Author: TransCorr

Oana SORESCU-IUDEAN

« Team

Oana SORESCU-IUDEAN is a researcher at the Centre for Population Studies of the Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca. She holds a PhD in History from the University of Regensburg (2021), where she was a member of the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies. Most recently, she held a postdoctoral grant from the STAR-BBU Institute of the Babeș-Bolyai University, which provided a data-driven approach to studying the plague in 18th century Transylvania, as well as a SeeFField-funded seed grant from the University of Regensburg (2023-2024). Over the past decade, she has been involved in several projects integrating digital humanities approaches with East-Central European historical sources from the 18th to 20th centuries. Her current research deals with the social, economic, and administrative history of early modern and modern Transylvania, focusing on the development of urban health infrastructures, shifts in housing and living conditions, and the evolution of epidemic diseases such as the plague.

As part of the TransCorr project, she will focus on the use and abuse of power within the framework of multiple, overlaying administrative layers, fiscality, and the issue of public and private debt in Transylvania between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries.

Email: [email protected]

Selected publications :

Forthcoming:

“Bearing the costs of epidemic: remaining households in Hermannstadt/Sibiu during the 1719-1720 and 1738-1739 plague outbreaks”, The History of the Family (peer-reviewed article, under press)

“Keeping the City Alive: Managing Public Health Crises in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century in Sibiu”, in Maria Pákucs, Julia Derzsi (eds.), Towns between Empires: Good Governance and “Police” in Case Studies from Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia, 1500s–1800s, CEU Press, 2025 (under press, chapter in edited volume)

Recent:

“Patterns of Romanian Women’s Civil and Political Engagement in Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth Century Transylvania and Hungary” (w. Vlad Popovici), in Marta Verginella (ed.), Women, Nationalism, and Social Networks in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1848-1918, Purdue University Press, 2023, 65-86 (chapter in edited volume).

“Elites and Groups in East-Central and South-East-Europe in the Long Nineteenth Century. Foreword from the Editors” (w. Judit Pál, Vlad Popovici), in Judit Pál, Vlad Popovici, and Oana Sorescu-Iudean (eds.), Elites, Groups, and Networks in East-Central and South-East Europe in the Long 19th Century, Brill | Schöningh, 2022, 1-27 (chapter in edited volume).

“Patterns in the Timing of Widows’ Remarriage in an 18th-Century Transylvanian City”, Romanian Journal of Population Studies, vol. XVI, Issue 2, 2022, 9-26 (peer-reviewed article).

Michał WASIUCIONEK

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Michał Wasiucionek is a Research Assistant at the Nicolae Iorga Institute of History of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest. He holds an MA in History from the University of Warsaw (2011) and received his PhD in History and Civilization (2016). From 2016 until 2020, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher with the ERC grant Luxury, Fashion and Social Status in Early Modern South-Eastern Europe (LuxFaSS), hosted by New Europe College in Bucharest. In his research, his main focus is on regional and informal practices of power in Southeastern Europe, with particular attention on the place of the Danubian principalities within the Ottoman and Eastern European context. His publications include a monograph study, Ottomans and Eastern Europe: Borders and Political Patronage in the early Modern World (I.B. Tauris, 2019), as well as a number of contributions and articles focusing on Moldavian and Wallachian entanglements within a broader political, social and cultural world of the Ottoman ecumene.

Boriana ANTONOVA-GOLEVA

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Boriana ANTONOVA-GOLEVA is assistant professor at the Institute for Historical Studies of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She received her PhD from Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” (2016). She has been assistant professor at the University of Economics – Varna (2015–2019), and has held scholarships and postdocs at the University of Ioannina (2010–2011), Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” (2012–2014; 2020), the American Research Center in Sofia (2013, 2014), Aristotle University (Thessaloniki) (2010, 2017), Uludağ University (Bursa) (2016–2017), Comenius University (Bratislava) (2017–2018), the British Institute at Ankara (2018), the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (2024).

Boriana Antonova-Goleva’s reseach focuses on the Southeast European infrastructure development, and particularly on the introduction of telegraphs and railways in the Ottoman Empire. She examines their construction and operation, as well as their development in a broader context, exploring the various aspects of modernization, economic transformation, industrialization, and the advent of capitalism in the region.

In TransCorr, Boriana Antonova-Goleva focuses on the modern corruption, as integral aspect of the Southeast European transformation, economic modernization, and infrastructure development. She studies its roots in the Ottoman Empire, its perception both on private level and in the public sphere, as well as the interrelationship between modernization and corruption (in the framework of the top-down/bottom-up interference between the Ottoman state and its Bulgarian subjects). An important concept applied in Antonova-Goleva’s research is the social network theory, which combined with the entangled histories approach, and the comparative approach, provides a useful interdisciplinary theoretical framework, which refines the analysis of the role and connections between the various foreign and local actors in the examined processes.

