“The role of Constantinople as a modernizing metropolis in confirmed by its impact on Bulgarians. Until 1876
    Constantinople was the capital of the Balkans…

    With 40,000 Bulgarian inhabitants, Constantinople became the Bulgarians’ largest city. In 1845, encouraged by
    the Tanzimat reforms, Bulgarian residents, for the first time acting as separate national group, chose two
    representatives Ilarion Makariopolsky and Neofit Bozveli, who asked for a Bulgarian church in Constantinople,
    and Bulgarian bishops in districts with a Bulgarian majority. The Oecumenical Patriarchate, wholly Greek
    despite its title, arrested the two Bulgarian leaders and imprisoned them on Mount Athos. However, a Bulgarian
    press opened in Constantinople in 1847. From 1848 to 1861 a Bulgarian newspaper, Tsarigradski Vestnik,
    published in a han by the Galata bridge, played a crucial role in Bulgarian cultural and educational life, having
    among its contributors the foremost Bulgarian teachers and writers of the day.” (p. 281.)

    “In addition to the Exarchate, a new school, Robert College, helped reassert Bulgarian identity… Run by
    American missionaries, it attracted large numbers of Bulgarian students and was the direct ancestor of Bogazici
    University, the best in Turkey today. Constantinople was becoming an international educational capital, like
    London and Paris. However, far from being, as the American ambassador had hoped, proof of `the universal
    brotherhood of mankind,’ Robert College bred nationalism. There were fights between Greek and Bulgarian
    students and, only a few years later, in 1876, Bulgarians educated at Robert College would lead revolts against the
    Ottoman Empire. No other city, not even London, has educated more leaders of nationalist revolts against the
    empire of which it was capital.” (p. 283.)

George Washburn with his class at Rober College, most of the students are Bulgarians.