3 - Liberation in Progress: Bulgarian Nationalism and Political Economy in a Balkan Perspective, 1878–1912

Summary

In this chapter I explore the correlation between the notion of liberation and attitudes to the economy in late nineteenth-century Bulgaria. The concept of “liberation in progress” is meant to imply that the reestablishment of the Bulgarian state as a result of the interrelationship of the Bulgarian national liberation movement, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, and the decisions of the European Great Powers at the Berlin Congress in 1878 was not taken for granted. It was a prolonged process, not a straightforward and easy one. The enormous changes in social life included but were not limited to the establishment of a state apparatus, of new local administration, of a legal framework, as well as of economic, educational, healthcare, and cultural institutions that did not exist under Ottoman rule.

Bulgaria, like the other Balkan countries, experienced economic difficulties after emancipation from the Ottoman Empire as a result of the Berlin Congress in 1878. The Balkan countries have various but equally compelling explanations: disconnection from the large market of the Ottoman Empire, unfavorable trends in international trade, foreign competition, insufficient investments in productive spheres, lack of entrepreneurship, and so forth. I draw attention to some related yet distinct aspects of this issue. First I consider how independence—the autonomy to implement a national policy—affected attitudes to economic development and what the human, ideological, and institutional resources that informed these strategies were. A further question to be explored is how the economy was embedded in political discourse and in developmental strategies.

The relevance of these questions stems from the statements of several nineteenth-century Bulgarian politicians that society-level transformations during the crucial post-liberation era had to confront widespread illusions connected to a certain type of economic culture. The term “economic culture”— described as behaviors or attitudes toward a national economy— includes knowledge, information, and their application in the management of economic activities. Emotions and sentiments also play a key role. Since economic culture allows for different approaches to a great number of sources, it would be impossible to discuss all of them in one chapter. This examination is based mainly on texts that are relevant to specific economic problems such as statistics, parliamentary proceedings, published programs and program documents of political parties, protocols, reports, documents of professional organizations, petitions, memoranda, economic journals, and monographs from the era.