HISTORIES CONNECTED THROUGH ENLIGHTENMENT AND ROMANTICISM: A CROSS-CULTURAL JOURNEY OF IDEAS FROM FRANCE TO THE DANUBIAN PRINCIPALITIES
HISTORIES CONNECTED THROUGH ENLIGHTENMENT AND ROMANTICISM: A CROSS-CULTURAL JOURNEY OF IDEAS FROM FRANCE TO THE DANUBIAN PRINCIPALITIES

Summary/Abstract: In the first decades of the 19th century, two currents of thought brought significant intellectual transformations in the thinking of the Moldavian–Wallachian elites. Enlightenment and Romanticism transmitted impulses that inspired and motivated substantial efforts to reshape local realities. The reconfiguration of intellectual life both determined and was determined by a shift in the sphere of influence. The growing awareness of the urgent need to detach from Eastern culture and move closer to Western culture marked the process of transition toward a new modern era. At that time, the elites of the Principalities most often interpreted the expression of the West through the image of France. The French model of culture and civilization made its presence felt as a result of historical circumstances into which the Principalities had been drawn. The intermediaries who initially facilitated the French influence in Wallachia and Moldavia were the Phanariotes, later succeeded by the Russians. Through what they left behind, they contributed to the process of bringing the Danubian Principalities closer to European culture and civilization. Among all these experiences, the most valuable was the contact with Western ideas and intellectual movements, which the local elites continued to cultivate and reinterpret to serve their own purposes. This practice, encouraged by an increasingly favorable political context during the 1820s and 1830s, made possible a new level of interaction with Western ideas. At that moment, the elites of the Principalities assigned to the French model the role of main collaborator, one that would accompany it in the effort to reshape local intellectual and political realities into new modern forms.

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