Romanian elections have been vaguely in the news recently, internationally speaking. Because locally they were the only news for a while. More or less. I was going to write a post on that but then thought that a bit of context is needed. How much? Well, a lot. Enough that I decided to write two posts, should they be published. The politics of the modern culture wars phrased things in either the sovereignty versus globalism, Russia versus the West, conservatism versus neo Marxism. I would say this does not fully cover it. Let’s start with a bit of history. I wanted to do a single post initially, but as it got rather long and I already took a bunch out, I will keep this one until the year 1900 and hopefully write a second. I know this is probably not a topic of interest for many but I have every confidence you will find something off-topic to talk about.
Romania – or the lands presently in Romania, I will use the modern word for all the principalities – have not been truly sovereign -except for small periods here and there – since the Roman emperor Trajan conquered Dacia, 106 AD, almost 2000 years. We were ever a land at the border of greater nations and empires. Transylvania was a separate case, mostly directly under Hungary or the Hapsburg. The two other principalities are a special case, and I will focus on them. For the time since the Romanian principalities formed around the beginning of the 14th century and until independence in 1878, there were two broad periods. One when we were stuck so to say between the Ottoman empire, Hungary and Poland (later the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, I will use that for both) followed by the Ottomans, Austria-Hungary and the Russian empire. The second part started around the reign of Peter the Great of Russia, when Russian ascendancy and Polish decline started.
After the Roman retreat from Dacia, these lands were under the nominal rule of various migratory tribes, mostly steppe nomads. There was not much written in this time period locally, but Byzantine sources mention tribes of Vlachs who paid tribute to whomever had the army to demand it, be it Mongols, Bulgars, Cumans or whatever. The locals were mostly Christian – according to the archeological evidence – shepherds and farmers, in small villages in protected valleys among the heavily wooded lands. These formed a smattering of small proto-states, some only the size of a few villages. Even state formation was under vassalage, as Wallachia and Moldavia formed under nominal Hungarian suzerainty, the kingdom being interested in some buffer states against the Golden Horde and their various offshoots. A foundational moment of Wallachia was winning de facto independence after the battle of Posada.
We were always distinguished from most of our neighbors by our Romance language and our Orthodox religion. In the early period there was some attempt at a switch towards the Catholicism of Poland/Hungary, but it did not hold. We were never the big dog in the area. An old saying was Romania’s only good neighbor was the Black Sea. And our best friends were the mountains and the deep woods, where we could retreat from the enemy. When we did not just retreat, we applied scorched earth policy as we retreated. This was not, as one would imagine, conducive to development and building.
There was a small period of independence with Hungarians otherwise occupied and the Turks not at out borders. Moldavia switched between vassalage to either Hungary or Poland, Poland being preferred. Moldavian forces under Alexandru I supported the Polish against the Teuton knights at Battle of Grunwald and the Siege of Marienburg, but ended up also occasionally opposing them. This is the time when the Ottomans reached these lands. And held nominal sovereignty for longer than another great power. The longest ruling Moldavian prince in turn defeated the Turks at Vaslui, fought the Hungarians at Baia and the Poles at Cosmin Forest.
Romania was never truly independent, because to fight one power we often needed the help of another – although often what was given was every support short of actual help. There were many civil wars between the pretenders to the throne, some supported by the Turks, the Pole-Liths, the Hungarians. In most civil wars besides local fighters there were Cossacks fighting Tatars. The chaos was helped by the inheritance laws which said than anyone coming from “the bones of a prince” in rough translation, could become prince, and this often included bastard sons or the sons of bastard daughters. The art and science of fratricide was not as developed as in the Ottoman Empire at these times.
Overall we were mostly under the Ottomans from 1500 to 1878, but Romanian Voivodes rarely fought the Turks without some Polish, Hungarian, Austrian or Russian help. And this also applies to any of those peoples versus any others. We fought all of them over time. A significant part of our history was defined by trying to remove the Ottoman yoke. The burden was great, between heavy tribute, and having to provide slaves – girls for the harems, boys for the Janissary corps. Frequent wars, plus various attempts to control local trade.
