The years of Ottoman rule served to isolate the Balkan region from the blossoming Renaissance period in Europe and consequently, the culture of this area was deeply affected by Turkish influences. However, continued efforts in isolated monasteries to nurture the native Bulgarian culture and religion gained momentum in the 17th century, aided by the inspiration of the haiduk movement. Contact was renewed with Orthodox Russia, a key relationship that would develop into eventual military assistance based on their common Slavic and religious backgrounds.
Several pieces of literature published outside the Ottoman sphere of influence also served to fuel Bulgarian determination to throw off the empire's rule, beginning with Sofia bishop Petar Bogdan Bashkev's History of Bulgaria in the 17th century, and Hristofor Zhefarovich's History of the Serbs and Bulgarians in 1741. In 1762, Paisii of Hilendar's piece, Slav-Bulgarian History, was particularly inspiring and the National Revival, a time of Bulgarian cultural renaissance, was born.
The cultural reawakening was aided by Bulgaria's textile and agricultural business with the empire. Having the economic means and also the renewed emotional strength of the Revival behind them, middle class merchants and artisans went about developing secular Bulgarian language schools. To help adults learn the written language, reading rooms called chitalishta were set up, and by the later half of the 19th century, Bulgaria's population was one of the most literate on the continent (literacy rates are still near 98-99 per cent today). Repeated efforts to gain religious autonomy from the Turks finally paid off in 1870 and marked another important step in increasing the momentum to regain national independence.
A defeat at Vienna in 1683 against Austria, and a combined force from Poland and Germany, marked the beginning of the end of Turkish control, and internal corruption and infighting among families in Constantinople vying for the sultanate further weakened the empire as a whole. A series of devastating wars in the 18th and 19th centuries resulted in great losses of territory, most notably when Russia recaptured Black Sea territories and Hungary was lost to Austria, then challenging the Ottomans as the dominant force in central and eastern Europe. In what became known later as the "Eastern Question," powers such as Britain, Austria-Hungary and France, as well as Russia, hungrily looked to the Ottoman Empire's waning control of the strategic Bosphorus Strait and the trade routes that passed through them.
Although Britain and France expressed increasing sympathy towards their fellow Christians in Bulgaria who were being repressed, their concern over increasing Russian power in the Balkans was greater. Western Europe began to fear Russia's growing idea of a Pan-Slavic culture under their ultimate guidance and protection, which ultimately led to Bulgaria's independence. Britain and France sided with the Ottomans against the Russians in the Crimean War (1854-56), even though the three had once fought alongside each other against the Turks to help the Greeks win independence some 30 years earlier. Russia lost the war, but the Turkish Empire remained in a downward spiral of lost territory and power.
