Abstract: The emergence of autonomous or independent states in the Balkans on former Ottoman territories during the 19th c. was accompanied by the massive transfer of land from Muslim to Christian owners. This process followed various paths in the different Balkan nation-states, depending on the particular political circumstances at the time of independence or autonomy, as well as on the economic conjuncture and the social balance of power in each case. A thorough comparative investigation of this process at the regional, Balkan, level is still needed. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this research agenda by narrating the story of a big farm (çiftlik) at the outskirts of Varna, owned before Bulgarianautonomy (1878) by a Muslim landowner. The fate of this çiftlik provoked after1878 a long dispute between the Bulgarian entrepreneur Nikola Tupchileshtov, son of the national ‘benefactor’ Hristo Tupchileshtov, based in Istanbul, and the Bulgarian refugees from Ottoman Thrace, who found resort in the Bulgarian Principality and were settled in the land of the çiftlik to make a living. Contrary to the assumptions of the older historiography, and similarly to what fresh research in other Balkan countries reveals, the pre-1878Bulgarian economic elites, predominantly commercial and banking entrepreneurs, raised serious claims on the land of the ‘liberated fatherland’ and the prestige and security land ownership could offer them. Far from solving the land question in favor of small peasant ownership, the acquisition of national independence or autonomy, provoked new struggles for land, this time within the Bulgarian national community. Moreover, the story of thisbig farm sheds light to certain aspects of the conflicts and contradictions – at the political, social and institutional level – developing in the first post-liberation years in Bulgaria.

Keywords: Post-Ottoman Balkans, Bulgarian Agriculture, Nationalism, Social-PropertyRelations, Land Relations, Çiftlik, Migration.

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