This situation led to many issues. The local elites – the boyars – were in constant search of patronage. Borders were very
permeable, and there were many links, not necessarily between countries, but between various nobles from one and nobles from others. This led to a very high level of factionalism for the local elite and quick changing of sides, and in the end to less development as the boyars focused on getting foreign patronage rather than improving the country. The powerful countries had their own share of factionalism, so for a Romanian getting a patron at the Sublime Porte was oft a temporary benefit, until said patron was eliminated by the local competition. Poland-Lithuania was a very decentralized state with nobles having a lot of power compared to kings, which complicated things. For them as well as their allies.
The peasantry was despoiled to pay for all the patronage. This led to a quarrelsome nobility and to a very wary and conservative peasantry, not conservative in a strictly modern political sense but in the sense of a great aversion to any change. A generally weak state and a diffuse state. Voivodes became Voivodes by buying the throne with the help of nearby powers and then had to squeeze the money out of the country. The peasantry started as somewhat independent land owning people, with some military duty in the medieval era, but no great taxation. The village economy – like the overall economy before the 16th century – was mostly barter based and taxes were paid in kind. The tribute requirements led to the Voievodes to raise taxes and demand payment in coin, which was difficult for peasantry in a country with insufficient developed markets. This often led to peasants losing their land due to inability to pay tax. Later on, this lead to serfdom for the landless but free peasants, as the rules wanted support from the boyars and got it by tying the workers to the land – otherwise there was a competition for labor and this led to having to increase the conditions of the peasants and thus the profit of the nobles, at least in the short term.
Most people were either peasant farmers or shepherds, the latter having a bit more freedom. The plains and lowlands were dominated by large estates and poor serfs. The hills and mountains were better off, as large estates were not as viable for large scale mono-culture agriculture. And in general mountain and forest regions were, here as everywhere, harder to control and as such populated by more independent and prosperous peoples. This was the same under communism, where the large scale collective farms were mostly in the low lands. Romanians have a long tradition of herding animals, moving from mountain to plain in summer / winter. There still remained a class of landed peasants due to the them being needed to provide military service. Some were border villages with border guard duties, others were responsible to provide trained light cavalry and trained archers to the armies of the country. Unlike the other peasants, they did not have other labor duties to the state. The serf had to provide labor for the boyar in working agricultural land and for the central government in things like maintaining roads.
A distinct period – the one of most complete ottoman dominance – was the Phanariot era of the 18th century. This was as a result of the Principalities and the Russian empire trying to push the Turks back, and failing. As a result, local rules were no longer tolerated and the throne was sold by the Turks to various rich Greek merchants. This had various effects. On the one hand, some of these rules had the first influences of enlightenment and tried to modernize the countries. On the other, they had to squeeze even more money, to pay both tribute and recover their expenses. The throne was sold for limited periods, and had to be re-bought. The same person could have several non-consecutive terms in power, and rule either of the two principalities. Some of the first attempts to modernize the are came in attempts to boost both the economy and state capacity in order to properly raise taxes. In these times serfdom was abolished and schools were build to educate members of the bureaucracy and there were attempts to copy some institutions from the Hapsburg. This period was not completely free of Russian influence, as they found an in by claiming to be the protectors of the orthodox peoples under Ottoman suzerainty.
The period ended in 1821 and while remaining under the Ottomans, local rules became the norm again.. Russian influence increased, culminating with the Organic Statutes.
Factionalism was strong as ever in the early 1800s when enlightenment ideas and increased attempts at modernity came out way. The early enlightenment came via the Greek elites and was more concerned with Greek independence and Greek nationalism. A second wave came via Transylvania, and had the roots of Romanian proto-nationlism. Modernity in the region always meant moving from Ottoman and Balkan culture to the West, though some elements also came from Russia, which was modernized itself, more or less willingly, starting with Peter the Great.
The boyars were mostly Ottoman in dress and habits and culture – except eating lots of pork and drinking lots of wine. Russians were starting to assert more dominance and Austrians as well. The main focus of a boyar family was to curry favor with some foreign potentate. A great win for a boyar was when his 14 year old daughter became the mistress of an almost 70 year old Russian count (which he made use of, though I did not think the equipment still worked at that age without modern pharma). Another boyar got a win when his wife became the mistress of an Austrian count (what a cuck amiright, but it was a political marriage so he preferred it this way). This also led to boyars neglecting their estates in favor of playing politics in the capital, which had different implications later on. Starting with the late 18th century, the local elites started to bring in the dress, food, music, dances etc of Vienna instead of Istanbul. There was increased demand for tutor who could teach young boys and girls German. These fashion statements may seem irrelevant, but they were not, they were a sign of the direction of the country and symbolic of underlying politics.
