Author: TransCorr
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.
Conference Papers
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.
Program
International Conference
Conceptualizing Corruption: The “Old Regime” and the New Order in East-Central-South Europe (1750s-1850s)
New Europe College – Institute for Advanced Study
Bucharest, 17-18 June 2024
PARTICIPANTS: Constantin ARDELEANU, Elena DENISOVA-SCHMIDT, Augusta DIMOU, Gábor EGRY, Boğaç ERGENE, Lucien FRARY, Niels GRÜNE, Eda GÜÇLÜ, Myrto LAMPROU, Silvia MARTON, Damjan MATKOVIC, Mihai OLARU, Mária PAKUCS, Konrad PETROVSZKY, Andrei-Dan SORESCU, Simeon SYMEONOV, Alex R. TIPEI, Constanța VINTILĂ
This conference is organized within the framework of ”Transnational histories of ‘corruption’ in Central-South-East Europe (1750-1850).” Funded by the European Union (ERC, TransCorr, ERC-2022-ADG no. 101098095) and hosted by the New Europe College.
Monday, June 17, 2024
10h00
Welcome remarks: Valentina SANDU-DEDIU, Rector, New Europe College
Silvia MARTON, Principal investigator, New Europe College
SESSION 1
Conceptualizing and (Re)defining ‘Corruption’
10h30-12h30
Chair and discussant: Silvia MARTON, New Europe College / University of Bucharest
Niels GRÜNE, Universität Innsbruck
Early Modern Corruption Contextualized: Changing Notions of Misconduct in Office in Central and Western Europe
Alex R. TIPEI, Université de Montréal / New Europe College
From Tyranny to Corruption: Shifting Cross-Continental Discourses in the Age of Greek Independence
Boğaç ERGENE, University of Vermont
Conceptualizing Corruption in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire: A Historiographic Reflection
12h30-14h00 Lunch at the NEC
SESSION 2
(Discursive) Conflicts of ‘Corruption’
14h00-16h00
Chair and discussant: Constantin ARDELEANU, New Europe College / Institute for South-East European Studies, Bucharest
Constanța VINTILĂ, ‘Nicolae Iorga’ Institute of History, Romanian Academy, Bucharest / New Europe College
Questioning Excessive Wealth: On Abuse and Corruption in Moldavia (1800-1850)
Myrto LAMPROU, Hellenic Open University
Corruption and the Question of Non-Natives in the Greek Kingdom (1833-1862)
Augusta DIMOU, University of Leipzig / New Europe College
Legality and Legitimacy. Conceptions of Legal Order in Post-Ottoman Bosnia
16h00-16h30 Coffee break
SESSION 3
Publicity, Morality, and ‘Corruption’
16h30-17h50
Chair and discussant: Elena DENISOVA-SCHMIDT, University of St. Gallen / Center for International Higher Education at Boston College
Konrad PETROVSZKY, Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna
Scandalizing Corruption in the 18th Century Ottoman Empire – the Case of the “Famous Greek Stavrakis”
Eda GÜÇLÜ, Central European University, Vienna
Corruption and the Liberal Sentiments of Morality: Taxation and Property in Nineteenth-Century Istanbul
Tuesday, June 18, 2024
SESSION 4
Othering ‘Corruption’
10h00-12h00
Chair and discussant: Alex R. TIPEI, Université de Montréal / New Europe College
Lucien FRARY, Rider University / New Europe College
Corruption in the Ottoman Balkans: Travel Accounts during the Age of Revolutions (1770-1848)
Simeon SYMEONOV, History Institute, Sofia
Corruption at the Consulate: Entangled Microhistories of the Lower Danube
Andrei-Dan SORESCU, New Europe College
“A Romanian Siberia”: Emigration, Corruption, and Ethnicity in an Internal Periphery
12h00-13h30 Lunch at the NEC
SESSION 5
Public Offices and Changing Regulatory Practices
13h30-15h30
Chair and discussant: Gábor EGRY, Institute of Political History, Budapest
Mária PAKUCS, ‘Nicolae Iorga’ Institute of History, Romanian Academy, Bucharest / New Europe College
Policeywissenschaft in the Provinces: from Local Gute Policey to Central Policeyordnungen in Habsburg Transylvania
Mihai OLARU, ‘G. Barițiu Institute of History’, Romanian Academy, Cluj-Napoca
Anticorruption from Above. Malfeasance, Reformism and Common Good in Late Eighteenth Century Wallachia
Damjan MATKOVIC, University of Regensburg
Formalization, Misuse and Corruption in Serbia (1838-1858)
Sub-Group Workshops
TransCorr team is divided into two sub-groups according to TransCorr’s two investigative directions. The first investigative direction, “The ‘old regime’ and the new order: reform, resistance, innovation,” uses micro-historical case-studies to situate changing notions of “corruption” in the region within their broader transnational context. The second investigative direction, “Old practices, new interactions? Favoritism, interests, patronage,” focuses on specific patron-client bonds in Central-South-East Europe between 1750-1850. The sub-group’s work centers on micro-historical case-studies for analyzing the variety of forms of favoritism, patron-client ties, or informal associations that historical actors mobilized during the period.
