My research investigates two ideologies of modern national citizenship which emerged in early twentieth century Bulgaria (ca. 1900-1939) as alternatives to the official ideology of liberal, individual citizenship. These framed citizenship as the contractual agreement among the main socio-economic sectors in the nation-state, on the one hand, and as negotiated cultural autonomy for the two main ethno-religious groups (Bulgarian Christians and Turkish Muslims) respectively.

The research addresses three major issues, namely:

• It explores how the prominent critiques of the official Bulgarian national project of modernity - Agrarianism and Muslim reformism - shaped national citizenship and ethno-religious relations in the post-Romantic period;
• It contextualises Agrarianism and Muslim reformism in the general framework of the European crisis of modernity, and seeks to illuminate the links between imperial past and national present, between tradition and progress which Agrarians and Muslim reformers forged in search of a viable future and empowered collective identity;
• By illuminating alternative visions of modernity in Bulgaria, it hopes to provide ground for qualified comparisons between the crises of modernity in other post-imperial, national societies in Southeastern and East-Central Europe.

By analysing the conception of property adopted by Bulgarian Agrarians and the Turkish-speaking minority in Bulgaria, and their respective efforts to change the underpinnings of modernity from liberal individual to ‘corporatist’, the project inquires whether this was a specific Bulgarian problem or whether such efforts could be interpreted as signaling of a wider crisis within European liberal modernity, in general.