The Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine was one of the constituent treaties of the Paris Peace Accords that brought the First World War to an end. This particular treaty finalized the peace terms between the victorious powers (Britain, France, the United States, Serbia, Romania, Greece, and Italy) and Bulgaria, which had been allied with the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. The treaty was signed on the 27th of November 1919 in the Neuilly-sur-Seine commune in the western suburbs of Paris. Under the terms of it Bulgaria was expected to pay war reparations and limit the size of its army to 20,000 men. More significantly, it ceded some small pockets of territory along its western border to the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (subsequently Yugoslavia) and a much larger stretch of territory to Greece that had previously given Bulgaria access to the Aegean Sea. This annexation of Western Thrace by Greece also involved population transfers as Greeks living in Bulgaria were transplanted out of the country to Greece and vice-versa. Many people today in both countries will have an ancestor who had to migrate as a result of the population transfers included under the terms of the treaty.[1]
Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine chronology of eventsTreaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine chronology of events
The Kingdom of Bulgaria had acquired full independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1908 after centuries of Turkish rule and decades of growing autonomy form the mid-nineteenth century forwards. It was not therefore a long-term ally of the German Empire or the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the two core nations of the Central Powers in the First World War. Instead Bulgaria only decided to join the war on the side of the Germans and Austro-Hungarians in October 1915 in order to try to reclaim lands that it had acquired and then quickly lost again during the Balkan Wars of 1912 to 1913. It sought these from Romania and Serbia, which were both allied with Britain, France and Russia. Later it also aimed to acquire lands from Greece which joined the war belatedly on the side of the British and French.[2]
Owing to this background, some studies have characterized Bulgarian involvement in the war as part of a longer conflict which began in 1912 with the outbreak of the First Balkan War and ended in 1918 with the cessation of the First World War.[3] Ultimately it ended badly for the Bulgarians. Initially Bulgaria’s entry into the war bolstered the cause of the Central Powers in the Balkans, as the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire now had full freedom of movement between each other’s territory, while Bulgarian resources tipped the balance of power against Serbia and Romania in the region. However, the entry of Greece into the war in 1917 allowed for the Entente Powers to launch a rejuvenated campaign in the southern Balkans. Ultimately the same story of superior resources on the side of the Entente, especially after the entry of the United States into the war in April 1917 on the side of Britain, France, Romania, Greece and Serbia, ensured the defeat of the Central Powers.[4]
The peace negotiations took place in Paris in 1919 and were organized according to individual treaties between the defeated nations and the victorious ones. The most famous of these, the Treaty of Versailles, was between Germany and the victorious powers.[5] In Bulgaria’s case the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine was between them and all of the victorious powers together. It was signed in the west Parisian commune of Neuilly-sur-Seine on the 27th of November 1919. £100 million of war reparations were imposed on Bulgaria and it was ordered to limit the size of its army to 20,000 men. A few small pockets of land were ceded to the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes along the western border, while Western Thrace, a large territory that had provided Bulgaria with access to the Aegean Sea, was given to Greece. Thus, where Bulgaria had entered the war in 1915 with the hope of retaking the lands it had lost in the Second Balkan War in 1913, it ended up losing even more territory to its neighbors.[6]
Extent of migration following the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-SeineExtent of migration following the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine
The terms of the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine included provisions for population transfers between Bulgaria and its neighbors, particularly Greece. This was a common feature of the post-war settlement of the Balkans disputes and there were mass population transfers between numerous victorious and defeated powers, especially between Greece and Turkey after the Greco-Turkish War that followed the First World War as part of the wider Turkish War of Independence. For instance, this population transfer involved several million people under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne, which was a delayed consequence of longstanding Greek colonization of parts of western and south-western Turkey going back all the way to the first millennium BCE.[7]
The situation was less severe when it came to Bulgaria, but reports at the time suggested that there were 37,000 Greeks living in southern Bulgaria and 150,000 Bulgarians in parts of Macedonia and Thrace that were now coming under Greek rule. A census which was carried out in Greece in 1928 gave the number of people who had immigrated to the country from Bulgaria as just over 49,000 people. This included movement of people prior to the First World War during the era of the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), but gives a good sense of the overall level of migration as well after the war pursuant from the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine.[8]
Demographic impact of the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-SeineDemographic impact of the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine
The demographic impact of the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine in the long term was to create two more ethnically homogenous countries in Bulgaria and Greece.[9] For instance, Greeks made up nearly 2% of the overall population of Bulgaria at the start of the twentieth century. That number collapsed as a result of the population transfers and by the middle of the twentieth century there was only around 5,000 Greeks in the whole of the country.[10] A similar pattern was seen in Greece, with a steep decline in the Bulgarian population. An exception is the Pomak community. These are Slavic Bulgarians whose descendants converted to Islam under Ottoman rule. Because they were Muslims, they were not included in the same way in the population transfers attendant on the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine. To this day an estimated 35,000 to 45,000 Pomaks or Pomakachoria live in the Xanthi and Rhodope regions of north-eastern Greece near the border with Bulgaria and Turkey. This is the region that was ceded to Greece under the terms of the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine back in 1919.[11]
See alsoSee also
Explore more about the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-SeineExplore more about the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine
- The Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine at The International Encyclopedia of the First World War
- Bulgaria at The International Encyclopedia of the First World War
- Records Relating to the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1919 at British Online Archives
- Text of the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine at Archive.org
- Navigating Nationality in the Emigration of Minorities between Bulgaria and Greece at Sage Journals
References
- ↑ https://opil.ouplaw.com/display/10.1093/law:epil/9780199231690/law-9780199231690-e343
- ↑ https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/balkan-wars-1912-1913/
- ↑ https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/bulgaria/
- ↑ https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/bulgaria/
- ↑ https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/paris-peace
- ↑ https://opil.ouplaw.com/display/10.1093/law:epil/9780199231690/law-9780199231690-e343
- ↑ https://merip.org/2013/06/the-greek-turkish-population-exchange/
- ↑ J. R., ‘The Exchange of Minorities and Transfers of Population in Europe since 1919, Part I’, in Bulletin of International News, Vol. 21, No. 15 (July, 1944), pp. 579–588.
- ↑ Theodora Dragostinova, ‘Navigating Nationality in the Emigration of Minorities between Bulgaria and Greece, 1919—1941’, in East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 23, No. 2 (2009), pp. 185–212.
- ↑ Theodora Dragostinova, Between Two Motherlands: Nationality and Emigration among the Greeks of Bulgaria, 1900–1949 (Cornell, 2011).
- ↑ https://greekreporter.com/2025/05/08/forgotten-greece-pomakochoria/