The peasants were no really influenced by these, they never took to Turkish fashions and did not change them with the boyars. It was said that when a Romanian peasant visited Rome in 1900 the people there thought he looked exactly like a Dacian from Tajan’s column, which showed that the dress of the peasant changed little in 2000 years.
And even the more enlightened boyars struggled with it due to the extreme conservative outlook of the country. The peasantry learned long ago that nothing good came to them and were suspicions of any change. They expected it was just another way to exploit them. So, they were very stuck on their subsistence agriculture. One issue in the 1800s was that there were few Romanians in the trades as most only wanted to be farmers, despite this being more and more difficult, as the population grew but the land area stayed the same. This was not helped by the inheritance laws, which were that all children – which were many – got an equal share of the land. So the plots of land got smaller and smaller, and there was no pressure for urbanizing or getting a trade, as it is when the oldest gets all the land and the others need to find something to live on. In the meantime, some high skilled trades came to be disproportionately occupied by foreigners. Merchants had long been disproportionately Greeks or Armenians or Aromanians and a few such other nations.
The peasants were described by both local and foreign writers as lazy, suspicious, wary, and lacking in ambition. This was partial true, though it had a tinge of sneering at the lower classes. But as a saying went, few sow where they cannot reap. They were used to any surplus being taken away, so they created no surplus. Only worked to produce the bare necessities. A good harvest this year may mean less was planted the next. But this also meant there were few reserves and a bad harvest could lead to hunger. No time preference as they say these days. This was not the case before 1600s, when the peasants were independent and more prosperous, but 200 years of serfdom and Turkish domination left them somewhat broken.
Modernity was attempted and failed repeatedly. It picked up steam- along with Romanian nationalism and nationalism overall in Europe – with the revolution of 1848 and continued with the unification of the principalities in 1856 – which was accepted by the great powers of Europe with significant diplomatic support from Napoleon III of France.
The first common prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza started a more aggressive policy of modernizing the state – attempting universal literacy, reforming institutions, nationalizing monastery lands and importantly a land reform which implied giving 400.000 landless peasant families their own land – but this policy led to conflict with the ruling elite of the country, which formed the National Assembly. He attempted to solve the issues by simply dissolving the parliament of the time and ruling by executive decree and simply putting people loyal to him in important government positions, but this led to corruption and his downfall After this – mainly due to the high factionalism and similar to other eastern European countries – a foreign prince was desired and found in Karl Eitel Friedrich Zephyrinus Ludwig von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, who brought a German outlook to the country. The French started to expand their influence in eastern Europe and found the Latin based language as their way to get in. And as such more and more sources of influence came as the Ottoman retreated.
When independence was finally achieved in 1878 after yet another Russo-Turkish war, we soon became kingdom. And to his credit, King Carol I, the previous German prince, did try to protect the interests of the fledgling nation instead of other German interests, mostly at least. Though the king was fairly conservative in outlook, modernity staggered along, with improvements in infrastructure, education and the beginning of a real the industrial revolution. Though the situation of the peasants, most of the population, was still poor for a variety of reasons. This lead to the peasant revolt of 1907, a rather late time in history for a modern country to have a peasant revolt. And things just wobbled about along until The Great War. About that I will write in a different post. Hopefully, as who knows what the morrow will bring.
Thanks, Pie
My heritage is a little further to the west but I’m sure had similar political problems, with knowing who is on First.
Vikings and friends got around more on ships than horseback but were still willing to take what was available.
Yes, this was interesting – getting a glimpse of a corner of the world it would otherwise be easy to be ignorant of is always welcome. Second, I have to commend you on your command and use of English; reading this I have to remind myself that you aren’t a native speaker. For a thumbnail sketch of over 1000 years of history, this is excellent.
Also, love the saying about who is your best neighbor.
A couple of oceans have definitely served us well over the years.
Fascinating article. I know nothing about this area so this is very welcome.
