ABSTRACT
Bulgaria made its way into the Europe-centred international society in the latter half of the 19th century as a result of the unravelling of the Ottoman imperial order. Bulgaria from the 1850s onwards is a case in point. The transition from the Ottoman imperial order into the European society of states was informed and conditioned by asymmetries of normative and material power. At various levels, Bulgaria's road into Western institutions after the end of communism, culminating with membership in NATO and the European Union (EU) in 2004-7, have echoed the efforts at catching up with model European societies in the 'bourgeois period' prior to the Second World War. The Bulgarian nation's mythology, coined during the struggles for a separate church and political emancipation and disseminated thereafter by the state, pursued several goals. Bulgaria's state tradition came to play an important role in the competition with neighbours for the spoils of the retreating Ottoman Empire.
