Veeky Forums explain pre-WWI Balkans to me

No, in 1885 Serbia didn't want any territory in that war, Serbia wanted to extort money and leave.

>didn't want any territory in that war
Actually, Milan I was as crazy as Ferdi and was backed by A-H at the time. He wanted to restore the power balance (i.e. take all the territory up to the Iskar river (pic related) and move the capital to the former capital of Turnovo) since Bulgaria got too big with the addition of ~1 million "east rumelians" . Just like how Romania took southern Dobrudja in 1913, despite it having barely any romanians as a compensation.

Yes, Milan was off his rocker, and after the war abdicated and took the Serbian treasury, moved to Paris and fucked hookers.

I've read a lot about this particular conflict. I've read Italian records, as well as British and French ones, but primarily Italian ones.
The main plan was to maintain the balance of power, however that didn't mean keeping those lands, he wanted to force Bulgaria to give Rumelia back to the Turks. This was his plan with the approval of Austria Hungary.
To the general public (both Serbian and international) it seemed that he was going to attack the Turks, and other great powers were actually relieved when he attacked Bulgaria (the Serbian army, not so much).
As he missed his opportunity, his own goal was to capture that land, and instead of giving Rumelia to Turkey, to ask Bulgaria to pay him a shit ton of money to leave.

>To the general public (both Serbian and international) it seemed that he was going to attack the Turks
Yeah, I'm aware. I even read that serb soldiers thought they were fighting the turks until it turned out they weren't. The whole war was a clusterfuck but started the precedent of balkan countries wanting land to "keep the balance" and general backstabbing. And honestly, as far as the bulgarian government and population were aware, Serbia wanted land and the population and soldiers were mad as fuck. Same shit as with the russian coup of 1886 that created the russophobe movement here.

Yes, sadly, the Balkans are a shitty sitcom (shitty laugh track included)

>1885

I've made this OP if you or anyone else is interested.

youtube.com/watch?v=y4k3h3Q201c

And Bulgaria specifically in the 20th century, as told by a british academic. Ends up sounding very apologetic, since he talks from the position of british hating bulgarians.

Bigger?

you mean bigger font? how dunno how to make the field bigger so i can do that...

well crampton is speaking to the diplomatic establishment there, and with all things diplomatic you always have to be careful what you say so as to not offend the host country. if you mean to say that you want more pro-bulgarian accounts on the pic, there's a pro-bulgarian history in the general history section, besides the "short history of bulgaria" in the bulgarian section. if you want anti-bulgarian, check out the serbian section kek.

ahh i think i misread your post senpai desu

>When A-H screwed Serbia (and Montenegro to a lesser extent) over and forced the release of Albania, Bulgaria was silent.
Bulgaria was also pushed back to the enos-midia line

the great powers forced the balkan league to give up on albania in the west and the enos-midia line in the west, so spinning this into making serbia a poor little victim when they were honor-less thieves is not gonna work in this case

This is terrible to read, you'll need to scroll in which will make the text blurry, and then you'll have to scroll up and down the picture to read the different tables. Make one column of text, make the text larger and wider so that it fits from left to right on one screen, then make it as long as you need to, possibly splitting it in different parts.

i don't know how to make it long using preview on my apple laptop... what program do i use?

mountain people owned by turks

that's as far as I care to ever delve into it

>the fact that we are now joined in the same political entity is sure hope and guarantee that this sort of thing will never happen again, hopefully.
Yeah, about that...

balkans exposed

>honorless thieves

>"The failure of the Şarköy-Bulair operation and the deployment of the 2nd Serbian Army together with its much needed heavy siege artillery sealed Adrianople's fate."
>"Subsequently the Serbs officially protested, pointing out that although they had sent their troops to Adrianople to win for Bulgaria territory whose acquisition had never been foreseen by their mutual treaty,[65] the Bulgarians had never fulfilled the clause of the treaty requiring Bulgaria to send 100,000 men to help the Serbians on their Vardar front. The Bulgarians answered that their staff had informed the Serbs about that on 23 August."
>"The Bulgarian censor rigorously cut any references about the Serbian participation in the operation in the telegrams of the foreign correspondents. Public opinion in Sofia thus failed to realize the crucial services Serbia rendered in the battle."
>"The friction escalated some weeks later when the Bulgarian delegates in London bluntly warned the Serbs that they must not expect Bulgarian support on their Adriatic claims. The Serbs angrily replied that was a clear withdrawal from the prewar agreement of mutual understanding according to the Kriva Palanka-Adriatic line of expansion, but the Bulgarians insisted that in their view, the Vardar Macedonian part of the agreement remained active and the Serbs were still obliged to surrender the area as agreed.[65] The Serbs answered by accusing the Bulgarians of maximalism, pointing out that if they lost both northern Albania and Vardar Macedonia, their participation in the common war would have been virtually for nothing."

