune moment was missed and the communist led coalition took power in Bulgaria a little later condemning Bulgaria to join the Red Army give hundreds of thousands of dead and still get under communist occupation. The casualties we gave against Germany did not give as any credit with the victors in the war. Italy- the country of Fascism was treated as a second hand ally to the GB and the US but Bulgaria was treated as a defeated enemy state. Bulgaria did not send troops against the USSR, fought only a defensive air war against Britain and the US and joined the war effort against Germany was still treated as a defeated state equal to Germany.
It actually achieved the opposite as the allies targeted civilians....that being said bulgaria was never an eager ally of the axis. Only joined as it really was given no other viable option.
It might have to do with the Russian hordes, nearing the border idk
If you think bombing is scary, you haven't seen what thousends of drunken armed russians can do
Great lecture. Really enjoyed it along with the couple of jokes. :D Richard Crampton is indeed a renowned scholar. It is sad how few Western Europeans outside Bulgaria know about it in more detail than the usual slander in the press or on TV. But I guess the saying "Ignorance is a bless" applies to us all.
Well, it's not like anyone is obliged to know about the Bulgarian society and history. Just like we, Bulgarians, in general know practically nothing about the societies and histories of the Baltic countries or of Slovenia etc. I think that, if anything, it's our own fault we haven't made ourselves better known.
@@NikeBG I dont think anybody knows much about the Baltic countries or Slovenia. Bulgarians probably not unique there...
"Ignorance is bliss"
@@thatisme3thatisme38 Indeed. Even though f.e. Lithuania (especially in the times of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) was once also a very important country in Europe (even the biggest country on the continent, for some time) and has a fascinating culture and history. But it's indeed only natural that most people would be more or less familiar only with the countries in their own region (aside from the biggest, global powers, of course) and thus a lot of interesting peoples and cultures around the world would be left mostly unknown. In a way, that can even be a good thing, as it turns them into "a secret gem" or a mystery to be discovered.
Thanks to prof. Crampton for this interesting lecture. I don't agree, however, with his positive attitude towards the EU. In my view, the only thing it has brought is a worsening (and speeding up) of Bulgaria's brain drain which followed the fall of Communism. Moreover, now Bulgarians want to join the eurozone, but they forgot that there is an important reason for Bulgaria's lev to be worth half as much as the euro: a currency should be adapted to a country's economy; pushing Bulgaria into the eurozone will lead to extreme commercial deficits, and will only benefit stronger countries like Germany. This is what happened to Italy, Portugal, Spain, and other southern countries the economies of which are far too weak to adopt the euro currency (check the TARGET2 stats). Finally, to get rid of these deficits Bulgaria would want to devaluate its currency (the euro), but Germany (the big boss of both the EU and the eurozone) would of course say "nein", and would impose (together with the IMF, etc.) an austerity package on an already poor Bulgaria. Many Bulgarian leaders are blinded by the utopian Europeist discourse (a fairytale for ideologues, but pure baloney for pragmatic people with a minimum of knowledge about monetary economics) and seem not to understand this.
You know that the Bulgarian Lev is pegged to the German mark, right?
4 years on and the still pending imposition of the Euro remains a dreadful prospect - perhaps one of the few good things about this obscene current war is that it might just give cause for serious re-evaluation. I sincerely hope so.
@@bogomilyossifov2290 lol seriously? and yes it is pegged to the euro. however it is one thing to have a pegged currency. which you have an option to depeg in the event of something like what happened to greece and being locked into using the euro with no way back.
@@zarni000 Първо - България и Гърция макроикономически нямат нищо общо. Едната държава е с развита икономика и силно задлъжняла, а другата е точно обратното. Второ - падането на валутния борд е невъзможно за по- малко от половин година. Технически невъзможно. И трето - има ли желание има и начин, ако ще да означава алтернативна валута. Колкото до тезите на орките от възраждане - ще те помоля да ми ги спестиш. Имаше и едни псевдопатриоти във Великобритания преди 8 години, които тръбяха колко губели от членството си в ЕС. От излизането им до днес нито БВП е мръднало, нито фондова борса, нито стандарт на живот се е подобрил, а онези "патриотите" вече живеят в имотите си в ЕС.
@@bogomilyossifov2290 dali bulgaria i gurciq imat neshto obshto ili ne nqma nikakvo otnoshenie za tova che i dwete sushtestvuvat w sushtata realnost, tova che bulgaria ne e zadluzhnqla ne znachi che ne mozhe da zadluzhnee.
puk da ne govorim che tova e samo prichinata nakraq wsuchko da propadne. dupkata se kopae dulgo wreme. tova che ne sa se wideli oshte razultatite ot tova kopane nishto ne ozhnachava.
a za "vuzrazhdane" i ne znam si kakvo oshte drugo nqmam ponqtie. az zhiveq izwun bulgaria ot 26 godini ta ne znam tochno kakvo se govori ot kogo.
prosto gledam na neshtata s ochi na chovek koito si ima nqkakvo ponqtie ot ikonomika i finansi. razbira se politicheski izglezhjda po dobre da se wurzhish s po-razvita ikonomika i priemaneto na valutata e chast ot tova. no neshtata ne sa tochno taka. kupuvash si bilet samo za otivane. nqma da ima wrushtane nazad.
Absolutely brilliant, no other words for it
Watch next cool too
So… I bought his book “Concise history of Bulgaria”. Therein I read that I came from some Turik tribe, which is cognate to the Afghanis, and some such, to wit, “a pot-pourri of various ethnic elements, the word Bulgar being derived from a Turik verb meaning ‘to mix’.”
If true, we used to speak some Turkish dialect. And we do not! I will have you, Compton, take note of the fact that we speak Bulgarian, we write Bulgarian, and we had a literary school, which disseminated the newly minted Cyrillic script to the other Slavic people.
It also did not escape my attention that the man is liberally sparse with the punctuation mark ignominiously often named after his institution of some type of learning, and perhaps intentionally so…
Further, have we not suffered enough British meddling and pro-Turkish attitude at a time when their dear friends were rather more blood thirsty, that we should read, even nowadays, this *stuff*.
And where, might I ask, did the dear old English come from? The little known Asian peoples collectively “known” as the Brjt-Ming-Ho? 😂
Someone else, please, write a concise history of my people. Thank you.
PS IF you want to crack a history joke that we can All have a good laugh at, why don’t you e-mail D T the Wise and inform him that his people, the Filistines, have been calling looking for their 5 sh. back?
PS Google, I know you’re just itching to mutilate my comment; go right ahead, I can’t spend the whole day correcting the mistakes you introduce, and have been introducing.
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I beg to differ, immigration has nothing to do with bettering relations between Bulgaria and Britain, which is no longer Great.
this is so patronizing I feel like barfing
You mean Crampton's lecture?