A Genealogy of Corruption. Administrative Malpractice and Political Modernization in Eighteenth Century Wallachia

Project Information

GenCorr

Grant agreement ID: 898155

DOI

10.3030/898155

Project closed

EC signature date 25 March 2020

Start date 1 April 2021

End date 31 March 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 162 806,40

EU contribution

€ 162 806,40

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAET REGENSBURG
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GenCorr (A Genealogy of Corruption. Administrative Malpractice and Political Modernization in Eighteenth Century Wallachia)

Reporting period: 2021-04-01 to 2023-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The project addresses the problem of the emergence of corruption as a problem of governance in 18th century Wallachia and has two main objectives. The first is to account for the internal and external factors which spurred this transformation. Attention is paid to the political economy of 18th century Wallachia as a key to understand the preoccupation of the princedom with the phenomenon of the administrative malpractice. In addition, the determining role of surrounding great powers and of the circulation of political ideas is stressed. The second objective is to analyse the emergence of corruption as a problem of government in the second part of the 18th century. Contrary to ahistorical perspectives that saw corruption as an invariable factor in Romanian history, the project traces the historical process whereby officials’ misdemeanors ceased to be framed as disloyalty to the prince to become infringement of the law. This historical process also entailed the transformation of the rulership and public office, which came to be regarded as subservient to the common good.
Without having any immediate application to the current preoccupations with corruption, my research helps us to better understand corruption and its history. By studying the history of corruption, we can better understand what it meant in the past, how it changed, how people – governors and civil society – tried to control it and how can we avoid misconceptions.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The starting point of the demonstration is an overview of the corruption practices and the reaction to them during the 17th and first half of the 18th centuries. The evidence from this period suggests, in line with the literature on early-modern corruption, that administrative malpractice was to a certain extent tolerated and dealt with according to the context in which it was committed. In addition, when authors of abuses were indicted, their deeds were framed as treason of or debt to the prince. The situation changed in the second half of the 18th century as a by-product of repeated administrative reforms which in turn were responses to fiscal and agrarian crises. The reforms inaugurated a new style of government, one based on the issuing of frequent ordinances which regulated in detail the duties and rights of the office-holders as well as other sectors of society. These regulations warned repeatedly the office-holders to refrain from bribery, abuses, peddling of influence and so on. Other sources - judicial decisions, chronicles, memoirs, travelogues - document how this preoccupation with officials’ (mis)conduct was turned into administrative practice. Why were the reprimands and warnings addressed to the Wallachian office-holder formulated or why did they appear during the second part of the 18th century?
The project argues that during the second half of the 18th century the princedom became less tolerant to the officials’ abuses. This process took place in a context marked by the ever-mounting Ottoman fiscal pressure and the competition for resources between princes and the social elite (boyars). Moreover, the frequent wars between the three neighboring empires (Habsburg, Tsarist, Ottoman) generated periods of economic and demographic crises which determined attempts from the part of the Wallachian rulers to reform the administration and to impose stricter rules of conduct in office. Part of this reform was a stricter delineation of the officials’ responsibilities and obligations and the regulation of their income. Perquisites were limited and regulated and salaries were introduced for the higher officials.
The regulation of office-holders’ responsibilities entailed a significant transformation in the understanding of administrative malpractice. If previously abuses were framed as treason of the prince or even debt to the prince (i.e. embezzled money was described as a debt to the prince), from the second half of the 18th century, especially, from 1775 on, such activities were considered abuses of office which broke the law (i.e. the princely regulations) and damaged to common good. This transformation of the meaning of corruption was a significant historical process that accompanied the process of modernization in Romania and that was largely ignored by researchers.
Results and dissemination:
“The Private/Public Divide in the Administration of Wallachia during the Second Half of the 18th Century” in Mathias Beer, Harald Heppner, Ulrike Tischler-Hofer eds. Stadt im Wandel. Der Donau-Karpatenraum im langem 18. Jahrhundert / Towns in Change. The Danube-Carpathian Area in the Long 18th Century. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2023, 341-354.
“De folos obştesc. O nouă strategie de legitimare a puterii în Ţara Românească a secolului al XVIII-lea” in Pasiune şi rigoare. Noi tentaţii istoriografice. Ionuţ Costea, Radu Mârza, Valentin Orga (eds.). Cluj-Napoca: Argonaut & Mega, 2022, 274-295.
“Poclon,” Encyclopaedia of Informality (Wallachia, Romania) - Global Informality Project (in-formality.com).
Book proposal to Manchester University Press: A Genealogy of Corruption. Administrative Malpractice and Political Modernization in Eighteenth Century Wallachia.
Blog posts:
From Malpractice to Corruption. Wallachia during the Eighteenth Century and Beyond (informalityregensburg.com).
Despre apariţia corupţiei în Ţara Românească (ligaoamenilordeculturabontideni.blogspot.com).

Newspaper article: (Când apare coruptia în Ţările Române? – ziarulfaclia.ro).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project represents a contribution to the growing scholarship on the transformation of corruption. It shares with the relevant literature that sometime around 1800 the attitude to administrative malfeasance became less tolerant. Historians argued that this transformation was mirrored in the changing understanding of the word “corruption”, from moral degeneration to abuse of public office (this is a simplification, as both meanings coexisted in variable proportions before and after the transformation). My research departed from this latter aspect because the word “corruption”, as a container of all kind of misdemeanors, did not exist in 18th century Wallachia (it was imported as a neologism only by the middle of the 19th century). Instead, it traces the transformation of administrative malpractice from treason to abuse in office and law breaking that is, corruption (without the name itself). The project also engages critically the Romanian historiography of corruption, most of which holds that the rule of the Phanariots – proxy Ottoman rulers - was the perfect antithesis of good governance, featuring rampant corruption. My project refutes this interpretation and argues that it was precisely during this period that corruption was invented as an issue of governance.
The argument has broader implications, refuting the notion that corruption is in some way specific to some regions/societies/cultures. Building on extant literature, the research carried out under the project argues that corruption is not an incontrovertible phenomenon, but one based on social constructions and linked to political struggles. Contending political forces struggle to define what is legitimate state power and what is honest conduct in office. Ironically, this politicized struggle ends up formulating a new ideal of impartial civil servant.

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