The Wars and the Economic Development. The Bulgarian’s Case from the First Half of the 19th Century

The article focuses on the Bulgarian lands during the first half of the 19th century. It concerns the eastern parts of the Balkans, i.e. the territories of the Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire, inhabited mainly by Bulgarians, which during this period were severely affected by three consecutive Russo-Turkish wars: the wars of 1806–1812, 1828–1829, and the Crimean War, 1853–1856. In an attempt to develop working hypotheses about the extent to which each of these wars affected local economic development, the main economic-historical approach leads to the selection and analysis of accessible historical sources. In this sense, the study proposed here is aimed at analysing and evaluating historical sources on the subject. The comparison between these three Russo-Turkish wars leads to the working hypothesis that the first two, those of 1806–1812 and 1828–1829, led to more severe crises in the economic situation of the Bulgarian lands. The reasons for this are the military actions carried out on Bulgarian territory, the destruction of important economic and commercial centres (in the first of the two wars, the Russian army deliberately plundered Svishtov, one of these centres), as well as the large wave of emigration during and after the wars. In the second war, there is reason to believe that emigration was greater, and together with the subsequent re-emigration, the time it took for the local economy to stabilize was extended to 4-5 years. This was not the case during the Crimean War, when military operations and the accompanying destruction and human casualties had only a short-term impact on Bulgarian economic development, and price increases were more a consequence of the integration of the Bulgarian economy into the European one. This war led to the attraction of capital, which subsequently had a positive impact on local economic development.