Books by Constantin Ardeleanu
Through a skillful combination of economic and cultural history, this book describes the impact o... more Through a skillful combination of economic and cultural history, this book describes the impact on Moldavia and Wallachia of steam navigation on the Danube. The Danube route integrated the two principalities into a dense network of European roads and waterways. From the 1830s to the 1860s, steamboat transport transformed time and space for the areas that benefited from regular services. River traffic accelerated urban development along the Lower Danube and contributed directly to institutional modernization in one of Europe’s peripheries.
Beyond technological advances and the transportation of goods on a trans-imperial waterway, steamboat travel revolutionized human interactions, too. The book offers a fascinating insight into the social and cultural milieu of the nineteenth century, drawing on first-hand accounts of Danube cruising. Describing the story of travelers who interacted, met, and visited the places they stopped, Constantin Ardeleanu creates a transnational history of travel up and down the Danube from Vienna to Constantinople. The pleasures and sometimes the travails of the travelers unfold against a backdrop of technical and economic transformation in the crucial period of modernization.
Gheorghe Cojocaru, Sergiu Cornea, Nicolae Enciu (coord.), Ştiinţa istoriei - formă fundamentală de cunoaştere a trecutului : in honorem Ion Şişcanu - 70, 2022
This text aims to bring to scholarly attention a little-known source on the work of the border co... more This text aims to bring to scholarly attention a little-known source on the work of the border commission that settled the boundary in Southern Bessarabia in 1856. It contains excerpts from the writings ofone of the British military enginccrs involvcd in topographical surveys and thcn in mapping the new border. The engineer's recollections arc an intcresting addition to the testimony of another expert from the British delegation, Charles George Gordon, already known in Roman ian historiography. The author of the pages below, Major-General Edward Renouard James (1833-1909), was educated at Woolwich and then joined the Corps of Military Engineers at Chatham. During the Crimean War he was involved in surveying and cartographic works in Crimea; based on these skills, he was invited, in May 1856, to join Licutenant-Coloncl Edward Stanton, with whom he had previously worked, and who had bccn appointed British delegate to the commission for the delimitation of the Bessarabian border. Stanton's second aide was Gordon, a very good friend of James. Departing for Bessarabia in May 1856, the British military engineers were caught up with the commission's activities until March 1857, when James and Gordon wcrc sent to help with the demarcation of the border bctwccn Russia and the Ottoman Empire in Asia Minor. This text is a translation of excerpts from the memoirs of Edward Renouard James. The excerpts are interesting for the details of the work of the delimitation commission, but they also provide some information on some picturesque aspects of Bessarabian life in the mid-19th century.
Brill, 2020
In The European Commission of the Danube, 1856-1948 Constantin Ardeleanu offers a history of the ... more In The European Commission of the Danube, 1856-1948 Constantin Ardeleanu offers a history of the world’s second international organisation, an innovative techno political institution established by Europe’s Concert of Powers to remove insecurity from the Lower Danube. Delegates of rival empires worked together to ‘correct’ a vital European transportation infrastructure, and to complete difficult hydraulic works they gradually transformed the Commission into an actor of regional and international politics. As an autonomous and independent organ, it employed a complex transnational bureaucracy and regulated shipping along the Danube through a comprehensive set of internationally accepted rules and procedures. The Commission is portrayed as an effective experimental organisation, taken as a model for further cooperation in the international system.
Revue des Études Sud-Est Européennes, 2017
Based on various archival sources, this paper looks at how the production of borders and its nega... more Based on various archival sources, this paper looks at how the production of borders and its negative effects on the fishermen community of Vylkove (Vâlcov) were instrumentalized by different agents interested in strengthening their position in the Danube Delta in the post-Crimean War context. Following the Paris Peace Treaty (30 March 1856) and an additional agreement in 1857, borders changed in the area of the Maritime Danube, and the burgh of Vylkove became part of Moldavia. It was thus doubly disconnected from its fishing grounds (taken over by the Ottomans), and from its main markets – Bessarabia and the Ukrainian provinces of the Russian Empire. As the economic condition of the community worsened, the Moldavian authorities tried to support its new subjects and turned their situation into a question of Prince Cuza’s relations with the Sublime Porte. The European Powers accepted to analyze these issues in the European Commission of the Danube, an international organization that aimed to clarify its own attributions in the Lower Danubian area.
