Thrace

Thrace (Latin Thracia, from Greek Thrakě), region in southeast Europe, forming part of present-day Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey. The name was first applied by the ancient Greeks to the northeastern shores of the Aegean Sea. Later the name was used for the greater part of the eastern Balkan Peninsula, bounded on the north by the Danube River, on the east by the Euxine (Black Sea), on the south by the Propontis (Sea of Marmara), the Bosporus, the Hellespont (Dardanelles), the Aegean Sea, and Macedonia, and on the west by Macedonia, Paionia, and Dardania.

Ancient Thrace was largely uncultivated and covered with forest; mineral deposits, particularly of gold, made the region a coveted possession. The Thracians were a barbaric, warlike people who established their own kingdom in the 5th century bc. Thrace became successively a Macedonian, Roman, and Byzantine province. By the fall of Constantinople (present-day İstanbul) in 1453, Thrace came under the control of the Ottoman Empire.

After the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 and the Congress of Berlin, the northern part of Thrace became an autonomous district, under the Turkish government, and was called Eastern Rumelia; the southern portion became the Turkish vilayet of Adrianople, now Edirne. The Conference of London in 1913, ending the Balkan Wars, gave Eastern Rumelia to Bulgaria, and by the Treaty of Bucharest, later in 1913, Bulgaria also acquired the region between the Mesta and Maritsa rivers, known as Western Thrace. Turkey retained Eastern Thrace, east of the Maritsa River. After World War I Bulgaria was compelled by the Treaty of Neuilly (November 27, 1919) to cede Western Thrace to Greece. Turkey ceded Eastern Thrace to Greece under the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres (1920). By the Treaty of Lausanne (July 24, 1923) Eastern Thrace was returned to Turkey. Greek (Western) Thrace is divided into three provinces, Évros, Xanthe, and Rhodope. It was temporarily occupied by Bulgaria (1941-1944) during World War II.