Glimpses into the Business History of the Bulgarian Revival Period: The Entrepreneurial Activity of Atanas Simov in the 1870s

The current text is an attempt to shed light on the entrepreneurial activity of a little-known person – Atanas Genkov Simov (1832 – 1897), born in Kalofer. He was a distant relative of the prominent merchant Hristo Petkov Tapchileshtov who was also born in Kalofer and settled down in Istanbul. Atanas worked for Taphileshtov as an agent. He was responsible for purchasing and forwarding clarified butter form the town of Sofia and the nearby villages. The research is based on commercial correspondence (63 letters) and 3 contracts written in Bulgarian language. The bulk of the letters encompasses the period from the summer to the end of 1874. Several other primary sources give some information about Atanas’ entrepreneurial dealings in 1873 and in 1875. The mentioned documents give us interesting evidences of the everyday life of a typical commercial agent from the period of the Bulgarian National Revival. Moreover, it is evident that he possessed entrepreneurial mentality and particular economic culture.