"During the years 1829–1853, profound changes in the economic and political structure of the Roma... more "During the years 1829–1853, profound changes in the economic and political structure of the Romanian principalities considerably increased the European interest for the Lower Danubian area. The Russo-Turkish treaty of Adrianople (1829) marked the beginnings of a new era in the history of the Romanians, opening significant perspectives of political, institutional or national development, although Russia’s status as protector of Moldavia and Wallachia overshadowed these prospects. At least as important were the economic opportunities, nourished by the abolishment of all restrictions regarding the principalities’ foreign trade. Prior to 1829, Danubian exports were limited to grains and animal products, sold, often at requisition prices, on the Ottoman market, or to the free trading of those raw materials which were abundant throughout the Porte’s dominions. A noticeable change took place with the opening of the Black Sea to foreign shipping, starting with the last decades of the 18th century, but mainly after the peace of Bucharest (1812), when the Bessarabian ports of Reni and Ismail, annexed by Russia, became the centres of an increasingly flourishing trade in grains, hides, tallow or wax.
Nevertheless, it was only after the peace of Adrianople that this commercial freedom, doubled by financial and customs reforms, made the northern Danubian area attractive for Western capitalists, interested in the profitable economic perspectives of the principalities. Naturally, safe and cheap commercial routes were necessary to link the region to the European economic body. The Danube was the most appropriate artery, “because the river connects the principalities upstream with Central Europe, downstream with the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Two cities, Brăila in Wallachia and Galaţi in Moldavia, personify, to say so, the interests and hopes of the principalities regarding the Danube”. These port–cities were, in an anatomical comparison, the lungs of the Moldo–Wallachia, whereas the Danube served as the respiratory apparatus by which the Romanians breathed the economic oxygen, so full of modernity, of European commercial exchanges.
The aim of this book is to radiograph this economic trinity, to analyse how the function and the organ mutually regulated and adapted themselves, to present the evolution of each element of the triad and the way in which they worked in conjunction with all the other component parts (central and local administration, political and economic system, social background etc.) of the two Romanian states. By using sources with a wide circulation (narrative literature, brochures, daily press), written in international languages (English, French and German) up to about 1860, this volume presents the contemporaneous perspective on aspects such as: the introduction of steam navigation on the Danube; the development of Moldo-Wallachia’s export capacities and the Western merchants’ increasing interest for Romanian products; the structure, value and direction of Danubian foreign trade; the qualitative and quantitative development of navigation at the Danube mouths; the genesis and evolution of Danube navigation as a major diplomatic question; the political, juridical and technical solutions for removing the natural and artificial obstacles impeding the free navigation of this great European river.
Such an approach, perhaps objectionable from several points of view, is meant to bring to the forefront
contemporaneous information regarding the economic realities of the Lower Danubian area. It is an attempt to avoid the omniscient remarks induced by the access to various diplomatic sources or the subsequent judgments of the historian, who often tries to arrange logically even the most distorted and irregular phenomena and events of the past, so as to get as close as possible to the perception which well–informed contemporaries (statesmen, diplomats, journalists etc.) had on these important aspects for the genesis of European public opinion on the Romanian principalities. It must be said from the very beginning that, when the question of Romanian unity was raised by the Western cabinets, at the end of the Crimean War, the artisans of British, French or Austrian policy were perfectly aware of the economic value of the Danubian market. The analysis of the treaty of Paris proves, in a quantitative and qualitative assessment (by the number and content of provisions), the importance which the victorious powers placed on Danube navigation and the free access to the outlets of Galaţi and Brăila.
By the exclusive recourse to such narrative and public sources, this volume aims to underline the fact that this interest was not confined to official political circles. It also came from the active socio–economic categories: peregrines with different professions, lost in the mosaic of old and new that made up the Romanian society, or diligent merchants, adventurers in a “Wild East” or just mere pioneers of capitalism on Eastern markets. No matter their condition, they all came to witness, de visu, the changing Danubian realities. This economic interest also nourished the involvement of political actors, who understood that Russia’s status as protector of Moldavia and Wallachia affected not only the prosperity of the two autonomous principalities, but also the welfare of Western industrialized states. Starting with the 1840s, the principalities were known not only as veritable granaries of Europe, but they were also much looked after by the tradesmen who could easily sell here, at competitive prices, their manufactured goods.
The dimension of this public perception can only be estimated by using such contemporaneous narrative literature or articles from magazines and the daily press, materials having a wide distribution among contemporaries. Thus, the author has intentionally ignored important and valuable testimonies (ranging from the correspondence of diplomats such as Charles de Bois–le–Comte and the detailed papers of the Sardinian consul Bartolomeo Geymet to the published and unpublished documents of the European consular agents in the Lower Danubian ports). Similarly, the author did not use the rich Romanian and foreign literature regarding this topic, trying to get the very picture that an informed mid–19th century contemporary could have had drawn."
