Changes in the Social Structure of the Urban Population in Bulgaria from 1878 to 1912

Abstract

The problem of the changes within the social structure of the population in Bulgaria during the pre-war period in the development of Bulgarian capitalism (from the liberation of the country from Turkish domination in 1878 to the First Balkan War of 1912) has not been studied either by Bulgarian or foreign economists. It is true that some Bulgarian historians analyse the changes in the class structure of the Bulgarian population at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, but they do that only on a nationwide scale.1 With such a treatment of changes in the class structure, the peculiarities of urban social structure seem to disappear in the mass of rural population due to the marked numerical superiority of the latter. The lack of research of the specific tendencies in the changes of the social structure of the urban population in Bulgarian historical literature.up until now can be explained by some objective causes. The censi taken in Bulgaria after the liberation are marked by a rather simplified statistical treatment of the collected data; they do not separate urban and rural population nor (unless some data concerning the urban population is at hand) do they treat the data referring to the distribution of the urban population according to profession and social standing. The publications of the 1900 census and of later ones contain the statistical elaborations necessary to separate urban and rural population. The aim of this article is to fill in the gap in historic literature; it is based on a comparative analysis of data from the 1900 and 1910 censi; it is also an attempt at a more concrete description of the situation around 1888 and 1893.