The region of Thrace in the
Marmara region, 3,310 sq mi (8,575 sq km), South-east of Europe,
is occupying the southeastern tip of the Balkan Peninsula and comprising
North-east of Greece, South of Bulgaria, and European Turkey.
Its boundaries have varied in different periods. It is washed by the Black
Sea in the northeast and by the Sea of Marmara and the Aegean Sea in the
south.
The Rhodope mts. separate Greek from Bulgarian Thrace, and the Maritsa
River (called the Évros in Greece) separates Greek from Turkish
Thrace. The main cities are Istanbul, Edirne
(formerly Adrianople), Tekirdag, and Gallipoli (all in
Turkey);
Istanbul (Constantinople) is generally considered
a separate entity. With the exception of the mountainous Bulgarian section,
Thrace is mainly agricultural, producing tobacco, corn, rice, wheat, silk,
cotton, olive oil, and fruit. Natural gas has been discovered lately in the region.
At the dawn of history the ancient Thracians, a group of tribes speaking an Indo-European language, extended as far west as the Adriatic Sea, but they were pushed eastward (c.1300 B.C.) by the Illyrians, and in the 5th century B.C. they lost their land west of the Struma (Strimón) River to Macedon. In the north, however, Thrace at that period still extended to the Danube. Unlike the Macedonians, the Thracians did not absorb Greek culture, and their tribes formed separate petty kingdoms.
The Thracian Bronze Age was similar to that of Mycenaean Greece, and the Thracians had developed high forms of music and poetry, but their savage warfare led the Greeks to consider them barbarians. Many Greek colonies - e.g., Byzantium on the Hellespont and Tomi (modern Constanta) on the Black Sea - were founded in Thrace by c.600 B.C. The Greeks exploited Thracian gold and silver mines, and they recruited Thracians for their infantry. Thrace was reduced to vassalage by Persia from c.512 B.C. to 479 B.C., and Persian customs were introduced.
Thrace was united as a kingdom under the chieftain Sitalces, who aided Athens during the Peloponnesian War, but after his death (428 B.C.) the state again broke up. By 342 B.C. all Thrace was held by Philip II of Macedon, and after 323 B.C. most of the country was in the hands of Lysimachus, a general of Alexander the Great. It fell apart once more after Lysimachus' death (281 B.C.), and it was conquered by the Romans late in the 1st century B.C. Emperor Claudius created (A.D. 46) the province of Thrace, comprising the territory south of the Balkans; the remainder was incorporated into Moesia. The chief centers of Roman Thrace were Sardica (modern Sofia), Philippopolis (Plovdiv), and Adrianople (Edirne).
The region benefited greatly from Roman rule,
but from the barbarian invasions of the 3d century A.D. until modern times
it was almost continuously a battleground. The northern section passed
(7th century) to the Bulgarians; the southern section remained in the Byzantine
Empire, but it was largely conquered (13th century) by the second Bulgarian
empire after a brief period under the Latin Empire of Constantinople (Istanbul).
In 1361 the Ottoman Turks took Adrianople (Edirne),
and in 1453, after the fall of Constantinople,
all of Thrace fell to the Turks.
In 1878, Northern Thrace was made into the province of Eastern Rumelia; after the annexation (1885) of Eastern Rumelia by Bulgaria (which had gained independence in 1878), the political meaning of the term Thrace became restricted to its southernmost part, which was still in Turkish hands. The terms Eastern Thrace and Western Thrace were used for the territories east and west of the Maritsa (Meriç) River. In the first of the Balkan Wars (1912-13) Turkey ceded to Bulgaria all Western Thrace and the inland half of Eastern Thrace, including Adrianople (Edirne), but after its defeat in the Second Balkan War (1913), Bulgaria retroceeded all Thrace east of the Maritsa to Turkey.
After World War I, Bulgaria ceded the southern part of its share of Thrace to Greece by the Treaty of Neuilly (1919), thus losing its only outlet to the Aegean. By the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) Greece also obtained most of Eastern Thrace except the zone of the Straits (Bosphorus and Dardanelles) and Constantinople (Istanbul); the treaty, however, was superseded by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which restored to Turkey all Thrace East of the Maritsa (Meriç) river. As a result of subsequent population movements, the ethnic composition of the various parts of Thrace now corresponds largely to the national divisions. The Greek - Bulgarian frontier of 1919 and the Turkish - Greek frontier of 1923 were left unchanged after World War II, during which Bulgaria had occupied (1941-44) Greek Thrace.
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