Papers by Constantin Ardeleanu
Analele Dobrogei, 2024
Articolul prezintă aspecte ale activității vice-consulului britanic la Constanța (Kustendjie), Fr... more Articolul prezintă aspecte ale activității vice-consulului britanic la Constanța (Kustendjie), Frank Fremoult Sankey, în primul an de la numirea sa în funcție. Într-o perioadă de dezvoltare susținută pentru portul Dobrogea, imediat după finalizarea căii ferate Dunăre-Marea Neagră, Sankey a încercat să-și afirme autoritatea asupra unei comunități numeroase și oarecum obediente de supuși britanici. Textul se bazează pe o serie de documente inedite deținute în arhivele britanice, dintre care opt sunt reproduse în anexă, și care contribuie la o mai bună înțelegere a istoriei Constanței la începutul anilor 1860.
Archiva Moldaviae, 2022
On the Present and Future of Prut Navigation in Three Reports from 1861
After several failed at... more On the Present and Future of Prut Navigation in Three Reports from 1861
After several failed attempts made in the 1850s, new initiatives were undertaken in 1861 to open the river Prut for steamship navigation. The interest of some entrepreneurs from Galati, along with the support of the authorities, both in Iași and at local level, and the involvement of foreign experts involved in engineering the Danube, contributed to the rapid mobilization of human, financial, material and administrative resources. The objective was to transform the Prut into a navigable river for river steamboats, which would transport the agricultural production of the upstream regions to Galati. This text provides the context for these initiatives based on three reports drawn up by two foreign engineers, John Stokes and Eduard Süren. Their accounts, dated July and October 1861, outline the challenges that hindered navigation on the Prut, as well as the opportunities created by opening the river to a modern merchant fleet. In his reports, Stokes estimated that the opening of the Prut would contribute to the prosperity of Moldavia and the Danube region. Navigation on the lower reaches of the river was not technically very difficult, and could be facilitated as far as Iași with relatively simple hydraulic works and modest expenditure. At that time there was political will, both nationally and internationally, for such an initiative. Interested investors, including British capitalists, provided significant guarantees for the project's completion. Süren’s information on the geography of the Prut valley and the riverbed aligns with Stokes’ reports, but Süren also provides additional data on the depth, velocity and width of the river based on his preliminary measurements. According to the engineer, to enable navigation on the Prut, three types of technical works needed to be undertaken: “clearing works,” “construction of the towpath,” and “river correction.” As these reports are of interest for aspects related to the history of economy, international relations or environmental history, as well as for the local history of the communities along the Prut river, the second part of this work includes the reports of the two engineers.
Anuarul Institutului de Istorie A.D. Xenopol, 2023
PUBLIC HEALTH AND TRADE. ON THE ECONOMIC COST OF THE QUARANTINE SYSTEM IN GALAȚI BEFORE THE CRIME... more PUBLIC HEALTH AND TRADE. ON THE ECONOMIC COST OF THE QUARANTINE SYSTEM IN GALAȚI BEFORE THE CRIMEAN WAR (Summary)
Keywords: Danube trade, shipping, quarantines, public health, Galați.
The Treaty of Adrianople and the Organic Regulations legalised two contradictory institutions in the Romanian Principalities of Wallachian and Moldavia: their commercial freedom and the introduction of a severe sanitary cordon along the Danube. The former institution was open and inclusive, the latter closed and exclusive; the former was related to the globalization of the capitalist system and the Principalities’ exit from the economic periphery of the Ottoman Empire, the latter concerned the globalization of disease after the two states’ entry onto the routes of international mobility. Both institutions were the result of diplomatic calculations made by the Russian authorities during their occupation of the Principalities (1828-1834), and they contributed to maintaining the Romanian territory in a zone of inter-imperial ambiguities, as autonomous provinces of the Ottoman Empire, but enjoying numerous immunities and privileges guaranteed by Russia. The status of Moldavia and Wallachia remained equally ambiguous economically, as can it results from an analysis of the commercial exchanges through the inland Danubian ports of Galați and Brăila, the commercial “capitals” of the two Principalities. These port-cities have been studied from multiple perspectives, and my paper aims to analyse their connections, with a special focus on Galați, as a contact zone of the two contradictory institutions. The ports were the convergence of complex commercial and sanitary regulations, but also of the different interests of Russia, the European powers and the Principalities themselves. In both ports, the quarantine stations were a central site from which to trace the contradictions and ambiguities of the Principalities’ economic regime. Thus, I will try to analyse the competition between free trade and preventive sanitary policies as it results by detailing some aspects of the organisation and functioning of the Galați quarantine station. The paper is mainly based on British consular sources, as the English vice-consul in Galati, Charles Cunningham, often reported to his superiors in Istanbul and London the shortcomings of the commercial and quarantine regime of Moldavia’s port. My paper will refer to three aspects in which the trade – public health dispute is clearly visible in the port of Galați: 1) the status and role of the quarantine system; 2) quarantine policies and the state of the Galați lazaret; 3) the regional trade effects of these quarantine policies.
