The modernization of Southeast Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is widely studied by contemporary researchers. Topics as diverse as political and institutional development, social and cultural transformations, economic changes, and technological innovations address important features of this process. The emergence of new concepts and ideas about governance and public order was an integral part of this transformation. Thus, the present talk will explore the Bulgarian (and Ottoman) transition to modernity during the nineteenth century by focusing on the contemporaries’ perceptions of corruption and associated practices related to advancing modern technological projects and capital investments. It will discuss the emergence of the topic in the public sphere, as well as the role of some Bulgarian sites within the Ottoman capital as places of publicity. The interrelationship between modernization and corruption in the framework of the top-down/bottom-up interference between the Ottoman state and its Bulgarian subjects will be addressed. Thus, the focus of the talk will be placed on some members of the Bulgarian community in Istanbul as intermediary actors in the center-periphery dynamics related to corruption, its spread, and its denunciation.

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This event is part of an ongoing series of public seminars organized under the ERC research project “Transnational histories of ‘corruption’ in Central-South-East Europe (1750-1850)” – TransCorr, hosted by New Europe College.