Author: TransCorr

Program

« Activities

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

Source: P. V. N. Myers, A General History for Colleges and High Schools (Boston, MA: Ginn & Company, 1896) | Maps courtesy FCIT | https://etc.usf.edu/maps

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

« Activities

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 Meetings

« Activities

During strategic meetings, TransCorr members discuss their conceptual and methodological approach, their empirical/archive-based research, and identify case-studies relevant to the project. These state-of-the-project gatherings ensure the coordination of workflow across the team as well as the organization of the publications and scientific events.

International Conference June 2024

« Activities

The New Europe College – Institute for Advanced Study in Bucharest hosts the first major international TransCorr event from the 17th to the 18th of June 2024. During the conference, Conceptualizing Corruption: The “Old Regime” and the New Order in East-Central-South Europe (1750s-1850s), participants present their works that employ a (de)constructivist and/or sematic approach to study ‘corruption’ and its relationship to the rise of modernity. Focusing on Central-South-East Europe from the 1750s to the 1850s, panelists situated changing notions of ‘corruption’ in a transnational context.

Andrei SORESCU

« Team

Andrei SORESCU is an early career researcher (PhD UCL SSEES ’19) specializing in nineteenth-century European intellectual and cultural history, with an emphasis on Romania in a transnational setting. He has published on the history of concepts, the intellectual history of international law, the impact of subversive objects on nation-building, and on antisemitism and citizenship. He has previously held postdoctoral positions at the New Europe College institute of advanced studies, Bucharest, and at the University of Bucharest Research Institute (ICUB).

At present, he is a member of two research projects covering the long nineteenth century, funded by UEFISCDI (the Romanian higher education funding agency) at the New Europe College, examining the entanglement between colonialism, infrastructure, and corruption – and the cultural and social impact of the Danubian quarantine system, respectively.

Email: [email protected]

Selected Publications:
Forthcoming:
“The ‘Is’ at Home, the ‘Ought’ Abroad: Self-Comparison as Self-Criticism and the Transylvanian Model in Early Twentieth Century Romania”, Comparative Studies in Society and History (peer-reviewed article, in press)

“The Numbers Game: Demographic Anxieties and Quotas in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Romania and the Global Anti-Semitic Imaginary” in: Michael Laurence Miller, Judith Szapor (eds.) Quotas: “The Jewish Question” and Higher Education in Central Europe and Beyond (1880-1945), Berghahn, 2024 (w. Raul Cârstocea, chapter in volume, in press)

Recent:
“Inventing a Prosthetic Bourgeoisie: Romania and the Aromanians, 1848-1906” Nations and Nationalism, 4/2022, pp. 661-683 (peer-reviewed article)

“Peddlers, Peasants, Icons, Engravings: The Portrait of the Tsar and Romanian Nation-Building, 1888-1916” New Europe College Ştefan Odobleja Program Yearbook 2019-2020, pp. 209-246 (chapter in volume) OA: https://nec.ro/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Sorescu.pdf

„Denunţarea „funcţionarismului” şi a clientelismului în Vechiul Regat” [“Denouncing ‘functionarism’ and Clientelism in the ‘Old Kingdom’ of Romania”] (w. Silvia Marton), in: Judit Pál, Vlad Popovici, Andrei Florin Sora (coord.), Servitorii Statului: Funcționari, funcții și funcționarism în România modernă (1830-1948), Cluj-Napoca, Mega, 2022, pp. 75-105 (chapter in volume)

“Política «oculta»: Publicidad, secretismo, transparencia e inteligibilidad en la Rumanía de finales del siglo XIX” [“‘Occult’ Politics: Publicity, Secrecy, Transparency, and Intelligibility in Late Nineteenth Century Romania”] (w. Silvia Marton), in: Frédéric Monier, Lluís Ferran Toledano, Joan Pubill, Gemma Rubí (eds.), “Las sombras de la transparencia. Secreto, corrupción y “Estado profundo” en la Europa contemporánea”, Editorial Comares, 2022, p.
21-43 (chapter in volume)

Constanţa VINTILĂ

« Team

Constanţa VINTILĂ is a Senior Researcher in the Department of Modern History at the ‘Nicolae Iorga’ Institute of History, Romanian Academy. She received her PhD in History et Civilisation, from EHESS, Paris (2004) and in Sociology from University of Bucharest (2012). She was the recipient of the ERC Consolidator Research Grant entitled Luxury, Fashion and Social Status in the Early Modern South-Eastern Europe, hosted by New Europe College, Institute for Advanced Study, Bucharest (2015-2020). She was researcher, visiting professor, or guest lecturer at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) (2002, 2003, 2007), Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (Paris) (2007), University of Toulouse (2008), University Paris-Sorbonne IV (Centre Roland Mousnier) (2012, 2015), Freie Universität Berlin (2016), University of Amsterdam (2017), University of Munster (2017). She was a research fellow of the New Europe College – Institute for Advanced Studies, Bucharest (2001-2002, 2006-2007, 2020-21), and fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2015-2016); postdoctoral fellow of Agence universitaire de la francophonie at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) (2004-2005). Since 2009, she co-organizes (with Silvia Marton and Constantin Ardeleanu) the monthly focus-group “Political and Social History of the 18th and 19th century” within the New Europe College – Institute for Advanced Studies, Bucharest.

