Нови данни за стопанската дейност на Чалъкови
Some New Findings about the Chalakovs' Economic Activity

Summary/Abstract: The article is based on many and various Ottoman and Bulgarian documents from the Bulgarian Historical Archive at the National Library „Sts. Cyril and Methodius“. It scrutinizes a large partnership enterprise of the Chalakovs, which has not been examined so far: the tithe tax-farming on cereals in the region of Plovdiv in the end of the 1840s and the beginning of the 1850s. The analysis of this case of enterprising adds some more specified information about the Chalakovs' wide ranged activities in different incomes tax-farming. The data about some particular economic practices and strategies implemented by the Bulgarian businessmen of the time are of specific interest. Among them are easily distinguished firstly, the establishment of close relatives' partnerships for fund raising; secondly, the practice of tax-farming as a kind of family business and the importance of the tax-farmers' personal contacts on different levels of administration. It is also worth mentioning the considerable presence of members of the local administrative and financial authorities and of prominent local merchants and bankers among the sub-farmers, as well as the specific role of some local municipalities in this process.

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