There seems to be a lot of interesting human history all around the Black Sea.
Seconded, JI, seconded.
thanks I do try to write good 🙂
Very illuminating on a corner of Europe that has been a ping-pong ball batted between the various Great Powers for centuries and thus overlooked by most historians. I had to look up what an Aromanian was (and the sources I found weren’t particularly enlightening. Are they a people or just a language?). I had always thought that Vlachs and Moldvans etc. were Medieval-era immigrants to the region from further west; my understanding was the Dacians had been Thracian in language and culture. Taking refuge in the woods and mountains of the Carpathians would have been a wise move for the locals, considering how dominant (and ruthless) the various nomad peoples were in the lowlands until the Bubonic Plague made the grasslands too hazardous to dwell in.
RC Dean:
““Karl Eitel Friedrich Zephyrinus Ludwig von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen”
That name belongs in the Prince of the North Tower.
Medieval-era immigrants to the region from further west – this theory is promoted by some Hungarian historians but I find the evidence lacking. would have been difficult and there are no sources for such a large migration. Many Romanians would be very mad at such a claim, but it is all murky. But I think some continuity after the roman retreat is more probable.
hell there are some local nutjobs who will say Latin was just a branch of Dacian.
Dacians had been Thracian in language – this is the general assumption, but again not fully known.
Aromanian – well an ethnic group of mixed genetics, but they see themselves as a people and traditionally oppose marrying outside the group
Saved me typing it out, JI.
“Karl Eitel Friedrich Zephyrinus Ludwig von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen”
I need more names.
I love that Pie gets the nuances of American in-jokes. I was going to say something the other day when he said something an American would say, but clearly understood it in its usage, but didn’t want to come off condescending.
Well, shit. I’ll say it anyway.
We’re clearly a bad influence on him.
Yeah, I was embarrassed to have to look up “suzerainty” for this reason. I’m used to having to look up words when reading SugarFree, but those are usually words I wished I hadn’t known.
Thanks for the article.
I’ve been having a hard time finding good books on the history of Europe east of Germany and west of Russia before the 20th Century, so it is a new persepctive most appreciated.
related to what I wrote, this could be interesting but is is twice the price it is in Romania
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/ottomans-and-eastern-europe-9780755638536/
or maybe
https://www.academia.edu/94958255/Luxury_Fashion_and_Other_Political_Bagatelles_in_Southeastern_Europe_16th_19th_centuries
Thank you.
(I was able to shop around and found a paperback for $19.51)
Thanks, Pie. Super interesting.
“Rich in history”, not all of it pleasant
😮 Never heard of those guys.
Internet says “Leftover romans” an Ethnic group in the Balkins, so they probably have as messy a history as the others.
As usual I approached it from a look at the language and yeah another Romance language, distantly related to Romanian (more than a thousand years ago) but trapped in the Balkans.
Fascinating.
I’m thinking they’re more aromatic than visual.
From dedthred re the death penalty:
Pat:
We were apparently at that brink some time ago. Or it was just prescient.
I am so torn on this subject. It doesn’t keep me up at night, but when I do think about it, it’s depressing. Yes, I know Blackstone’s formulation. I think, “this is morally correct.” Then I look at all the unpunished violence visited upon innocents and I feel despair.
Also, qualified immunity plays a part in this.
Sorry, Pie. Didn’t mean to step on your post.
Vampires are terrible about the passage of time.
In a show of appreciation for your efforts, I taped some old dinars to my computer screen. You’re welcome.
(Seriously, tho… thanks for this)
The death penalty could easily be thought of as an extension of the privilege – not the right – to vigilantism.
In my view, the death penalty is nothing more than revenge murder outsourced to the state.
Yes. I think that was Pat’s point. The state acts as the people’s proxy so that the people won’t go lynching people willy nilly.
So criminal justice is simply civilized vengeance?
Yes
Next question
Kinnath, damn your nimble fingers!
🙂
thanks I do try to write good
On the internet, nobody knows you’re a
dogRomanian.Nobody needs that many names. Except UCS’s characters.
I may have taken inspiration from some historical cultures.
…von Ulm.
Squeezing out the very last drop.
And Ray Epps still walks around a free man.
They sentenced Tarrio to 22 years. Did not know that.