Constanţa Vintilă is a social historian who dedicates her research to the history of family, mobility, and material culture in pre-modern and modern South-eastern Europe. She started her career studying the history of family in the eighteenth-century Romanian society. Her scholarship has made important contributions to the history of the family in South-eastern Europe by exploring and analysing a huge number of primary archives kept by the ecclesiastical and civil courts in Wallachia and Moldavia. Her international scientific visibility has increased after receiving an ERC Consolidator Grant. In the framework of the ERC project LuxFass, she focused on luxury and social status, and material culture across South-eastern Europe.

In TransCorr, Constanţa Vintilă investigates the Phanariot networks across the empires of Central-South-eastern Europe. She will build a series of micro-historical case-studies of patron-client tiesto understand the vocabulary used to describe such long-standing connections and networks, their typology, and their aims. She will also study how the historical actors mobilized these networks in various situations, locations, and periods.

Selected publications:
Changing Subjects, Moving Objects. Status, Mobility, and Social Transformation in Southeastern Europe, 1700-1850, Brill, Leiden, 2022. Changing Subjects, Moving Objects – Status, Mobility, and Social Transformation in Southeastern Europe, 1700–1850 | Brill

Women, Consumption, and the Circulation of Ideas in South-Eastern Europe, 17th – 19th Centuries, Brill, Leiden, 2018 (ed. by). Women, Consumption, and the Circulation of Ideas in South-Eastern Europe, 17th – 19th Centuries | Brill

‘Du zarif au galant. Modes et corps à l’âge des révolutions dans les pays roumains (1780-1830)’. Annales Historique de la Révolution Française, 3 (49) 2022, 145-168.

‘Shawls and Sable Furs: How to Be a Boyar under the Phanariot Regime (1710-1821)’, European History Yearbook, 20 (2019), 137-158.

‘I believe in stories’: The journey of a young boyar from Bucharest to Istanbul in the early nineteenth century’, Turcica, (50) 2019, 285-317.

‘A Wallachian Boyar in Emperor Joseph II’s Court’, Journal of Early Modern History, 2019, 341-362.

Alex TIPEI

« Team

A transnational historian of modern Europe, Alex TIPEI is an assistant professor in the department of history and the program in international studies at the University of Montréal. She trained in the United States and France and earned her PhD from Indiana University (2016). She has previously held teaching or research positions at McGill and Princeton Universities as well as the Universities of Bucharest and Illinois. Focused primarily on Southeastern Europe and France in a global context, her research questions fundamental dichotomies—center/periphery, universal/national, developed backward, local/global—and reveal how relations between these categories are not as
straightforward as they appear.

Alex’s first monograph, Unintended Nations: How French Liberals’ Empire of Civilization Remade Southeast Europe and the Post-Napoleonic World, is currently under review at Oxford University Press. Based on archival work in France, Romania, and Greece, the book explores how and why, after Napoleon’s defeat, Paris-based liberals formed partnerships with Orthodox elites in Southeast Europe. They used a specific discourse of civilization to describe and promote these relationships, which aimed to produce informal economic and cultural colonies in the Balkans. The study reveals the central place of these exchanges in the development of liberalism and of a liberal reform agenda in France. It likewise demonstrates how these contacts provided a framework for the articulation of nascent national identities in the Greek and the Romanian lands. Situating this history in a global context, it links these entanglements to Franco-British economic competition in the Americas and discuss how they helped crystalize the cultural, political, and biopolitical borders of Europe and the West.

Alex has published in outlets such as Modern Intellectual History, European History Quarterly, and has an article forthcoming in East European Politics and Society. She is presently working on a second monograph that traces out the role of French Saint-Simonians in the expansion of infrastructure and finance networks in Greece and Mexico. Her recent work has benefited from support from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Fulbright Program among other sources.

As a member of the TransCorr team, Alex looks forward to further studying the relationship between the development of (West European) modernity and the rise of specific notions of corruption in Southeast Europe as well as the way actors in the Balkans and their partners across the continent mobilized these concepts to further their discrete political and economic agendas. Alex has previously touched on this topic, contributing, for instance, the chapter, “A Corrupt Governor? Kapodistrias’s Assassination in the Francophone Press” to a new collective volume on the Greek War of Independence (ed. by Christine Phillou and Katerina Lagos, under review at Oxford University Press).

Email: [email protected]

Selected Publications:
Unintended Nations: How French Liberals’ Empire of Civilization Remade Southeast Europe and the Post-Napoleonic World, under review Oxford University Press.

“‘And Mama Studied with Me’: Elementary Education, Modernization, Gendered Curricula, and the Reconfiguration of the Public and Private in the Danubian Principalities and Greek lands, 1810s-1840s,” East European Politics & Societies, forthcoming.

“Korais’s Greece and Napoleon’s Empire: The Egyptian Campaign, Race Science, and the Europeanization of an Idea,” in From the Napoleonic Age to the Age of Empires: Empire after the Emperor, Thomas Dodman & Aurélien Lignereux (eds.), (Palgrave, 2023).

“How to Make Friends & Influence People: Elementary Education, French ‘Influence,’ & the Balkans, 1815-40s” Modern Intellectual History, 15:3 (Nov., 2018): 621-649. “Audience Matters: ‘Civilization-Speak,’ Educational Discourses, & Balkan Nationalism, 1815-40,” European History Quarterly, 48:4 (Fall, 2018): 658-685.