Revue des Études Sud-Est Européennes, 2023
This paper analyses the dispute that emerged in 1878 between Romania and the European Commission ... more This paper analyses the dispute that emerged in 1878 between Romania and the European Commission of the Danube, a techno-political organisation composed of delegates from Europe's Great Powers, over which side had the right to enforce sanitary policies at Sulina. On the one hand, since Sulina was part of the territory granted in 1878 to Romania, whose independence had been recognised by the Great Powers through the Berlin Treaty, the government in Bucharest claimed that it had the legal and moral rights to extend its public health policies to its newly acquired territories. As an independent state, part of the European community of civilised nations, Romania believed that it possessed all the necessary institutions, knowledge and expertise to fight epidemic diseases threatening its own citizens and those of Europe. On the other hand, since Sulina was the operational headquarters of the Commission, an organisation that enjoyed the status of operating 'in complete independence' of Romania's territorial authority, the commissioners representing the Great Powers of Europe and their governments demanded full control over the sanitary administration of the region. The dispute lasted until 1884, after a functional compromise was reached in several stages.
Water History
In the late nineteenth century, Sulina, a settlement of about 10,000 inhabitants, was Romania’s b... more In the late nineteenth century, Sulina, a settlement of about 10,000 inhabitants, was Romania’s busiest port. Located at the mouth of the only navigable branch of the Danube, the town held a strategic position along South-Eastern European transportation corridors, being the gateway of Lower Danubian trade and shipping. But Sulina was also a hydrobiological melting pot of natural and anthropogenic water flows carried by the Danube, the Black Sea’s currents, and the tanks and bilges of the thousands of ships that came to load their cargoes in the local harbour and roadstead. With advances in the science of bacteriology, provisioning Sulina with safe urban water became a Romanian and international public health priority. Investments in the town’s water supply and sanitation are a fascinating, yet little-known episode of sanitary internationalism, in which several actors in Romania and Europe cooperated – institutionally, technologically and financially – in the attempt to bring sanitar...
Water History, 2023
In the late nineteenth century, Sulina, a settlement of about 10,000 inhabitants, was Romania's b... more In the late nineteenth century, Sulina, a settlement of about 10,000 inhabitants, was Romania's busiest port. Located at the mouth of the only navigable branch of the Danube, the town held a strategic position along SouthEastern European transportation corridors, being the gateway of Lower Danubian trade and shipping. But Sulina was also a hydrobiological melting pot of natural and anthropogenic water flows carried by the Danube, the Black Sea's currents, and the tanks and bilges of the thousands of ships that came to load their cargoes in the local harbour and roadstead. With advances in the science of bacteriology, provisioning Sulina with safe urban water became a Romanian and international public health priority. Investments in the town's water supply and sanitation are a fascinating, yet little-known episode of sanitary internationalism, in which several actors in Romania and Europe cooperated-institutionally, technologically and financially-in the attempt to bring sanitary civilisation to one of Europe's most crucial commercial and epidemiological gateways. In line with similar interest for water, disease and urban infrastructure in a peripheral (quasi-colonial) context, this paper will be illustrative for the growing debates in Romania around the quality of water in the context of the larger hygiene movement. The rhetoric of 'improvement' and 'progress' in providing access to safe drinking water, stemming from the idea that 'uncleanliness with all its consequences comes mainly from lack of water', was accompanied by calls for the construction of modern water infrastructure.
Ukraina Moderna
Invited experts who study and teach economic history in American, Romanian, Swedish, and Ukrainia... more Invited experts who study and teach economic history in American, Romanian, Swedish, and Ukrainian universities answer questions about the recent trends and perspectives in the economic history of Eastern Europe. They demonstrate how the relationship between history and other disciplines developed in Eastern European scholarship. They explain the reasons for the relatively underdeveloped scholarly community of the field in the region. Finally, they talk about the applicable theories and concepts which could challenge Gerschenkron’s theoretical framework when discussing the history of economy and business in Eastern Europe. Authors mostly accept the suggested statement that the economic history of Eastern Europe is institutionally underdeveloped if compared with Western scholarship. At the same time, they see the situation as a good opportunity for the development of new research projects. The authors emphasize the necessity to “learn the language of other disciplines” as well as to ...
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Books by Constantin Ardeleanu
Beyond technological advances and the transportation of goods on a trans-imperial waterway, steamboat travel revolutionized human interactions, too. The book offers a fascinating insight into the social and cultural milieu of the nineteenth century, drawing on first-hand accounts of Danube cruising. Describing the story of travelers who interacted, met, and visited the places they stopped, Constantin Ardeleanu creates a transnational history of travel up and down the Danube from Vienna to Constantinople. The pleasures and sometimes the travails of the travelers unfold against a backdrop of technical and economic transformation in the crucial period of modernization.
