Henry C. Barkley was not a writer in the proper sense of the word. He was a civil engineer who put his Bulgarian experiences on paper for anybody interested in the Ottoman Empire. That is why I did not analyse his writings as I would have proceeded with texts of literary value. Neither was I very interested in the historical evidence they give but focused on the (inter)cultural phenomena they reveal. Between the Danube and the Black Sea and Bulgaria Before the War show the efforts, successful and less successful, of a Victorian gentleman to overcome his prejudices -- those he brought over from England and the ones he acquired during his stay in Eastern Turkey. But most of all they show his struggle to cope with a foreign culture whose laws and logic were at odds with his own worldview. The two-volume account of Bulgaria consists of an attempt to express in an analytical way experiences and thoughts about the eastern part of the Ottoman Empire.
Since Barkley came to Bulgaria because of his profession, his main occupation there (the construction of the two railway lines Kustenjeh-Chernavoda and Varna–Rustchuk) was reflected in his books. The experiences he reports are chiefly connected with his work. This paper was particularly concerned with two main aspects of Barkley's encounter with the Orientals: the concept of time and the labour-payment relation as seen by the natives.
The chapter ' Time' discussed the theoretical model of the linearity of time that existed in England in comparison with the cyclical time structure of everyday reality in Bulgaria. It also explained the psychological mechanism of individual time-perception of the individual, by which one experiences history subjectively and not in its fullness and complexity. In this context, subchapter 3.4 demonstrated the effect of this mechanism when an individual is placed in an unfamiliar, foreign surrounding -- in Barkley' s case, his encounter with technologically and socially backward Bulgaria created a sense of a psychological time-shift into the past and a sense of personal disorientation. To this is added the fact that cultures differ in their general orientation toward the future, present, or past. It is central to this orientation whether the "Golden Years" are understood to lie either in the future (hence, time is seen as progressive and evolutionary), the present (now is what matters), or in some golden past (such as the ' glorious history' of the Ottomans). This broad temporal distinction is due to the specificity of the different cultures and becomes especially obvious in their interrelation. Time orientation determines such beliefs as the role of the dead in everyday life and the extent to which the behaviour of the living is oriented towards their ancestors or heirs. The section ' English and Turkish Burials' discusses the attitude of the Orientals and the Englishmen to the traditions of their forefathers. To this multiplicity of time layers one still has to add the artificial schedule of time which social institutions impose on the individual, the result of which is a diversion from the natural time rhythm and the people' s loss of their singularity. The example Barkley gives is of a group of Greek workers who even had to change their professions to build a team.
The Chapter ' Labour and Money' deals with the attitude of the Ottoman inhabitants to work and payment. It contains an analysis of Barkley' s labour habits in the context of the nineteenth-century Protestant work ethic. The Englishman reveals himself to be a typical Victorian: he believed in hard work and thrift and in success as a sign of God' s benevolence. He was proud of everything that was English and had a completely pragmatic worldview. Barkley judged the natives and their attitude to labour according to his own value system. In his opinion, two main circumstances are responsible for the dilapidated state of the Ottoman Empire: the corruption of Oriental institutions and national character traits like laziness and degradation. They led to dishonesty of the officials who lived off the common people. By doing so they deprived their subordinates of the possibility to exercise labour freely and enjoy the fruits of their hands -- two circumstances which secured individual and communal prosperity in England. The ordinary people, in their turn, had to be skilful in the art of bribery in order to survive, which brought matters back to the beginning of the vicious circle. According to Barkley, a third important factor in the faulty working habits was the moral character of Oriental women and the methods they used for bringing up their children. In this last point the Englishman seems to be influenced greatly by prejudice and hearsay for he did not have a chance to form his opinion from first-hand information. The female part of Turkey represented a gap in his knowledge even when his wife came down to Bulgaria, and was regularly visited by curious neighbours. She did not speak Turkish at all, which not only made her communication with the guests difficult but also rendered her judgement about them shallow.
The Bulgaria of the nineteenth century was very complicated in its diversity of time aspects and interpersonal and intercultural relations and customs. I must point out that in writing this paper I had the interesting, though not always delightful, experience of entering the world of my forefathers as seen through the eyes of a Victorian gentleman.
Last modified 2001