Strategic Meeting on 21 March 2024
« Activities « Strategic Meetings
Discussions focused on historical semantics, one of TransCorr’s main methodological approaches. Team members examined how the meanings and uses of specific concepts linked to “corruption” changed over time and space. They highlighted how for “corruption” to have meaning it has to be situated within a set of political and social discourses. The emphasis on the intersection of (social and political) practice and discourse constitutes one of TransCorr’s methodological novelties.
Constantin Ardeleanu presented his research with the title “ ‘Trading consuls’ and the blurring of public and private interests at the Lower Danube (1830s-1860s)”. The presentation focused on the activity of two British vice-consuls to the Lower Danube (Charles Cunningham and St. Vincent Lloyd), who served as case studies to illustrate the importance of consuls as key actors in denouncing local authorities in Moldavia and Wallachia as incompetent, abusive, and corrupt. At the same time, the two vice-consuls, who often blurred the lines between public or state and private interests, were themselves the object of various accusations, not least of all since their privileges stemmed from a special legal regime that was actively contested as backward and abusive.
Andrei Sorescu’s presentation, “The Perils (and Promise) of German Colonization: Civilizational Hierarchies and Anxieties in Nineteenth Century Romania”, focused on the constant recurrence of “colony” and “colonization” as key concepts in nineteenth century Romanian public discourse and on what this recurrence reveals about the nexus between capital, development, civilization, nation, and state. He argued that, in the formative stages of Romanian nation-state building, anxieties regarding the perceived encroachment of (Pan-)“German” expansionism were cast in explicitly “colonial” terms. As part of a self-perceivedly “backward” and underpopulated region which had historically attracted German settlement, the Danubian Principalities (and, subsequently, Romania) were increasingly feared by local political elites to be the final piece of a geopolitical puzzle, within a spatial and temporal colonial continuum of expansion. Drawing upon parliamentary debates, press, pamphlets, and economic literature, his presentation highlighted the importance of recovering historical actors’ own categories, and demonstrated the need for reflexively historicizing “colonization” and “colony”, beyond their retrospective usage as analytical categories.
Strategic Meeting on 18 January 2024
« Activities « Strategic Meetings
Team members discussed the constructivist approach to ‘corruption’ in a transnational context, one of the major contributions of TransCorr to existing scholarship on Central-South-East Europe.
Principal Investigator Silvia Marton presented a paper titled, “Hopeless corruption? Negotiating modernity in Wallachia and Moldavia in the 1830s”. She highlighted the surprising centrality of the language of (anti)corruption in Russia’s interventions in the two Principalities in the context of major political and institutional changes in these territories. She also showed that, as a historically specific concept, “corruption” was closely linked to novel ideas in the region about modernization (or westernization). As such, denouncing “corrupt” acts generated a particular form of political and social capital in an emerging order in South-East and Central Europe.
Alex R. Tipei’s presentation – entitled “Civilization or Corruption: Representing Modernizing Projects of the Early Greek State in the Francophone Press” – illustrated how transnational inquiry allows historians to move beyond the confines of the nation, which have characterized much of the scholarship since the nineteenth century itself. Following the presentation, team members discussed transnational history’s focus on relationships and networks that crisscrossed nation-states, empires, and continents, exploring the interplay between historical actors and processes in disparate locales and on multiple geographic scales.
Team members also discussed the historical corpus of their research that allows them to build their micro-historical and biographical studies and to track the trajectories of individual historical actors in a transnational context.
Strategic Meeting on 24 October 2023
« Activities « Strategic Meetings
Team members discussed the organization of research (TransCorr’s two investigative directions and sub-groups), identified research goals, and began planning a 2024-2028 calendar for conferences and publications. They also reviewed administrative and logistic matters related to research mobilities.