Bulgarian Geopolitics in a Balkan Context

Valentin Mihaylov works in the Institute of Social and Economic Geography and Spatial Organisation at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. He holds a PhD in Human Geography from the Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Bulgaria and records previous institutional affiliation in the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Department of Geography. His chief scientific interests are focused on national and territorial identities, urban studies, political geography and geopolitics, with particular attention to the Balkans and East-Central Europe. He has authored 70 scientific publications, including seven books. Dr. Mihaylov recently published the collective volumes Post-Utopian Spaces: Transforming and Re-Evaluating Urban Icons of Socialist Modernism (co-editor) and Spatial Conflicts and Divisions in Post-Socialist Cities as an editor.

• 1. Introduction: geopolitical imaginations beyond greater state projects2. Space, human territoriality, and nationalism in classical political geography and geopolitics: the physical spaceSpace and ethnonational communitiesThe incompatibility between ethnic, spatial, and political structuresEthnic and historic territoryNational(-istic) cartography3. Critical political geography and geopolitics: the alternatives to the national(-istic) imaginations of spaceNational imaginations of space: between ‘high’ and ‘low’ geopoliticsHow nations read and politicise the geographic space: an overview of the chief concepts of critical analysisA conceptual model4. The emergence and historic evolution of an imagined national space: the San-Stefano Bulgaria and its Balkan rivals (Re)discovering historical and ethnic territory: 1762–1870A Balkan’s nation project for a greater state, as defined by external powers: 1870–1878‘We followed the principle “all or nothing”, but nothing remained for us’: 1878–1944Freezing territorial aspirations and inconsistent internal geopolitics: 1944–19895. The focusing of current geopolitics: the spatial layers of an imagined national space Possessed national space: internal geopoliticsThe ethnogeopolitical neighbourhood of a nation: multifaceted geopolitics Disaggregating external spaces of special geopolitical concern: the geopolitics of soft revisionismAncient and legendary spaces: emerging historical geopolitics6. Long-term modelling of the historic development of the nation’s spaceThe imagined continuity of Bulgarian statehoodThe changing geopolitical priorities of the Third Bulgarian StateThe long-term cognitive appropriation of an imagined national space7. Conclusion