Email: [email protected] ; [email protected]

Selected Publications:

Transforming Southeast Europe During the Long Nineteenth Century: Persons and Personalities as Agents of Modernization in the Ottoman and the Post-Ottoman Space, Brill Schöningh, 2024 (co-edited with Ivelina Masheva)

‘“Top-Down” or “Bottom-Up’ Modernization: Local Railway Entrepreneurs in the Ottoman Empire in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century”, Turkish Historical Review, vol. 14, no. 1, 2023, p. 26–57

“Concessions and Mirages along the Lower Danube: The Town of Silistria in the Plans of Foreign Railway Promoters during the mid-1850s”, Journal of Balkan and Black Sea Studies, vol. 3, no. 5, 2020, p. 19–47

Electoral Corruption and Violence in Nineteenth Century Romania

« Activities « Research Seminars

Cartoon’s title: “Political drollery”
Comment: “The freedom of elections is guaranteed.”
Bobârnacul (The Flip), anul II, no. 19, 16 March 1879, by Vim or Vinu

Event: Research Group
Location: NEC conference hall & Zoom

17 March 2025, 16.00-18.00 (Bucharest time)

Silvia MARTON, PhD. Associate Professor, Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest; Principal Investigator, ERC research project Transnational histories of ‘corruption’ in Central-South-East Europe (1750-1850), New Europe College

Short abstract:

From the very onset of modern voting procedures in the 1850s in the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia / Romania, candidates, politicians, and voters alike strongly denounced irregularities, fraud, and interference in elections in this pre-democratic period of census-based voting. The aim of my research is to explain the paradox of the simultaneous strong normative condemnation and the systematic and recurring practice of electoral corruption by all the relevant historical actors from the 1850s up to 1914.  The ample political freedoms, including freedom of expression and of the press, were counterweighed by the restricted suffrage which allowed limited citizen access to politics and elections, and by low literacy levels. The period also marked a high point for both nation- and state-building.

My focus in this paper will be on the physical and rhetorical violence in electoral politics in the 1850s-1870s. I will discuss, first, electoral fraud and interreference – subsumed in the then (in)famous expression “moral influence” – that included a wide range of (physically) violent techniques of influence, control, mobilization, or dissuasion of voters, in the context of a fierce rivalry between the two main contenders, the Liberals and the Conservatives that dominated parliament and politics. Second, I will examine the polemical and violent vocabulary and rhetoric of excess and satire that permeated the press, occasional publications (such as pamphlets), the official documents, and the parliamentary debates, when historical actors condemned electoral interference and corruption.

Politics, “Publicity”, and the Denunciation of “Corruption” in the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia (1834–1848)

« Activities « Research Seminars

Photo: Obșteasca Adunare, 1837

16 January 2025, 16.00-18.00
Event: TransCorr Seminar
Location: NEC conference hall & Zoom
Constantin ARDELEANU, Researcher within the framework of the ERC project Transnational histories of ‘corruption’ in Central-South-East Europe (1750-1850); Senior Researcher, Institute for South-East European Studies, Bucharest

The appointment of new princes (“hospodars”) in 1834 to govern the two principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, in accordance with the “Organic Regulations”, was followed by a period of intense political infighting. Alexandru Dimitrie Ghica in Wallachia and Mihail Sturdza in Moldavia encountered considerable resistance from groups of disaffected boyars. The disagreements were especially pronounced within the Wallachian Assembly, where prince Ghica and the boyars exchanged a multitude of accusations. Facing pressure from various political factions and, more significantly, the loss of imperial Russia’s trust, Ghica was ultimately dismissed in 1842. The boyars elected a new prince, Gheorghe Bibescu, a prominent rival of Ghica’s.

In order to ensure the “good governance” of their respective countries, both Sturdza in Moldavia and Bibescu in Wallachia implemented more authoritarian measures against their political opponents. The censorship of the press was one method utilized to purge the public sphere of potentially disruptive political ideologies or provocations espoused by the opposition.
However, the opposition was not effectively silenced. In newspapers articles or printed brochures smuggled into the principalities, the princes were depicted as utterly “corrupt” leaders who exploited their public office for personal gain and the benefit of their close associates. The princes were denounced as guilty of embezzlement, extortion, nepotism, and conflict of interest. In response, the princes instructed their associates to disseminate articles and brochures defending their work and levelling accusations of “corruption” against their primary rivals.

Based on diplomatic reports, the private correspondence of several of the main actors and an analysis of the printed brochures and daily press, I will try to understand how “corruption” was defined and redefined in South-East-Central Europe and how such definitions were used for asserting or contesting political legitimacies.

