Българи от Чипровско – посредници в търговския обмен през XVI–XVII век
Bulgarians from the Chiprovtsi Area – Middlemen in the 16th – 17th Centuries

Summary/Abstract: For centuries the Bulgarians from the Chiprovtsi area had engaged in ore-mining and in various crafts. During the first half of the 17th c. in the majority of them they had already turned merchants. According to the studies published so far they engaged in home delivery in Wallachian villages and towns, carrying also different artisan articles, chiefly textiles, from the Balkan region to Transylvania. It has not been established yet how and when such a sharp change ocurred in the occupation of the people of Chiprovtsi. Trade on a considerably wider scale to meet the growing needs for raw materials and foodstuffs expanded in the 16th and 17th centuries. Mainly livestock (cattle), wax arid other goods, were exported to the West from Poland, Moldavia and Wallachia, from Transylvania and Hungary. This profitable commerce was joined also by Bulgarians from Chiprovtsi, together with Wallachians, Serbs, Hungarians and others. Research is based mainly on data extracted from custom registers kept in the period 1689–1712 at four custom-houses which were under the Austrian administration in Hungary. They were customhouses along the trade route from the East to the West – towards the markets in Italy and South Germany. More than 50 Bulgarian merchants pass through them. They came from Chiprovtsi, Alviriz, Ribnik, Craiova, Petrovaradin and Baja. They traded in wax, honey and cattle. The newly traced material provides ample grounds to support the thesis that the Bulgarians as early as the 16th c. made use of the favourable market conditions that had been established. Some of them traded wholesale in goods in demand on the Western markets while others contented themselves by peddling in Wallachia and Transylvania.

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