1st Edition
Bulgarian Geopolitics in a Balkan Context Imagining the Space of a Nation
1. Introduction: geopolitical imaginations beyond greater state projects
2. Space, human territoriality, and nationalism in classical political geography and geopolitics: the physical space
Space and ethnonational communities
The incompatibility between ethnic, spatial, and political structures
Ethnic and historic territory
National(-istic) cartography
3. Critical political geography and geopolitics: the alternatives to the national(-istic) imaginations of space
National imaginations of space: between ‘high’ and ‘low’ geopolitics
How nations read and politicise the geographic space: an overview of the chief concepts of critical analysis
A conceptual model
4. The emergence and historic evolution of an imagined national space: the San-Stefano Bulgaria and its Balkan rivals
(Re)discovering historical and ethnic territory: 1762–1870
A 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’: 1878–1944
Freezing territorial aspirations and inconsistent internal geopolitics: 1944–1989
5. The focusing of current geopolitics: the spatial layers of an imagined national space
Possessed national space: internal geopolitics
The ethnogeopolitical neighbourhood of a nation: multifaceted geopolitics
Disaggregating external spaces of special geopolitical concern: the geopolitics of soft revisionism
Ancient and legendary spaces: emerging historical geopolitics
6. Long-term modelling of the historic development of the nation’s space
The imagined continuity of Bulgarian statehood
The changing geopolitical priorities of the Third Bulgarian State
The long-term cognitive appropriation of an imagined national space
7. Conclusion
Biography
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.
