Thrace is a province of Greece rooted in thousands of years of history.
Located in southeastern Europe, Thrace is a historically and culturally significant region with a fascinating history that spans millennia.
Today, three different countries share parts of this ancient area’s influence: Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey.
The question that comes to mind is, however, who were the original people of this region, and how did it come to be partitioned amongst various nations instead of being part of one?
The origins of Thrace
The Thracians were a collection of Indo-European tribes who inhabited the area of southeastern continental Europe as early as the second millennium BC.
The Thracians were particularly renowned for their fierce warrior culture and excellent metallurgy talents, something that gave them significant advantagesin comparison to other neighborhing tribes.
Because of the very fearsome nature of the Thracians, the region managed to have a lasting influence on the ancient world.
During the early years of Greece’s antiquity, these tribes of Thrace were not unified under one ruler but rather existed in distinct kingdoms.
Despite their lack of political coherence and governmental unity, the Thracians had common cultural characteristics amongst themselves, such as language, religious beliefs and creative traditions.
The Thracian language is now an extinct and poorly researched; primarily known from a limited number of inscriptions and proper names found in Greek writings.
Thrace and Ancient Greece
The Thracians were well-known in ancient times for their military strength. Because of their excellent physical abilities, many men from Thrace worked as mercenaries in the armies of ancient Greece and Rome.
Their riding talents were particularly appreciated and cavalry troops from Thrace were always in high demand.
As the city-states of ancient Greece expanded their authority and strength in the broader region, they founded colonies on the Aegean and Black Sea shores of Thrace.
The significant cultural blending between the south of the Greek peninsula and the southeastern part of Europe resulted in the gradual Hellenization of many sections of Thrace, especially in the south of the region.
At the same time, the Macedonian Empire, led by King Philip II and later his son, Alexander the Great, took easy control of Thrace in the fourth century BC. After Alexander the Great died, the region became a battleground for his successors and a hotspot for Greek dominance.
The Roman dominion
In the first century AD, the emerging superpower of the known world, Rome, captured Thrace and incorporated it into its expanding empire as the province of Thracia.
Under Roman administration, the region experienced significant progress and substantial urban expansion. Due to its exceptionally strategic location at the crossroads of two continents, the construction of vital roadways, which connected it to the rest of the empire was concluded very swiftly.
Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Thrace became part of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. The fact that region was in such a strategic location very close to Constantinople, made it a popular target for invading troops, including Goths, Huns and Slavs.
In the 14th century, the Ottoman Turks began their invasion of the Balkans, and Thrace was one of their primary targets.
The Ottoman conquest
The region came eventually under Ottoman administration, which lasted for about five centuries. During that time, substantial demographic changes occurred within Thrace, such as the settlement of many Turkish populations and the conversion of certain natives from Christianity to Islam, for mere reasons of survival.
Following the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the modern Turkish Republic, state borders in Thrace changed significantly.
The modern partition of Thrace dates back to the late 19th and early 29th centuries. A number of conflicts took place during this time and subsequent treaties defined the borders many times.
Thrace and the modern Greek state
The newly independent state of Bulgaria gained control of the northern section of Thrace during the Treaty of Berlin, which was signed in 1878. A few decades later and during the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), Bulgaria gained further land in Eastern Thrace, expanding their presence in the broader region.
It wasn’t until the late 1910s and the early 1920s with the Treaty of Neuilly and the Treaty of Lausanne that the borders of this region were finalized to their current form, dividing Thrace among Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey.
The time when most of Thrace became part of Greece
In 1920, following the end of World War I, the Treaty of Sèvres was signed between the Allied Powers, who had won the war and the Ottoman Empire.
This monumental treaty for Athens, granted Greece control over most of what is today Eastern Thrace, with the exception of the zone of the Straits (Bosphorus and Dardanelles) along with Constantinople (Istanbul).
Following the treaty, a large number Greek troops triumphantly entered the historic city of Adrianople (today’s Edirne) in July 1920, and a General Administration of Thrace was formed under the leadership of Consul Antonios Sachtouris.
However, this period of Greek control over Eastern Thrace was very short-lived.
The Turkish National Movement, led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, rejected the Treaty of Sèvres and fought against what they perceived as the Greek occupation of Turkish lands.
Following the catastrophic defeat of Greece in the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) and the subsequent signing of the Armistice of Mudanya in October 1922, Greece was obliged to immediately evacuate Eastern Thrace within just 15 days.
Approximately 200,000 Thracian Greeks were forced to abandon their ancestral homes during this time along with the millions of those who had to leave Asia Minor and the broader Smyrna region. The Treaty of Lausanne, which was subsequently signed in 1923, officially ended the Greek presence in Eastern Thrace and restored the region to Turkish control, where it remains to this day.
Thrace as part of Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey
Today, Thrace is a region where three countries meet, two of them fully member-states of the European Union. Each one of them keeps its unique cultural history while sharing a similar historical inheritance of the broader region of Thrace.
Today, northern Thrace is part of southern Bulgaria and the E.U., as is Western Thrace in the northeastern part of Greece. Eastern Thrace is Turkey’s only European region right west of the big metropolitan center of Istanbul (Constantinople).
This geopolitical split of Thrace has created a diverse mixture of cultures, languages, religions and traditions, solidifying the role of Thrace as a melting pot of nations, cultures and civilizations.
The rich heritage of the ancient peoples of Thrace continues to be evident to this day through archaeological sites, museums and the region’s ongoing cultural practices that share many similarities with Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey.
From the gold treasures in Bulgaria and the numerous historical monuments in Greece and Turkey, Thrace is a truly fascinating destination for those interested in lesser-known parts of the European continent.