Historicising the “Colonial” in Nineteenth Century Romania

« Activities « Research Seminars

11 October 2024, 16.00-18.00
Andrei-Dan SORESCU, NEC alumnus
Postdoctoral Researcher, ERC research project “Transnational histories of ‘corruption’ in Central-South-East Europe (1750-1850)”

Intellectual histories of “empire” have long taken centre stage in scholars’ attempts to make sense of its attending “-ism” and the long shadows it continues to cast. By contrast, and with less definitional precision as a separate yet connected process, the meanings that the “colonial” held as a category for historical actors themselves have been left comparatively under-researched. That the two are – and were – deeply entwined is a given. And yet, the historical semantics of “colony” and “colonisation” deserve particular attention. As the politics, ethics, and pragmatics of “de-colonising” institutions, knowledge, and cultural praxis have in recent years gripped public imagination, my contention is that a deeper knowledge of what “the colonial” meant in its past, original context(s) is equally necessary.

The present intervention therefore takes nineteenth-century Romania as a surprisingly productive case-study for investigating the meanings that “colony” and “colonisation” could hold, as pervasively recurring concepts in public discourse. From the self-imagining of the nation’s origins as the outcome of Roman colonisation to envisioning the “colonial” potential of the Dobruja as a province, or by anxiously connoting German or Jewish presence as potentially “colonising”, the literate Romanian public sphere ceaselessly returned to, and attempted to define what these keywords could stand for. The rhetorics of colonial presence in the nation’s past, present, and future remained salient across long nineteenth century, I will argue, even in a country not directly involved in European processes of imperial expansion. Charting how, and which contexts “colony” and “colonisation” were used, and whether their meaning shifted, or was broadened across time, the present talk aims to highlight the often surprising texture of historical discourse, and how the two concepts remained hidden in plain sight for subsequent historical investigations.

Strategic Meeting on 19 June 2024

« Activities « Strategic Meetings

Team members, along with Gábor Egry, member of the International Advisory Board, were all present at the New Europe College. This strategic meeting took place in the aftermath of the first International Conference organized within the framework of the project.

Discussions focused on the variety of words historical actors used to name and / or to denounce what they perceived to be problematic and ‘corrupt’ transgressions. Each of the papers team members presented during the International Conference did include such historical semantics analysis. Discussions also focused on the novelty and continuity the meanings of ‘corruption’, of its normative core, its vocabulary, and its usages. What was new, if at all and in what ways, during the crucial transition period from the 1750s to the 1850s: these questions are at the core of TransCorr’s scientific concerns, and they were the focus elements of the International Conference as well. Team members also discussed the scientific rationale of the first edited volume, and they planned its content and structure, and they also deliberated on the topics of the future publications within the project.

The abusive power: risk perception, mis/trust and the genesis of Russophobia in 19th century Romania

« Activities « Conference Papers

TransCorr team member Constantin Ardeleanu presented his research on the origins and subsequent manifestations of Russophobia in nineteenth century Romania. His paper analysed several episodes that marked the genesis of nineteenth century Russophobia among Romanian elites. In the 1830s, the formation of a national party in Wallachia was the result of a complete distrust of imperial Russia’s annexationist plans in the Principalities.

Western-educated elites had Russophobic prejudices similar to those of Western European public opinion, clearly visible in various polemical pamphlets and especially during the 1848-1849 revolution. During the Crimean War, elites supported the anti-Russian military actions, also regarded as a sort of national liberation. Complete distrust was visible during Russian-Romanian military cooperation in 1877, while the outburst of public Russophobia followed in 1878, with the annexation of South Bessarabia. His talk contextualised several such episodes that shaped Romanian elites’ views of neighbouring imperial Russia as an abusive and corrupting power, a risk for their country’s sovereignty and for the peace of the larger region.

Team member Constanţa Vintilă presented the paper ”Wealth and corruption in Moldova during Mihail Sturdza’s Rule” at the Annual Convention of the “A.D. Xenopol” History Institute of the Romanian Academy (held in Iasi, May 30—June 1, 2024). Her paper investigated how society positioned itself in relation to wealth constructed through abusive means and how it reacted by publicly disavowing grand boyar Iorgu Hartulari, her case study. Iorgu Hartulari was a Greek who settled in Moldova around 1820 and managed to build a huge fortune and an important career by skillfully exploiting his linguistic knowledge, native intelligence, dowry and wife’s networks. The sources, many of them still unpublished, are very generous and reveal his relations with the patriarchates of Jerusalem, Constantinople, Alexandria, with the prince Mihail Sturza (1834-1848), with the Jews and Armenians of Moldavia, with the aristocratic elite of Iasi, with metropolitans, bishops, paschal and other officials.