The Banat Bulgarians – a Phenomenon of Cultural Continuity

Abstract

Nowadays, the so-called Banat Bulgarians are a numerous group of the descendants of Bulgarian Catholics, which were forced to emigrate to Wallachia in the end of the 17^th century and in the beginning of the 18^th century and from there in years 1738–1741 to Banat. Small part of them (after 1878) returned to Bulgaria where they establish new villages. Most of them still live in Romanian territory, decidedly less numerous colonies are in Hungary and in Serbia. From the end of 19^th century they were a subject of interest to historians and linguists. For historians, their history were extremely  interesting.  For  linguists,  because  they  managed  to  salvage  the  dialect  which became (in the half of the 19^th century) a base of literary norm that was to shape their language.