Title Balkan smoke : tobacco and the making of modern Bulgaria / Mary C. Neuburger

Published Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, 2013

Click on the following:
EBSCO eBooks
ACLS Humanities E-Book
ProQuest Ebook Central

Copies

Description 1 online resource Contents Coffee house babble : smoking and sociability in the long nineteenth century -- No smoke without fire : tobacco and transformation, 1878-1914 -- From the Orient Express to the Sofia café : smoke and propriety in the interwar years -- The tobacco fortress : Asenovgrad Krepost and the politics of tobacco between the World Wars -- From leaf to ash : Jews, Germans, and Bulgarian gold in the Second World War -- Smoke-filled rooms : places to light up in communist Bulgaria -- Smokes for big brother : Bulgartabak and tobacco under communism Summary In Balkan Smoke, Mary Neuburger leads readers along the Bulgarian-Ottoman caravan routes and into the coffeehouses of Istanbul and Sofia. She reveals how a remote country was drawn into global economic networks through tobacco production and consumption and in the process became modern. In writing the life of tobacco in Bulgaria from the late Ottoman period through the years of Communist rule, Neuburger gives us much more than the cultural history of a commodity; she provides a fresh perspective on the genesis of modern Bulgaria itself. The tobacco trade comes to shape most of Bulgaria's international relations; it drew Bulgaria into its fateful alliance with Nazi Germany and in the postwar period Bulgaria was the primary supplier of smokes (the famed Bulgarian Gold) for the USSR and its satellites. By the late 1960s Bulgaria was the number one exporter of tobacco in the world, with roughly one eighth of its population involved in production. Through the pages of this book we visit the places where tobacco is grown and meet the merchants, the workers, and the peasant growers, most of whom are Muslim by the postwar period. Along the way, we learn how smoking and anti-smoking impulses influenced perceptions of luxury and necessity, questions of novelty, imitation, value, taste, and gender-based respectability. While the scope is often global, Neuburger also explores the politics of tobacco within Bulgaria. Among the book's surprises are the ways in which conflicts over the tobacco industry (and smoking) help to clarify the forbidding quagmire of Bulgarian politics Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 281-297) and index Notes In English Print version record Subject Tobacco industry -- Bulgaria -- History -- 19th century Tobacco industry -- Bulgaria -- History -- 20th century Smoking -- Social aspects -- Bulgaria -- History -- 19th century Smoking -- Social aspects -- Bulgaria -- History -- 20th century HISTORY -- Europe -- Eastern. BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Industries -- General. Smoking -- Social aspects Tobacco industry Tabakindustrie Rauchen Tabaksindustrie. Bulgaria Bulgarien Bulgarije. Genre/Form Electronic books History Form Electronic book LC no. 2019725610 ISBN 9780801465505 0801465508 9780801465949 080146594X 1501705725 9781501705724

  Permalink