The Holevich Family and the Town of Kotel – from Proto-industrialization towards Capitalist Agriculture

The paper draws on the large unpublished private archive of the Bulgarian trading family Holevich, with documents stretching from 1834 to the 1950s. Having made their fortune in the town of Kotel during the final decades of Ottoman rule over the Balkans, the family acquired extensive lands in the fertile Dobrudja area near the Black Sea, where they established their 'chiftlik'- large-scale agricultural estates. Soon the Holeviches created a vast commercial network, stretching from Istanbul to Vienna, and from Varna to Marseille. The paper shows the specific ways in which Kotel and the proto-industrialization there helped merchants like the Holeviches accumulate their capital. With Bulgaria declaring independence from the Empire, Holevich's economic influence quickly transcended into the political field. Members of the family took important positions in the National Assembly, the local administrations and political parties. Successful and powerful in three different countries and under various political regimes, Holevich's case could be representative of other Balkan merchants who accumulated economic and social capital in the Ottoman empire and then made good use of it in their new national states. The economic upsurge of Kotel ended with the formation of the Bulgarian nation state but the accumulated capital managed to transform itself into other spheres and regions.