Nevertheless, it was only after the peace of Adrianople that this commercial freedom, doubled by financial and customs reforms, made the northern Danubian area attractive for Western capitalists, interested in the profitable economic perspectives of the principalities. Naturally, safe and cheap commercial routes were necessary to link the region to the European economic body. The Danube was the most appropriate artery, “because the river connects the principalities upstream with Central Europe, downstream with the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Two cities, Brăila in Wallachia and Galaţi in Moldavia, personify, to say so, the interests and hopes of the principalities regarding the Danube”. These port–cities were, in an anatomical comparison, the lungs of the Moldo–Wallachia, whereas the Danube served as the respiratory apparatus by which the Romanians breathed the economic oxygen, so full of modernity, of European commercial exchanges.
The aim of this book is to radiograph this economic trinity, to analyse how the function and the organ mutually regulated and adapted themselves, to present the evolution of each element of the triad and the way in which they worked in conjunction with all the other component parts (central and local administration, political and economic system, social background etc.) of the two Romanian states. By using sources with a wide circulation (narrative literature, brochures, daily press), written in international languages (English, French and German) up to about 1860, this volume presents the contemporaneous perspective on aspects such as: the introduction of steam navigation on the Danube; the development of Moldo-Wallachia’s export capacities and the Western merchants’ increasing interest for Romanian products; the structure, value and direction of Danubian foreign trade; the qualitative and quantitative development of navigation at the Danube mouths; the genesis and evolution of Danube navigation as a major diplomatic question; the political, juridical and technical solutions for removing the natural and artificial obstacles impeding the free navigation of this great European river.
Such an approach, perhaps objectionable from several points of view, is meant to bring to the forefront
contemporaneous information regarding the economic realities of the Lower Danubian area. It is an attempt to avoid the omniscient remarks induced by the access to various diplomatic sources or the subsequent judgments of the historian, who often tries to arrange logically even the most distorted and irregular phenomena and events of the past, so as to get as close as possible to the perception which well–informed contemporaries (statesmen, diplomats, journalists etc.) had on these important aspects for the genesis of European public opinion on the Romanian principalities. It must be said from the very beginning that, when the question of Romanian unity was raised by the Western cabinets, at the end of the Crimean War, the artisans of British, French or Austrian policy were perfectly aware of the economic value of the Danubian market. The analysis of the treaty of Paris proves, in a quantitative and qualitative assessment (by the number and content of provisions), the importance which the victorious powers placed on Danube navigation and the free access to the outlets of Galaţi and Brăila.
By the exclusive recourse to such narrative and public sources, this volume aims to underline the fact that this interest was not confined to official political circles. It also came from the active socio–economic categories: peregrines with different professions, lost in the mosaic of old and new that made up the Romanian society, or diligent merchants, adventurers in a “Wild East” or just mere pioneers of capitalism on Eastern markets. No matter their condition, they all came to witness, de visu, the changing Danubian realities. This economic interest also nourished the involvement of political actors, who understood that Russia’s status as protector of Moldavia and Wallachia affected not only the prosperity of the two autonomous principalities, but also the welfare of Western industrialized states. Starting with the 1840s, the principalities were known not only as veritable granaries of Europe, but they were also much looked after by the tradesmen who could easily sell here, at competitive prices, their manufactured goods.
The dimension of this public perception can only be estimated by using such contemporaneous narrative literature or articles from magazines and the daily press, materials having a wide distribution among contemporaries. Thus, the author has intentionally ignored important and valuable testimonies (ranging from the correspondence of diplomats such as Charles de Bois–le–Comte and the detailed papers of the Sardinian consul Bartolomeo Geymet to the published and unpublished documents of the European consular agents in the Lower Danubian ports). Similarly, the author did not use the rich Romanian and foreign literature regarding this topic, trying to get the very picture that an informed mid–19th century contemporary could have had drawn."
