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).
