Disciplining the ‘black sheep of the Balkans’: financial supervision and sovereignty in Bulgaria, 1902–38

Abstract

Using the example of Bulgaria, we argue that familiar models of international political economy fail to capture the tension between national sovereignty and access to capital markets experienced by peripheral debtors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Existing accounts exaggerate the significance of the gold standard as a good housekeeping seal of approval and underestimate the role of direct financial controls. Furthermore, they underestimate the linkage in zones of inter‐imperial rivalry, such as the Balkans, between foreign borrowing and strategic alignment. We show how Bulgaria found its politics destabilized prior to 1914 by the demands of its creditors. After defeat in the First World War, Bulgaria was forced to submit to an even tighter system of creditor control. Though it obtained substantial debt relief during the 1930s, these concessions were gained not through an assertion of national sovereignty and default, but at the price of even closer supervision. This in turn casts new light on the conventional view of Bulgaria as a victim of Nazi ‘informal imperialism’. In light of Bulgaria's previous experience, the more striking feature of its trade relations with Hitler's Germany is that they were conducted on a basis of sovereign equality.

Has Eastern Europe Always Lagged Behind the West? Historical Evidence from Pre‐1870

“…The research by Malinowski (2019), Tooze and Ivanov (2011) and Morys (2020) is primarily concerned with institutional weaknesses, what they led to and how CESEE countries tried to address them. There clearly is a lack of “positive” institutionalist research on the region, reflecting the perception that institutions in the region were part of the problem, not the solution.…”

Cliometric Approaches to Central, East, and South-East Europe

“…Some of this research has made an explicit institutionalist argument. Tooze and Ivanov (2011) and Morys (2016), for instance, argue that policymakers in South-Eastern Europe acquiesced into foreign financial supervision not because they necessarily had to but in an attempt to compensate for domestic institutional weaknesses. Recurring problems of Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, and Serbia/Yugoslavia with large external debts before World War II led to the introduction of financial control by the countries' West European creditors on various occasions.…”

“…The research by Malinowski (2019), Tooze and Ivanov (2011), and Morys (2016) is primarily concerned with institutional weaknesses, what they led to, and how CESEE countries tried to address them. There is a lack of "positive" institutionalist research on the region, reflecting the perception that institutions in the region were part of the problem, not the solution.…”

Colonialism or supersanctions: sovereignty and debt in West Africa, 1871–1914

“…55, 77). The imposition of ever-greater financial controls generated similar political upheaval in Bulgaria (Tooze and Ivanov 2011). The fact that such opposition was not as vehement or violent in Liberia as elsewhere is perhaps linked to the tenuous position of the ruling elite, which faced pressure from indigenous groups in addition to foreign powers.…”