Modern Bulgaria's development was continuously affected by the changing balance of power in Europe: Bulgaria's very emergence as a separate nation-state in 1878 was as much the outcome of great-power conflict and arbitration as it was of the struggle for self-determination. Starting with the somewhat misleadingly labelled ‘Russophiles’ and ‘Russophobes’ just after it gained independence from the Ottoman Empire, right through to pro- and anti-Western predilections in the post-Communist period, foreign-policy orientation has been a defining force in Bulgarian internal affairs. The involvement of a succession of great powers in the Balkans shaped not only the country's place on the international scene but above all the configuration of the domestic political forces. This reflected largely the fact that in the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, the Bulgarian political elite looked abroad for models of modernization and sought external support for Bulgaria's territorial ambitions.

It was Bulgaria's key geographic location that attracted the attention of European powers bidding for regional and continental influence. At the centre of the Balkan Peninsula, with a long coast on the Black Sea, the country constituted a natural stepping stone towards the Straits, a hinterland for extending control over the Eastern Mediterranean and a possible base for the penetration of the Middle East.