Rise of nationalism

During the second half of the 19th century the Balkans became an area of increasing nationalist restiveness directed mainly against the waning power of the Ottoman Empire, the 'sick man of Europe'. During the mid-1870s revolts erupted in Bosnia and Bulgaria which challenged Ottoman authority. The following year the Russians intervened in the Balkans on the side of the Bulgarians. After victory over the Ottomans was achieved in 1878 the Russians imposed a settlement at San Stefano (now Yesilkoy, near Istanbul), creating a large Bulgarian state that included Macedonia, though Austria-Hungary and Great Britain rejected the arrangement because it gave Russia too much influence in the region. On the invitation of the German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, representatives of the Great Powers of Europe met later that year at the Congress of Berlin to impose an overall settlement on south-eastern Europe. However the resulting Treaty of Berlin failed to meet the national aspirations of the peoples living there. In place of a large Bulgaria the Berlin settlement established a small Bulgarian principality and returned Macedonia to direct Ottoman rule. Thereafter the Bulgarians, Greeks, Montenegrins and Serbs all sought additional territories from the Ottoman Empire. Yet at the turn of the century their mutual rivalries for these territories precluded the development of any unified effort. At that point their rivalries overlapped in Macedonia, where Bulgarian, Greek and Serbian irregulars fought against each other as well as against the the Ottoman authorities.