‘Top-Down’ or ‘Bottom-Up’ Modernisation: Local Railway Entrepreneurs in the Ottoman Empire in the Second Half of the 19th Century

What is it about?

The article examines one of the earliest local railway enterprises in the Post-Crimean Ottoman Empire. In 1857 a group of Bulgarian merchants from the town of Şumnu (located in the North Eastern parts of the Ottoman Balkans) applied for the Rusçuk and Varna Railway concession. Their application was officially and unofficially supported by the Ottoman Grand Vizier Mustafa Reşid Pasha and other members of the Ottoman central and provincial administration. In April 1857 the group secured the concession and in the following months the project was put forward. Perhaps due to the inability to fund the undertaking, in 1858 the local railway entrepreneurs were forced to transferthe concession to another group. The latter was headed by J. B. Posno, an Ottoman Consul general in Anvers, Belgium. Yet, it seems that the Şumnu merchants still remained engaged in the project until 1864 when the concession was finally transferred to a British group. Thus, the paper examines the local enterprise which initially emerged as a “top-down” initiative instigated by the Ottoman Government“ and nd latter on transformed into a "bottom-up” initiative which was result of the influence of the new trends in the Ottoman economic life. The article is based on various types of sources – official Ottoman and British documents, newspaper reports, private correspondence and memoirs of persons involved directly or indirectly in the events, etc.

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