This book is about the geographic space as an inseparable component of a nation's historical memory, territorial awareness, geopolitical visions, and obsessions.

The empirical part of the book focuses on the critical analysis of first-hand sources containing representations of the imagined spaces and places of Bulgaria and Bulgarians from a long-term perspective. The research results are structured in accordance with the author's model of an imagined national space. It contains three general domains: possessed national space, the ethnogeopolitical neighbourhood, and ancient and legendary spaces. The book also explores how Bulgarians' historical and ethnic spaces are linked with specific geopolitics, such as passive internal geopolitics, soft revisionism, non-intervening geopolitical claims, blocking international integration as a disguised form of old territorial claims, and emerging historical geopolitics. It examines how the imagined national space is approached by statesmen, politicians, academics, and other creators of 'high' geopolitics. The book also pays attention to the role of spatial imaginations in growing 'low' (popular) geopolitics, which includes media, popular culture, and national mythology.

Written in an interdisciplinary manner, this timely book will attract the interest of scholars and students in geopolitics, human geography, international relations, nationalism studies, and ethnic history.

Autorentext

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.