Me neither.
Nope, not politically persecuted at all.
Obscene.
Even better – he wasn’t even in DC at the time.
And killers and rapists are frequently turned loose. I’m starting to think we might have a small problem with our justice system
You ain’t free if it ain’t free!
Everything within public health, nothing outside public health…
Since pregnancy isn’t a disease, I’m not sure how preventing it is “public health”.
Ah c’mon, you know what the vector is – we can refer to the wisdom of Zardoz if we must.
how quaint
At no cost means I don’t have to subsidize it.
Given the cost of paying for a hospital birth, even more for a C-Section, I’m surprised insurers don’t comp generally contraceptives, including snips. Make even more sense for employer-funded plans where they also bear the direct/indirect costs of paternal leave (whether paid leave, hit to productivity, hiring temp help).
It isn’t about the economics, it is about forcing religious employers to provide contraception (and abortion) coverage.
Back on topic:
What a mess. Being on the periphery of empires sounds like a recipe for poverty and oppression. The names come and go (and come back and go again), but the basic dynamic sounds pretty consistent.
Which pretty much justifies the social character of the peasantry who survives through all of that.
Quite a mixing bowl of DNA, one would assume. Armies marching back and forth in Western Europe, too, pretty much ensure that all us white folks are DNA related to each other going back 20 or 30 generations.
Squeezing out the very last drop.
Our modern re-enactment of the Salem Witch Trials.
The judge said Tarrio was “flippant, grandiose and obnoxious” on the stand and described him as an “awful witness,” according to the AP. “He was one of the worst I’ve had the opportunity to sit next to during my tenure on the bench.”
He probably thinks he is her equal. The nerve of that guy.
She knows shitty men!
— wiki
I was going to write a post on that but then thought that a bit of context is needed. How much? Well, a lot. Enough that I decided to write two posts, should they be published. The politics of the modern culture wars phrased things in either the sovereignty versus globalism, Russia versus the West, conservatism versus neo Marxism. I would say this does not fully cover it. Let’s start with a bit of history. I wanted to do a single post initially, but as it got rather long and I already took a bunch out, I will keep this one until the year 1900 and hopefully write a second.
I think we need a meme here.
I’ll be reading the fuck out of this, hopefully without interruption, after bro’s fam arrives and we do our early –> real Xmas. I’ll need all your context to learn of the political strangeness over there currently. Interesting part of the world I know too little about, especially as Mom’s family is from ‘general,’ adjacent-to area. Her dad was the first of his Polish immigrant family to be born in the US, c. 1924, distinct rumors of ‘They saw the Euro writing on the wall and fled.’ Married a born-in-USA Czech/Greek gal in Chicago. Also rumors of Jewish blood from a semi-distant relative over there.
Per my family requests, I now must find a fish boil vid to show my nephews, and far more ridiculous, Dad wants me to shoehorn a vid lesson on the Civil War to.. certainly the 9 and 11 yo, but I’m certain Dad wishes to ‘impart’ something on the 4yo. Attempts to forcefully teach something, particularly out of context, is a great way to ensure kids *don’t* learn that shit, partially out of spite. Nothing rings in The Holidays like learnin’ ’bout Shiloh? Yuh-huh.
Will be interested to hear how the Civil War lesson turns out. I’m supposed to take two 12 year olds (Yankees) around Gettysburg battlefield next summer and am wondering how to impart the horror of war, the righteousness of opposing slavery, and the importance of peacefully settling differences to a couple of pre-teens who haven’t studied American history yet.
The lack of any history lessons yet might be an asset rather than a hindrance.
not a very christmasy post. The next one is scheduled on the 31st.
Hey, what can I say – I needed content with some heft – you just happened to provide it, Pie.
It was very interesting. I look forward to the follow up.
You are our new holiday writer of choice.
A Very Glibs Holiday Season, Now, With More Romania!
(this is good stuff, pie!)
Thanks Pie! That was an interesting read.
OT: Do you know this guy? https://x.com/jeremykauffman/status/1871589897846345833?s=61&t=h5BOKTRU9mc6OIfm7REElw
I met Jeremy Kauffman twice. Once at a FSP event and the other at a Reopen NH event. I barely talked with him long enough at either event to get much a feel for what he’s like. I doubt he would remember meeting me. On the other hand, I watched the video of the FSP board meeting where Kauffman got the boot and the video of an incident at PorcFest which was referenced in the FSP board meeting. Since then I’ve taken anything Kauffman says with a grain of salt.