Papers by Constantin Ardeleanu
After several failed attempts made in the 1850s, new initiatives were undertaken in 1861 to open the river Prut for steamship navigation. The interest of some entrepreneurs from Galati, along with the support of the authorities, both in Iași and at local level, and the involvement of foreign experts involved in engineering the Danube, contributed to the rapid mobilization of human, financial, material and administrative resources. The objective was to transform the Prut into a navigable river for river steamboats, which would transport the agricultural production of the upstream regions to Galati. This text provides the context for these initiatives based on three reports drawn up by two foreign engineers, John Stokes and Eduard Süren. Their accounts, dated July and October 1861, outline the challenges that hindered navigation on the Prut, as well as the opportunities created by opening the river to a modern merchant fleet. In his reports, Stokes estimated that the opening of the Prut would contribute to the prosperity of Moldavia and the Danube region. Navigation on the lower reaches of the river was not technically very difficult, and could be facilitated as far as Iași with relatively simple hydraulic works and modest expenditure. At that time there was political will, both nationally and internationally, for such an initiative. Interested investors, including British capitalists, provided significant guarantees for the project's completion. Süren’s information on the geography of the Prut valley and the riverbed aligns with Stokes’ reports, but Süren also provides additional data on the depth, velocity and width of the river based on his preliminary measurements. According to the engineer, to enable navigation on the Prut, three types of technical works needed to be undertaken: “clearing works,” “construction of the towpath,” and “river correction.” As these reports are of interest for aspects related to the history of economy, international relations or environmental history, as well as for the local history of the communities along the Prut river, the second part of this work includes the reports of the two engineers.
Keywords: Danube trade, shipping, quarantines, public health, Galați.
The Treaty of Adrianople and the Organic Regulations legalised two contradictory institutions in the Romanian Principalities of Wallachian and Moldavia: their commercial freedom and the introduction of a severe sanitary cordon along the Danube. The former institution was open and inclusive, the latter closed and exclusive; the former was related to the globalization of the capitalist system and the Principalities’ exit from the economic periphery of the Ottoman Empire, the latter concerned the globalization of disease after the two states’ entry onto the routes of international mobility. Both institutions were the result of diplomatic calculations made by the Russian authorities during their occupation of the Principalities (1828-1834), and they contributed to maintaining the Romanian territory in a zone of inter-imperial ambiguities, as autonomous provinces of the Ottoman Empire, but enjoying numerous immunities and privileges guaranteed by Russia. The status of Moldavia and Wallachia remained equally ambiguous economically, as can it results from an analysis of the commercial exchanges through the inland Danubian ports of Galați and Brăila, the commercial “capitals” of the two Principalities. These port-cities have been studied from multiple perspectives, and my paper aims to analyse their connections, with a special focus on Galați, as a contact zone of the two contradictory institutions. The ports were the convergence of complex commercial and sanitary regulations, but also of the different interests of Russia, the European powers and the Principalities themselves. In both ports, the quarantine stations were a central site from which to trace the contradictions and ambiguities of the Principalities’ economic regime. Thus, I will try to analyse the competition between free trade and preventive sanitary policies as it results by detailing some aspects of the organisation and functioning of the Galați quarantine station. The paper is mainly based on British consular sources, as the English vice-consul in Galati, Charles Cunningham, often reported to his superiors in Istanbul and London the shortcomings of the commercial and quarantine regime of Moldavia’s port. My paper will refer to three aspects in which the trade – public health dispute is clearly visible in the port of Galați: 1) the status and role of the quarantine system; 2) quarantine policies and the state of the Galați lazaret; 3) the regional trade effects of these quarantine policies.
Beyond technological advances and the transportation of goods on a trans-imperial waterway, steamboat travel revolutionized human interactions, too. The book offers a fascinating insight into the social and cultural milieu of the nineteenth century, drawing on first-hand accounts of Danube cruising. Describing the story of travelers who interacted, met, and visited the places they stopped, Constantin Ardeleanu creates a transnational history of travel up and down the Danube from Vienna to Constantinople. The pleasures and sometimes the travails of the travelers unfold against a backdrop of technical and economic transformation in the crucial period of modernization.
Nevertheless, it was only after the peace of Adrianople that this commercial freedom, doubled by financial and customs reforms, made the northern Danubian area attractive for Western capitalists, interested in the profitable economic perspectives of the principalities. Naturally, safe and cheap commercial routes were necessary to link the region to the European economic body. The Danube was the most appropriate artery, “because the river connects the principalities upstream with Central Europe, downstream with the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Two cities, Brăila in Wallachia and Galaţi in Moldavia, personify, to say so, the interests and hopes of the principalities regarding the Danube”. These port–cities were, in an anatomical comparison, the lungs of the Moldo–Wallachia, whereas the Danube served as the respiratory apparatus by which the Romanians breathed the economic oxygen, so full of modernity, of European commercial exchanges.
The aim of this book is to radiograph this economic trinity, to analyse how the function and the organ mutually regulated and adapted themselves, to present the evolution of each element of the triad and the way in which they worked in conjunction with all the other component parts (central and local administration, political and economic system, social background etc.) of the two Romanian states. By using sources with a wide circulation (narrative literature, brochures, daily press), written in international languages (English, French and German) up to about 1860, this volume presents the contemporaneous perspective on aspects such as: the introduction of steam navigation on the Danube; the development of Moldo-Wallachia’s export capacities and the Western merchants’ increasing interest for Romanian products; the structure, value and direction of Danubian foreign trade; the qualitative and quantitative development of navigation at the Danube mouths; the genesis and evolution of Danube navigation as a major diplomatic question; the political, juridical and technical solutions for removing the natural and artificial obstacles impeding the free navigation of this great European river.
