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. It encompassed the territory between the Balkan Mountains, the Rhodope Mountains and Strandzha, a region known to all its inhabitantsBulgarians, Ottoman Turks, Greeks, Roma, Armenians and Jewsas Northern Thrace. The artificial 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 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.
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. 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. 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, a Bulgarian aristocrat, who was acceptable to both Bulgarians and Greeks in the province. The second governor-general was Gavril Krastevich, a Bulgarian historiaan. During the period of Bulgarian annexation Georgi Stranski was appointed as a commissioner for South Bulgaria, and when the province was restored to nominal Ottoman sovereignty, but still under Bulgarian control, the prince of Bulgaria was recognised by the Sublime Porte as the governor-general in the Tophane Agreement of 1886.
The earliest information on the ethnic demographics of Eastern Rumelia, before the first census was conducted, comes from ethnographic maps of the Balkans by Western cartographers. There is however little information on the actual population numbers of the different ethnic groups before 1878. According to a British report before the 1877–1878 war, the non-Muslim population of Eastern Rumelia was about 60%, a proportion that grew due to the flight and emigration of Muslims during and after the war. The 1878 census show a population of 815,946 people- 573,231 Bulgarians, 174,759 Muslims, 42,516 Greeks, 19,524 Roma, 4,177 Jews, and 1,306 Armenians. The results of the first Regional Assembly elections of 17 October 1879 show a predominantly Bulgarian character: Of the 36 elected deputies, 31 were Bulgarians, 3 were Greeks and two were Turks. The ethnic statistics from the censuses of 1880 and 1884 show a Bulgarian majority in the province. In the discredited census of 1880, out of total population of 815,951 people some 590,000 self-identified as Bulgarians, 158,000 as Turks, 19,500 as Roma, and 48,000 belonged to other ethnicities, notably Greeks, Armenians and Jews. The repetition of the census in 1884 returned similar data: 70.0% Bulgarians, 20.6% Turks, 2.8% Roma and 6.7% others. The Greek inhabitants of Eastern Rumelia were concentrated on the coast, where they were strong in numbers, and certain cities in the interior such as Plovdiv, where they formed a substantial minority. Most of the Greek population of the region was exchanged with Bulgarians from the Greek provinces of Macedonia and Thrace in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars and World War I. Eastern Rumelia was also inhabited by foreign nationals, most notably Austrians, Czechs, Hungarians, French people and Italians. The ethnic composition of the population of Eastern Rumelia, according to the provincial census taken in 1884, was the following:
Ethnicity
Population
Percentage
Bulgarians
681,734
70.0%
Turks
200,489
20.6%
Greeks
53,028
5.4%
Roma
27,190
2.8%
Jews
6,982
0.7%
Armenians
1,865
0.2%
Total
975,030
100%
The population's ethnic composition in the Bulgarian provinces of Pazardzhik, Plovdiv, Stara Zagora, Haskovo, Sliven, Yambol and Burgas, which have approximately the same territory as Eastern Rumelia according to the 2001 census is the following:
Ethnicity
Population
Percentage
Bulgarians
2,068,787
83.7%
Turks
208,530
8.4%
Roma
154,004
6.2%
Armenians
5,080
0.2%
Russians
4,840
0.2%
Greeks
1,398
0.1%
Jews
251
Others
8,293
0.3%
Unspecified
21,540
0.9%
Total
2,472,723
100%
Property rights
Property abandoned by Muslims fleeing the Imperial Russian Army during the 1877–1878 war was appropriated by the local Christian population. The former owners, mostly large landholders, were threatened with trial by military court if they had committed crimes during the war so that they would not return. Two Turkish landowners who did return were in fact sentenced to death thus preventing others from desiring to come back. Those Turkish landowners who were not able to take possession of their land were financially compensated, with the funds collected by the Bulgarian peasants, some of whom were indebted as a result. For those who did return a 10% property tax was issued, forcing many to sell off their property in order to pay the tax. Michael Palairet claimed that land rights of Muslim owners were largely disregarded, despite being guaranteed by the great powers, and the de-Ottomanization of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia led to economic decline in the region. Though this is contradicted by many other authors, who show rapid growth of the economy as well as rapid industrial development and growth of exports in Bulgaria after 1878.
