Western Outlands
The Western (Bulgarian) Outlands (Bulgarian: Западни (български) покрайнини, transliterated: Zapadni (Balgarski) pokraynini) is a term used by Bulgarians to describe several territorially separate regions located in southeastern Serbia and eastern Macedonia which at one point passed directly from Bulgaria to Yugoslavia. The territories in question were ceded by Bulgaria to the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1920 as a result of the Treaty of Neuilly, following the First World War. According to the Yugoslav census of 1991, two of the largest cities in the Western Outlands, Bosilegrad and Dimitrovgrad, were populated primarily by Bulgarians.
Today, the territories referred to by the term cover an area of 1,545 km² in Serbia. In 1919 the same territories corresponded to the following parts of the Bulgarian okrugs: Kyustendil, 661 km², Tsaribrod (nowadays Dimitrovgrad) 418 km², Tran 278 km², Kula 172 km² and Vidin 17 km².
Read more about Western Outlands: Controversy
Famous quotes containing the word western:
“trying to live in the terrible western world
here where to love at all’s to be a politician, as to love a poem
is pretentious,”
—Frank O’Hara (1926–1966)