Bulgarian Americans

Bulgaria is an eastern European country on the Black Sea, bordered by Romania, Serbia, Macedonia, Greece, and Turkey. A former empire and the cultural hub of Slavic civilization in the Middle Ages, it became part of the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century; it gained its independence shortly before the dissolution of that empire at the close of World War I.

After World War II, it became a Communist republic but transitioned into a capitalist democracy after 1989, concurrent with the fall of eastern European Communism. In the 2000 U.S. census, 92,841 people identified themselves as having Bulgarian ancestry, 55,849 of whom listed Bulgarian as their primary ancestry. Including the growth in the population since then, the 30,000 students residing in the country, and other resident aliens, the Bulgarian government in 2010 estimated there were close to 300,000 Bulgarians and Bulgarian Americans living in the United States. That figure includes temporary residents as well as citizens and long-term residents. Bulgarian students are one of the most populous foreign student groups in the United States; in eastern Europe, only Russia (with 20 times Bulgaria's population) sends more students to American colleges.

The United States is home to more people of Bulgarian descent than any country except Bulgaria itself and possibly Moldova and Spain (depending on the figures accepted for these countries). Bulgarian immigration to the United States began in the middle of the 19th century, when immigration from central, southern, and eastern Europe began to overtake immigration from western and northern Europe. Early Bulgarians converted to Protestantism (there was not yet any Bulgarian Orthodox Church presence). America's educational opportunities were the primary motivation for the early Bulgarian immigrants. Interest in the United States was especially ignited in the late 19th century by To Chicago and Back, a travel memoir by Bulgarian author Aleko Konstantinov. Konstantinov had visited Paris in 1889 and Chicago in 1893 (for the World's Fair), and was the first Bulgarian author to write of his experiences in western Europe and the United States. Konstantinov's writing—both this book and his stories about the character Bay Ganyo, whom he first conceived while in Chicago—popularized travel among Bulgarians, as well as inspiring many Bulgarians to relocate to Chicago, which today continues to have the largest concentration of Bulgarian Americans.