ABSTRACT
By 1914, the spread of modern manufacturing across the independent Balkan states and the Austro-Hungarian borderlands was too limited to speak of “sustainable” development. Small industrial sectors had nonetheless appeared across the region. The textile industry is also a good case study in another respect. It offers perhaps the best chance for comparison across the region because as an industry, it was not limited by the access to mineral deposits that favored some areas and not others. Led by much expanded mining in the 1930s, the Yugoslav share rose from 12 percent to 31 percent. While including some reference to Greece and Romania, this chapter concentrates on the interwar territories of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. Before the First World War, they were divided between the independent Balkan states of Bulgaria and Serbia, the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary.
