Thrace

Thrace, ancient and modern region of the southeastern Balkans.

The historical boundaries of Thrace have varied. To the ancient Greeks it was that part of the Balkans between the Danube River to the north and the Aegean Sea to the south, being bounded on the east by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara and on the west by the mountains east of the Vardar (Modern Greek: Axiós or Vardárais) River. The Roman province of Thrace was somewhat smaller, having the same eastern maritime limits and being bounded on the north by the Balkan Mountains; the Roman province extended west only to the Néstos River. Since Roman times, Greek Macedonia to the west has been separated from Greek Thrace by the Néstos. The portion of Thrace that is now part of Greece is bounded by the Néstos River to the west, the Rhodope (Rodópi) Mountains to the north, and the Maritsa (also called Évros) River to the east. The southern part of Bulgaria and European Turkey, including the Gallipoli Peninsula, constitute the remainder of the geographical region of Thrace. About one-fourth of Thrace lies in Turkey, about one-tenth in Greece, and the remainder in Bulgaria.

Topographically, Thrace alternates between mountain-enclosed basins of varying size and deeply cut river valleys. A wide plateau extends southward from the Rhodope Mountains and separates the lowlands along the Maritsa River from the plains of western Thrace. A Mediterranean climate prevails in southern Thrace and is modified by continental influences in the Rhodope Mountains. The range of temperatures is greater in Thrace than in the southern Greek mainland; average temperatures in Alexandroúpoli (also spelled Alexandroúpolis) range from the low 40s F (about 6 °C) in January to the low 80s F (about 27 °C) in July. Rivers are reduced to trickles during the summer months, and they drain toward the Aegean.

Ancient Greek and Roman historians agreed that the ancient Thracians, who were of Indo-European stock and language, were superior fighters; only their constant political fragmentation prevented them from overrunning the lands around the northeastern Mediterranean. Although these historians characterized the Thracians as primitive partly because they lived in simple, open villages, the Thracians in fact had a fairly advanced culture that was especially noted for its poetry and music. Their soldiers were valued as mercenaries, particularly by the Macedonians and Romans.

The Greeks founded several colonies on the Thracian coasts, the most notable being Byzantium. Others were on the Bosporus, Propontis, and Thracian Chersonese peninsula. On the Aegean were Abdera near the Néstos delta and Aenus near Alexandroúpoli. Farther north on the Black Sea’s Gulf of Burgas, the Milesians founded Apollonia (7th century bce), and the Chalcedonians founded Mesembria (end of the 6th century bce).

Most Thracians became subject to Persia about 516–510 bce. Members of the Odrysae tribe briefly unified their fellow Thracians into an empire that in 360 bce split three ways and was quite easily assimilated (356–342) by Philip II of Macedon. The Thracians provided Philip’s son, Alexander the Great, with valuable light-armed troops during his conquests. In 197, Rome assigned much of Thrace to the kingdom of Pergamum, though the coastal area west of the Maritsa was annexed to the Roman province of Macedonia. In the 1st century bce, Rome became more directly involved in the affairs of the whole region, and dynastic quarrels among the local Thracian rulers, who had by then become client kings of Rome, prompted the emperor Claudius I to annex the entire Thracian kingdom in 46 ce. Thrace was subsequently made into a Roman province. The emperor Trajan and his successor, Hadrian, founded cities in Thrace, notably Sardica (modern Sofia) and Hadrianopolis (modern Edirne). About 300 ce, Diocletian reorganized the area between the Lower Danube and the Aegean into the diocese of Thrace.

From the 3rd to the 7th century the population of Thrace was altered greatly by repeated Gothic, Visigothic, and Slavic invasions and immigrations. In the 7th century the Bulgarian state was founded, and Byzantium consequently lost all Thrace north of the Balkan Mountains to the Bulgarians. Racked by Byzantine civil wars in the 14th century, Thrace fell piece by piece, up to 1453, to the Ottoman Turks, who ruled it for four centuries thereafter. Russian encroachments in the eastern Balkans culminated in the Russo-Turkish Wars (1828–29 and 1877–78), but Russia failed to create a “Greater Bulgaria” that would include the northern portions of Thrace at the expense of Turkey. The whole of Thrace therefore remained under Turkish domination. During the Balkan Wars (1912–13) Thrace suffered terribly. After World War I the boundaries of Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey in Thrace were established by the treaties of Neuilly (1919), Sèvres (1920), and Lausanne (1923), and after World War II they remained unchanged.

As a result of wars and both forced and voluntary population exchanges, the ethnic character of Thrace became more homogeneous during the 20th century, although there are still large Turkish minorities in both Greek and Bulgarian Thrace. The Turks in Greek (Western) Thrace were excluded from the Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1923, while many of the resettled Greeks from Bulgaria and Turkey were settled in Western Thrace. A relatively small number of Turks from Bulgaria were resettled in Turkish (Eastern) Thrace. The Muslim population was exempted from repatriation to Turkey by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, but many emigrated after the appropriation of their land in 1924 and subsequently continued to emigrate because of deteriorating relations between Greece and Turkey. The Greek population of Western Thrace has grown rapidly since 1923 and is now the dominant population group, generally enjoying a higher standard of living than the Turkish minority. Greek is gradually supplanting Turkish as the language of instruction even in Muslim schools. Tensions between Greeks and the remaining Muslims have led to occasional outbursts of intercommunal violence. Most Thracian Muslims are of Turkish ancestry and speak Turkish. The Pomaks, who are Muslims and speak a Bulgarian dialect, are concentrated along the border with Bulgaria. There is also a small group of sedentary Roma (Gypsies) who speak Romany and Turkish.

High-quality Turkish tobacco, cultivated primarily by Muslims, is the chief cash crop of the region. Corn (maize) and rice are grown on the lowlands of the Evros River and the plains of western Thrace. Vineyards are found around Alexandroúpoli, where wine is produced. Oyster farming around Keramotí and eel fishing at Komotiní provide exports to central Europe. The manufacturing industries of Thrace consist chiefly of the processing of agricultural crops, tobacco curing, and wine production.

Archaeological sites, including Abdera, home of Democritus, the 5th-century philosopher who developed an atomic particle theory, and of Protagoras, a counselor of Alexander the Great, and the course of the Roman highway called the Via Egnatia attract tourists. Komotiní has a large museum with objects from throughout Thrace. Komotiní also is the site of Democritus University (1973) and of a Muslim secondary college.