Such an approach, perhaps objectionable from several points of view, is meant to bring to the forefront
contemporaneous information regarding the economic realities of the Lower Danubian area. It is an attempt to avoid the omniscient remarks induced by the access to various diplomatic sources or the subsequent judgments of the historian, who often tries to arrange logically even the most distorted and irregular phenomena and events of the past, so as to get as close as possible to the perception which well–informed contemporaries (statesmen, diplomats, journalists etc.) had on these important aspects for the genesis of European public opinion on the Romanian principalities. It must be said from the very beginning that, when the question of Romanian unity was raised by the Western cabinets, at the end of the Crimean War, the artisans of British, French or Austrian policy were perfectly aware of the economic value of the Danubian market. The analysis of the treaty of Paris proves, in a quantitative and qualitative assessment (by the number and content of provisions), the importance which the victorious powers placed on Danube navigation and the free access to the outlets of Galaţi and Brăila.
By the exclusive recourse to such narrative and public sources, this volume aims to underline the fact that this interest was not confined to official political circles. It also came from the active socio–economic categories: peregrines with different professions, lost in the mosaic of old and new that made up the Romanian society, or diligent merchants, adventurers in a “Wild East” or just mere pioneers of capitalism on Eastern markets. No matter their condition, they all came to witness, de visu, the changing Danubian realities. This economic interest also nourished the involvement of political actors, who understood that Russia’s status as protector of Moldavia and Wallachia affected not only the prosperity of the two autonomous principalities, but also the welfare of Western industrialized states. Starting with the 1840s, the principalities were known not only as veritable granaries of Europe, but they were also much looked after by the tradesmen who could easily sell here, at competitive prices, their manufactured goods.
The dimension of this public perception can only be estimated by using such contemporaneous narrative literature or articles from magazines and the daily press, materials having a wide distribution among contemporaries. Thus, the author has intentionally ignored important and valuable testimonies (ranging from the correspondence of diplomats such as Charles de Bois–le–Comte and the detailed papers of the Sardinian consul Bartolomeo Geymet to the published and unpublished documents of the European consular agents in the Lower Danubian ports). Similarly, the author did not use the rich Romanian and foreign literature regarding this topic, trying to get the very picture that an informed mid–19th century contemporary could have had drawn."
After several failed attempts made in the 1850s, new initiatives were undertaken in 1861 to open the river Prut for steamship navigation. The interest of some entrepreneurs from Galati, along with the support of the authorities, both in Iași and at local level, and the involvement of foreign experts involved in engineering the Danube, contributed to the rapid mobilization of human, financial, material and administrative resources. The objective was to transform the Prut into a navigable river for river steamboats, which would transport the agricultural production of the upstream regions to Galati. This text provides the context for these initiatives based on three reports drawn up by two foreign engineers, John Stokes and Eduard Süren. Their accounts, dated July and October 1861, outline the challenges that hindered navigation on the Prut, as well as the opportunities created by opening the river to a modern merchant fleet. In his reports, Stokes estimated that the opening of the Prut would contribute to the prosperity of Moldavia and the Danube region. Navigation on the lower reaches of the river was not technically very difficult, and could be facilitated as far as Iași with relatively simple hydraulic works and modest expenditure. At that time there was political will, both nationally and internationally, for such an initiative. Interested investors, including British capitalists, provided significant guarantees for the project's completion. Süren’s information on the geography of the Prut valley and the riverbed aligns with Stokes’ reports, but Süren also provides additional data on the depth, velocity and width of the river based on his preliminary measurements. According to the engineer, to enable navigation on the Prut, three types of technical works needed to be undertaken: “clearing works,” “construction of the towpath,” and “river correction.” As these reports are of interest for aspects related to the history of economy, international relations or environmental history, as well as for the local history of the communities along the Prut river, the second part of this work includes the reports of the two engineers.
Keywords: Danube trade, shipping, quarantines, public health, Galați.
