site.btaCoup de Chance: How French, Bulgarian Historians Discover Tarnovo's "Most Beautiful and Detailed" 19th Century Map

"A stroke of luck in the winter of 2018" led to the discovery of the most beautiful and detailed map of Tarnovo (Central North Bulgaria) made before the Liberation of Bulgaria from Ottoman rule in 1878. In an interview with BTA, Ivan Roussev, a corresponding member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) and a Professor at the University of Economics in Varna, talked about the information the map carries, as well as the process during which he and his French colleagues clarified the author and year of the cartographic plan, as these are not mentioned on the document itself.

The historian also spoke about the French historical sources for Bulgaria, to what extent they have been studied and what discoveries he has made during his more than 20 years of practice with them.

"All was a stroke of luck"

In the winter of 2018, French Professor Bernard Lory from the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris was searching through maps at Bouquinistes [booksellers of used and antiquarian books] along the Seine. He came across a map of Tarnovo in which he recognized the style of the Breton geographer and cartographer Guillaume Lejean. 

There is no year or author's name on the map - it only says "Trnova" and on the side, in different handwriting, "Bosnia"

"Since he knows well the style of Lejean, who also has published maps, including one of Plovdiv (Southern Bulgaria) from the same period with the same colours and design, he immediately had a light-bulb moment and realized that this was Lejean's," Roussev clarified.

The map fell into the right hands. In 2011, Lory published a book on Lejean with Marie-Thérèse Lorain, the specialist who knows the cartographer's work best. 

"Since she's Lejean's best biographer, he consulted her about the map and she was adamant it was his, too. The inscription 'Bosnia' was certainly made later by another person, as there was another Tarnovo in Bosnia. However, it is definitely the Bulgarian one," the Bulgarian historian added.

In the footsteps of Lejean in Tarnovo

A year and a half after the discovery, Lory contacted Roussev with an offer to do an article together on the subject. 

"He knows Lejean and his work well, and he expected me to bring in the context. Helped by other Lejean publications, we established exactly when he came to Tarnovo - to the month. Between Easter [April] and June 1857. He was the first to record and report on Nicopolis ad Istrum, an ancient Roman town at the village of Nikyup, which is still being explored today. When we dated the map and established the authorship, on this basis, I consulted a former student of mine who now works at BAS and who is a very good expert on cartography."

There are two other maps of Tarnovo from this period, but they are neither in colour nor as detailed. "This turns out to be the most beautiful and detailed map of Tarnovo from the mid-19th century," Roussev noted.

"For the first time, landmarks important for the city are indicated by their names, such as Kartal, Baiderlik, Kaiabaghi, Metropole, the churches in the city, as well as the hills of Sveta Gora (Gora), Hissar (Tsarevets) and Trapezitsa," Lory and Roussev point out in their joint published work on the subject. "For the first time, more attention is paid to the new western (Bulgarian) part of the city, while the other maps are dominated by sites in the eastern (Turkish) part, mainly mosques - this corresponds to the new realities, as the area west of the konak was the economically prosperous one in the city in the 1850s," they add.

Lejean's detailed cartographic plan specifies some dating and historical details relating to the town.

"Saints Constantine and Helena Church is known to have been built 1872-1874 by Kolyu Ficheto, but we did not know what was there before that. The rule then in the Ottoman Empire was to build or renovate a church only in places where one already existed. In fact, the map proves that there was indeed a church there, and it was of the same name. We also see on the map a bridge, then known as the wooden bridge, now known as the Vladishki Bridge, which was thought to have been built in the 1860s - the map shows it existed at least 10 years earlier," Roussev told BTA.

There are some inaccuracies, but they are not prevalent. Historians compare the map data with descriptions of the town from the period, including one by Bulgarian poet, publicist and politician Petko R. Slaveykov published in the Tsarigradski Vestnik newspaper. "We tied all these things together and it turned into a nice study," the Bulgarian professor said.

French archives on Bulgaria - accessible and almost unused

Roussev has been working with French archives since 2002. He stressed that the documents in France related to Bulgarian history are very well processed and accessible. However, few Bulgarian specialists make use of them.

"There are hardly more than 10 of us who have worked with these archives. Unfortunately, until the changes (the end of communist rule in 1989) there were 4 or 5 people at the most. And I personally have information about people who did not know the language and went there because they were given good postings. In recent times there are young people looking into the them, but not many. For the most part these archives are not used. There is still a lot to be discovered," Roussev pointed out.

Part of France's archival wealth was lost in World War II

Unfortunately, some of the documents have been lost without a trace. In a conversation after the research for the Lejean book was completed, Lory told Roussev how political events on the continent led to the loss of part of the Breton cartographer's legacy.

"During World War II, the Germans seized many archives when they went to Paris, including the archival legacy of Lejean himself. They took it to Berlin. When the Red Army entered Berlin, they took what they could from there. After the war, the Germans returned to the French what they had taken, but what went to the Soviet Union is no longer to be seen."

Roussev's discoveries in France

During his many years of work with the French archives, Roussev made a number of discoveries, including a confirmation of claims that Varna was one of the first (if not the first) towns in Bulgaria to have its streets named.

"From memories from the early 20th century, we knew that when the French soldiers came during the Crimean War, they named the streets of Varna. Not that there were not designations before then, but they were given names in the modern sense. I found a map that showed that this was indeed the case - it showed that the streets had names and what they were," he said.

According to the practice in the Ottoman Empire until then, streets did not have official names, but rather were associated with important buildings or persons to which they led. They did not yet have the same significance then as they do today, since taxable households were defined by boroughs, not by the streets on which they lived. 

Roussev has worked most actively on the subject of French consulates and consuls and as early as 2002 ascertained when the first French consulate was established on Bulgarian soil - in Varna in 1802. "This was not certain, but I was able to find specifically Napoleon's decree establishing three consulates-general and six vice-consulates throughout the Black Sea basin."

Professor Roussev focused on the importance of the Western consulates in the Balkans in the 18th and 19th centuries. "Their main role was to provide protection to the respective subjects of the state, in this case France, to carry out economic, commercial activities. At the same time, consuls played a very important role as one of the agents of modernization - they brought the European lifestyle, furnished their residences in a modern way. Some time ago I managed to find some interesting information about Leandre Le Gay (1833-1887), one of the first French consuls in Sofia, who later went to Burgas [on the Black Sea]. In a small town like Burgas, with a population of 2,900 at the time, he made a magnificent residence with modern furnishings and furniture that he ordered from Paris. You can imagine what this consular residence looked like. This is modernization in the European sense. These are the agents of modern way of life."