Treaty of Bucharest, 1913

The Treaty of Bucharest was concluded on August 10, 1913, by the delegates of Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece. As Bulgaria had been completely isolated in the Second Balkan War, and as she was closely invested on her northern boundary by the of Romania on her western frontier by the allied armies of Greece and Serbia, and in the East by the Turkish Army, she was obliged, in her helplessness, to submit to such terms as her victorious enemies chose to impose upon her. All important arrangements and concessions involving the rectification of the controverted international boundary lines were perfected in a series of committee meetings, incorporated in separate protocols, and formally ratified by subsequent action of the general assembly of delegates.

Appraisement of the treaty

By the terms of the Treaty of Bucharest, Romania profited most in proportion to her sacrifices. The unredeemed Romanians live mostly in Austro-Hungary and Russia, and therefore the Balkan wars afforded her no adequate opportunity to perfect the rectification of her boundaries on ethnographic lines.

Related Topics:
Austro-Hungary - Russia

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The humiliating terms imposed on Bulgaria were due to her own impatience and intemperate folly. The territory she secured was relatively circumscribed; she had failed to emancipate Macedonia, which was her avowed purpose in entering the war; she lost the districts of Ohrid and Monastir, which she especially coveted; she was assigned only a small line on the Aegean, with the wretched port of Dedeagatch; and she was obliged to forfeit her ambition as the leader of the Balkan hegemony.

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Greece, though gaining much, was greatly dissatisfied. The acquisition of Saloniki was a triumph; she was assigned the port of Kavala and the territory eastward at the insistence of the King and the army and contrary to the advice of Venizelos; in the northwest Greece encountered the opposition of Italy by urging her claims to southern Albania; in the assignment of the Aegean Islands she was profoundly dissatisfied; and she still claims 3,000,000 unredeemed conationals.

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The fundamental defects of the Treaty of Bucharest were that

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• the boundaries which it drew bore little relation to the nationality of the inhabitants of the districts affected
• the punishment meted out to Bulgaria, while perhaps deserved in the light of her great offense in bringing on the Second Balkan War, was so severe that she could not accept the treaty as a permanent settlement.

While Serbia, Greece, and Romania can not escape a large share of the blame for the character of the treaty, it should not be forgotten that their action at Bucharest was in large measure due to the settlement forced upon the Balkan States by the great powers at the London conferences.

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