The Treaty of Adrianople and the Organic Regulations legalised two contradictory institutions in the Romanian Principalities of Wallachian and Moldavia: their commercial freedom and the introduction of a severe sanitary cordon along the Danube. The former institution was open and inclusive, the latter closed and exclusive; the former was related to the globalization of the capitalist system and the Principalities’ exit from the economic periphery of the Ottoman Empire, the latter concerned the globalization of disease after the two states’ entry onto the routes of international mobility. Both institutions were the result of diplomatic calculations made by the Russian authorities during their occupation of the Principalities (1828-1834), and they contributed to maintaining the Romanian territory in a zone of inter-imperial ambiguities, as autonomous provinces of the Ottoman Empire, but enjoying numerous immunities and privileges guaranteed by Russia. The status of Moldavia and Wallachia remained equally ambiguous economically, as can it results from an analysis of the commercial exchanges through the inland Danubian ports of Galați and Brăila, the commercial “capitals” of the two Principalities. These port-cities have been studied from multiple perspectives, and my paper aims to analyse their connections, with a special focus on Galați, as a contact zone of the two contradictory institutions. The ports were the convergence of complex commercial and sanitary regulations, but also of the different interests of Russia, the European powers and the Principalities themselves. In both ports, the quarantine stations were a central site from which to trace the contradictions and ambiguities of the Principalities’ economic regime. Thus, I will try to analyse the competition between free trade and preventive sanitary policies as it results by detailing some aspects of the organisation and functioning of the Galați quarantine station. The paper is mainly based on British consular sources, as the English vice-consul in Galati, Charles Cunningham, often reported to his superiors in Istanbul and London the shortcomings of the commercial and quarantine regime of Moldavia’s port. My paper will refer to three aspects in which the trade – public health dispute is clearly visible in the port of Galați: 1) the status and role of the quarantine system; 2) quarantine policies and the state of the Galați lazaret; 3) the regional trade effects of these quarantine policies.
In this new economic contest that eventually aimed at the creation of a national industry, Romania’s port-cities of Brăila (Braila) and Galaţi (Galatz), the outlets of the rich grain surplus of the Danubian plains, were to play a significant role. However, the acquisition of the trans-Danubian province of Dobrogea (Dobrudja) in 1878 provided the country with the opportunity of possessing a maritime port on the Black Sea coast, a desideratum that proved impossible on the improper seacoast of Southern Bessarabia during the previous decade.
Starting from these premises, this paper will analyze the main aspects related to Romania’s policy towards its large ports of Brăila, Galaţi and Constanţa, how they coped with the new national economic imperatives and how they managed to survive into a growingly competitive mercantile context. The core issue relates to the ports’ roles in relation to the foundation and development of a modern land and water transportation infrastructure employed for shipping the products from the agricultural hinterlands to the routes of world trade.
The paper briefly presents Charles Augustus Hartley, the British expert who was responsible with improving navigation along the Maritime Danube as engineer-in-chief of the European Commission of the Danube. Besides this hydrotechnical masterpiece, Hartley was involved in several other engineering projects that took him from Bessarabia and Dobrudja to Turnu Severin and Giurgiu. The paper insists on these works and also mentions some of Hartley’s ‘international’ accomplishments in ports and rivers around the world.
This paper presents, on the basis of detailed information from the archives of the European Commission of the Danube, the circumstances which caused the shipwrecks of more than a hundred ships at the Lower Danube during the period 1856-1914 and classifies these disasters according to their main causes: human errors, adverse weather conditions, failure of ship equipment, etc. Comprehensive references to the major accidents are provided, with the names of the ships involved and the context of their occurrence.
Thus, in the subsequent years, Britain’s top priority in her Eastern policy was to obtain the annulment of the disadvantageous Russo-Ottoman agreement. During this emerging “cold war” or “armed peace”, the Foreign Office used any opportunity to protest against Russia’s abuses and violations of existing treaties, in an attempt to force her back down from the unilateral position held at the Straits. In this respect, Russia’s alleged impositions in the way of free trade and navigation in the Black Sea basin were favourable pretexts for anti-Russian diplomatic initiatives or public diatribes.
This paper aims to comparatively analyse two such cases, presented in the Western press as examples of Russia’s arbitrary aggressions and topics of official interpellations in the British Parliament, both with an enormous contribution to the development of British Russophobia in the 1830s: a) the British economic enterprises in the Romanian Principalities and the Russian infringements in the way of free trade and navigation at the Lower Danube; b) the detainment of the schooner “Vixen”, officially employed for carrying salt from Wallachia to the Caucasus, arrested in 1836 by the Russian authorities around the Circassian port of Sudzhuk-Kale.
The paper presents the evolution of the foreign trade of Tulcea, after Dobrudja became a part of modern Romania, in 1878. Thus, the paper insists on the value and quantity of the commercial exchanges (exports, imports), the main traded goods, the main economic partners and the specific character of Tulcea in the Romanian economy. On the basis of such quantitative remarks, the author presents the three factors that caused the stagnation or slow development of the port during that period: the
peripherization of the city and area in relation to Romania; the fact that the city did not have a significant hinterland, capable to secure an economic basin decisive for its development; the lack of communication ways.