« Activities « Research Seminars
4 May 2026, 16.00-18.00 (Bucharest time)
Constantin ARDELEANU, TransCorr team member; PhD Senior Researcher, Institute for South-East European History, Bucharest / Long-Term Fellow, New Europe College, Bucharest
Starting from the emblematic case of the relationship between Prince Alexandru Dimitrie Ghica, the banker Ștefan Hagi Moscu, and several of the leading capitalists of the era, my presentation aims to investigate the complex relationship between money, influence, and power in 1830s Wallachia, as part of a broader system of governance through networks.
My analysis will follow three complementary directions. First, I will focus on the inter-imperial networks of business, trust, and patronage that linked Bucharest to Iași, Belgrade, Istanbul, and Vienna. These networks – composed of merchants, officials, diplomats, and creditors – functioned simultaneously as mechanisms of regional economic integration and as infrastructures of personal enrichment, in which the circulation of capital relied on the social capital of relationships and political protection.
Second, I will examine the fluidity of the boundaries between public and private in a world governed by personal loyalties, family alliances, and reciprocal obligations. In the absence of a clear separation between “public interest” and “private benefit,” the prince, ministers, and capitalists operated within a regime of reciprocity and compensation, where state resources were negotiated and redistributed according to the logic of patronage. This porosity of spheres did not signify the absence of order, but a different form of political rationality, specific to a moral economy of governance in which personal relationships substituted for formal institutions.
Finally, the article will address the emergence of a new regime of accountability and transparency in the administration of public funds, following the introduction of the Organic Regulations and the empowerment of the General Assembly to oversee budgetary expenditures.
This normative framework made possible the rise of a discourse of political morality, in which terms such as “good governance,” “abuse,” or “corruption” began to redefine older practices of patronage and to mark the transition from personal to institutional forms of governance.