Dr. Lyubomir Pozharliev will present his research proposal on the topic:

Competing Interests. State and Private actors in the Development of Black Sea Infrastructure in Russia and Bulgaria (1856–1914)

on 19 November, 2020 (Thursday) at 16:30 h.

Moderated by Agoston Berecz

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The aim of the project is to research the competition and cooperation of state and commercial interests of key Russian and Bulgarian Governmental and entrepreneurial actors as a driver for long-term development of maritime infrastructure in the Black Sea region – the ports of Varna and Odessa. The objects of the research are The Russian Steam Navigation and Trading Company (founded in 1856) and the Bulgarian Commercial Steam Navigation Company (founded 1893). The studied period is between 1856 and the beginning of the WWI. The hypothesis of the study is that the construction of maritime infrastructure is a hybrid project, the result of simultaneous confrontation and negotiation of presented as a common good strategies of Governmental and Imperial actors and the commercial interests of entrepreneurs and merchants. The transfer of knowledge is also important. This approach to the development of infrastructure explicates the complex character of the modernization processes, in which the two modernization lines – through “top down” state intervention and by “down up” entrepreneurship and trade activities are entangled, in constant tension and negotiation. The project follows the methodological frame of entangled modernities. The proposed method is interpretative analysis of official and personal documents, related to the two companies.

A comparative study of the development of maritime infrastructures in Odessa and Varna, seen through the prism of the domination/negotiation of state and private interests has not been conducted to date. In addition to answering the question about the relationship between state and private interests in the construction and development of the maritime infrastructure in the two cases, the study has the ambition to shed light on the modernization processes for which infrastructure construction is a main factor.

The study of the negotiation, conflicts, and striving for dominance of commercial vs. state interests will explicate the complex entanglement of two different lines of modernization – by top-down state intervention, whose main priority is the establishment and protection of state sovereignty, and modernization through trade development. It is accepted that the modernization development of Russia and Bulgaria followed the first model – modernization through the “strong arm” of centralized state power (Lieven 2015; Taki 2016; Dimitrov et al 1996). This presumption is obviously valid for Soviet Russia, and is perceived as valid for the Russian Empire as well. The analysis of the cases of the two shipping joint-stock companies, combining the interests both of entrepreneurs and merchants, and the state, could prove that modernization developments were much more complex, with constant negotiation and confrontation, or with periods of domination of one or the other type of interests. The current project could challenge the notion of a dominant model of modernization, defending the more complex and resilient notion of “entangled modernities” (Randeria 2002) and “entangled histories” (Daskalov, Mishkova 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017) in the construction and development of infrastructure.