I have no idea what he is referring to in that tweet. I think I’ve met Dennis Pratt at a FSP event. I think? I don’t know. I’m not sure who the OlgaSayz person is.
This was my reply: https://x.com/moriahjovan/status/1871632805232611543?s=61&t=h5BOKTRU9mc6OIfm7REElw
We are our own worst enemy.
Thanks for this, Pie! I think I’ve mentioned that other than hearing about good old Vlad the Impaler, my only exposure to the history of that region was a little about John Sigismund Zapolya’s role in one of the first laws establishing religious freedom, which got some publicity among Unitarian Universalists around the time of Ceaucescu’s fall, I believe.
I feel as if my knowledge of European history (with the partial exception of the British Isles) is sorely lacking in general, and certainly when it comes to Eastern Europe. My sister was pestering me about what I wanted for Christmas, so I asked for a book on early European history. My sister and BIL are deeply immersed in the Society for Creative Anachronism (better known as SCA,) so I figured if they didn’t know of some good books on the subject, they should be kicked out.
It’s fun when humans create their own slang to the extent, combined with dialects, ‘old’ languages and more, mix to create whole, formal languages. I imagine the ‘spite’ effect, purposefully doing something *just* to be different, unique, has a massive effect on groups choosing (or not) to be distinct.
I have a pretty good grasp of Romance languages (years of French book-learnin with excellent fluency, and an ability to understand a decent amount of Spanish and Italian).
Romanian is almost completely incomprehensible to me.
Latin as filtered through Slavic, Ugric and some Turkic? What could possibly be the problem?
greek as well.. and some german but not much
An old saying was Romania’s only good neighbor was the Black Sea.
As Vlad Tepes noted, bad neighbors make good fences.
Excellent fences.
Romania’s problems can be summed up as it is a country devoid of Firsters. Firsters have been the seed of all great innovation throughout human history.
I would say it’s a good thing to see Biden reveal himself as a petulant petty vindictive asshole on his way out the door, but nobody is really paying attention. It comes as no great revelation to those of us who already knew, nd the rest of America is too invested in “owning Trump” to give the slightest thought to the precedent being set.
…von Ulm.
I was waiting for that.
Statesmanship
TO RUSSIA, WITH LOVE — Biden may have one last twist of the knife for Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN before he leaves office.
The president is considering a significant new round of sanctions taking aim at the ships and exporters that have kept bringing Russian oil to other countries, WaPo’s Jeff Stein and Ellen Nakashima reported this morning with new details of the plans being discussed. The banks that facilitate Russia’s energy sector could also be targeted for changes.
It’s a risk the Biden administration wasn’t previously willing to take, for fear of causing gas and oil prices to jump. But Washington’s decision matrix is different now, as Bloomberg’s Annmarie Hordern, Jenny Leonard, Viktoria Dendrinou and Alberto Nardelli reported earlier this month: Inflation has eased. Oil prices have fallen. The election has already happened. And, of course, Trump is coming.
President Shits-in-the-Punchbowl fine tunes his legacy some more.
The sanctions sure have hurt Russia so far. Putin will be quaking in his boots. It’s not like the Russian economy is thriving and he’s going to get his way in Ukraine or anything.
Well, the Russian economy isn’t thriving. They aren’t on their knees, but they aren’t swinging from the chandeliers, either.
Translation – fuck the country for not electing me again. Let it all burn.
Having a very superficial knowledge of general European history and culture I would say this reads very much like the rest of Europe. Too many people, too many tribes, too little space. Nearly all is bordered with radically different cultures (Asia, ME and North Africa).
I have a grasp of just how vastly different America is from the rest of the world but sadly most Americans do not. That seems to be getting markedly worse in my lifetime. Even places in the Anglosphere that many here see as better than America manage to change those people’s minds in short order when they actually do try to live there.
Just me rambling.
Thanks, Pie. I learned a lot from that. I”m ready for part 2.
That was very interesting, Pie.
A very interesting read, thanks for the write-up!