This fascinating book explores the history of tobacco and tobacco culture in Bulgaria from the mid-19th century, when the country became partially and then fully independent from the Ottoman Empire, to the postcommunist present. Neuburger... argues convincingly that smoking and the production of tobacco products played an important if not the key part in Bulgaria's political, economic; and cultural modernization during this period.... Summing Up: Highly recommended. Choice

In Balkan Smoke, Mary C. 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.

About the Author

Mary C. Neuburger is Director of the Center for Russian East European and Eurasian Studies, Chair of the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies, and Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria, also from Cornell.

Reviews

Balkan Smoke places Mary Neuburger squarely at the forefront of the burgeoning field of consumption, commodities, and material culture studies about East-Central Europe.... Neuburger adeptly ties together numerous strands of culture, economics, politics, and ideas into a coherent narrative of the ever-changing and competing expressions of "Bulgaria.'

* Ab Imperio *

In Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria, Neuburger masterfully demonstrates how the yellow-leafed plant has been at the core of building the historical narrative of modern day Bulgaria. More importantly, it also reveals in a particularly poignant way the complex dynamics of national consumption and global flows of goods and the ideologies they encapsulate.... Neuburger has a keen eye both for factual details and for cultural minutia, which reveals her remarkable ease and extreme, almost native-like, level of comfort and familiarity with the often hidden nuances of Bulgaria's less obvious cultural references.

* Consumption Markets & Culture *

Mary C. Neuburger's brilliant new book recounts the social life of tobacco in the past two centuries.... It creatively utilizes the extensive Bulgarian literature on the tobacco industry and cultural works on everyday life to produce a highly original account of the making of Bulgarian modernity.... [A] remarkably well-researched and inspiringly written work.

* American Historical Review *

Neuburger's work sharpens our understandings of Bulgarian economic history.... It is dense stuff, and I am terribly impressed with Neuburger's ability to bring it all together in a coherent narrative. She has added a new thread to our understanding of the development of modern nationalism.

* Slavic Review *

One of the strongest contributions of Balkan Smoke is Neuburger's method. She uses tobacco and smoking as a lens through which to rethink the parameters of Bulgarianhistory. In doing so, she argues that tobacco production and consumption spurred deep transformations and brought a modern condition to Bulgaria's tobacco-growing regions.... Tobacco runs through each topic and it is evident that they are all tied to the others in both obvious and hidden ways. And this is precisely where Balkan Smoke shines.

* Ab Imperio *

This fascinating book explores the history of tobacco and tobacco culture in Bulgaria from the mid-19th century, when the country became partially and then fully independent from the Ottoman Empire, to the postcommunist present. Neuburger... argues convincingly that smoking and the production of tobacco products played an important-if not the key-part in Bulgaria's political, economic; and cultural modernization during this period.... Summing Up: Highly recommended.

* Choice *

This smart, scrupulous, and elegant volume shows just how much interpretative power and creative reach a carefully executed commodity history can have. Balkan Smoke takes up the story of tobacco in a society that, like no other, has been shaped by the plant's production, distribution, consumption, and incorporation into mass and high culture.... Balkan Smoke is a thoughtful, innovative work of history writing and, in many ways, a valuable, fresh, and highly original contribution not just to national and regional historiography but to European history and economic history more generally, and to the expanding field of commodity studies.

* The Journal of Modern History *


Awards
Winner of Winner of the Barbara S. Jelavich Book Prize given.



Book Information
ISBN 9781501705724
Author Mary C. Neuburger
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 907g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 155mm * 19mm