The Expansion of Bulgaria 1877-1944
This web page contains links to the content of the exhibit pages for the exhibit
'The Expansion of Bulgaria 1877-1944' by Al Kugel.
This exhibit tells through contemporary postal material the history of the birth of Bulgaria as an independent entity following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 and its struggles to include all of its ethnic brothers in Eastern Roumelia (South Bulgaria), Thrace and Macedonia within its borders. Such efforts-brought the Bulgarians into conflict with their neighbors (Greece, Romania, Serbia and Turkey) in a series of wars starting with the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885 and extending through the Balkan Wars as well as World Wars I and Il. Although the Bulgarians managed to occupy most of the desired territory during the latter three conflicts, they ended up on the losing side each time and were forced to give up their temporary conquests. The Bulgarian postal material shown here is presented chronologically, with the historical context of each war or other significant event being represented as a separate chapter. Overall, the time period covered embraces all of the conflicts noted and what has emerged is essentially fashioned as a marcophily exhibit showing the postal markings used in each separate area that was occupied. Within the territories administered during the time period covered by each war, the markings are essentially in alphabetical order.
This exhibit was created by, and is the property of the late Al Kugel, and is being supplied by his heirs as a courtesy to the Military Postal History Society. (See the MPHS webpage) The Military Postal History Society (MPHS) is a non-profit organization for philatelists and stamp collectors interested in the collecting and studying of the postal aspects of all wars and military actions of all countries, including soldiers' campaign covers, naval mail, occupation and internment covers, patriotics, propaganda, V-mail, censorship and similar related material.
These exhibit page scans were made from black and white photocopies of the original exhibits. Those exhibits were created by Al Kugel many years ago, and are presented here for historical and research purposes. As far as the MPHS is aware, there are no color scans available of these older exhibit pages, nor for any of the illustrated postal history items.
This exhibit, created by the late Al Kugel, is made up of 10 frames, each frame containing 16 pages. Due to their size, each frame is available as a separate searchable PDF file. (See the PDF information page for additional help with this file format.)
All frames as images for the Exhibit of Bulgaria Postal History
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Updated 20 August 2026