The Bulgarians were the ones who broke the treaty first, and repeatedly.

The Serbs demanded independent arbitration (in accordance with international law), Ferdinand chimped out (in accordance with being an idiot), got his shit kicked in.

Honorless thieves? You're projecting, Ivan. Try reading independent sources instead of nationalist textbooks.

>That picture

Is it weird that despite not living in the Balkans i still get a strange sense of joy looking at the Bulgarians getting their shit kicked in? I've never even been to Bulgaria yet I feel a deep hatred for these people.

Poster above explains why

autismspeaks.org/what-autism

tl;dr serbs wanted lands where ethnic serbs didn't live

k

Everyone did in the Balkans, that's indisputable.

What my post was getting at is that it's Bulgarian WE WUZERY to say "Oh those dastardly Serbs just out of the blue decided to claim Macedonia and we did nothing wrong! It's pure coincidence literally every Balkan country went to war against us in Balkan Wars II."

Like this is from the English wiki quoting neutral sources and with direct quotes. You can't spin it.

Anyone have a map of the Balkan fronts on Armistice Day?

I'm a Serb who's been to Bulgaria, they're fine people, just don't bring up the Balkan wars.

Same as us, so long as you don't talk about the 90s you'll be fine.

Looks like more serbian excuses and spinning of the truth to me. Serbia broke THE treaty between Bulgaria and Serbia. I don't see how Serbia sending minimal aid to Bulgaria during a war in which they were allies is an excuse. Not to mention that it was ethnic Bulgarian land and the local population kept assassinating your politicians and rebelling against you. It's inexcusable.

>serbian heavy artillery
A fact nobody denies, but have you read how the siege went?
It was a spec-ops job, with one infiltration during the night to capture the front battlements, and a second infiltration during the next night to capture the core.
It was James Bondov in action, not the howitzers, who took the city.

Also, you are missing much of the overall picture here.
You didn't mention that Russia started the Balkan League to fight the Ottomans, and Russia promised to Romania that they will get Silistra fortress to stay neutral. Bulgaria owned that fortress, and didn't want to give it away, nor was it consulted. Russia was playing big boss in the region.
Also you fail to mention that Bulgaria wanted land that France and Britain denied her, because of threatening to intervene. They didn't want Russia to gain access to Istanbul through her allies, so they stopped the war before Bulgaria gets what she wanted.
And another thing most people miss, is that the Serbian, Montenegrins and Greeks already knew they will go to war with Bulgaria, because it got too big, too fast. At the time there was such a thing as the "balance of power" theory of politics, the moment someone looks to gain power, either his competition is compensated (like Serbia wanting Sofia in exchange for the Bulgarian Unification), or they get a coalition started against them.
The fact that Bulgaria was larger than any other state in the region 100% guaranteed that the others will form a coalition against her, just like they formed a coalition against the Ottoman Empire, which was the biggest Balkan state prior.
So this war isn't about Serbian thieves of warlike Bulgarians or perfidious Greeks, its about balance of power, and the politics of the day.

The treaty said Russia will decide who gets what.
The treaty also said that Romania gets Dobruja.
Bulgaria didn't give Dobruja to Romania, so they expected that Russia will not give them Macedonia.

Also the treaty didn't include Greece, since they weren't part of the original plan, Great Britain insisted they join the pact, else the British Empire will support the Ottoman Empire.
They wanted their creature in the region to grow too, not just the Austrian and Russian creatures.

So its complicated Bismarckian shit, and not something 90 IQ Balkan nationalists on Veeky Forums can argue.

>English wikipedia
>foreign sources
>looks like Serbian spinning the truth to me!
You're literally hopeless.

>have your own lands claimed by everybody
>decide to defend your people
>hey, fuck you, you were supposed to do nothing
as one other guy says, bulg got too big too fast, people around it stopped it, that's all
i get their motive, doesn't mean they were right if you look at the self determination principle