B ORDER S YMBOLISM (1797-1810)
2. Research objectives and work methods
Our study generally aims to grasp the way in which the realities of the Romanian space were perceived through the travel reports written by foreigners who crossed the Romanian countries11. The interest of our research is to identify and analyze the records directly related to the border defined as a space delimiting states12. Following Michael Metzeltin‟s methodological suggestions13, the first
6 Istoria românilor. Vol. VI. Românii între Europa clasică şi Europa luminilor (1711-1821).
Coordonatori: Dr. Paul Cernovodeanu, Prof. univ. dr. Nicolae Edroiu. Secretar ştiinţific:
Constantin Bălan, pp. 13-30.
7 Ibidem, pp. 30-34.
8 Neagu Djuvara, Între Orient şi Occident. Ţările Române la începutul epocii moderne (1800- 1848). Traducere de Maria Carpov, Bucureşti, 1995, pp. 41-58. Pompiliu Eliade, Influenţa franceză asupra spiritului public în România. Originile. Studiu asupra stării societăţii româneşti în vremea domniilor fanariote. Traducere din franceză de Aurelia Dumitrescu. Ediţia a II-a integrală şi revizuită, Bucureşti, 2000, pp. 121-125.
9 Pompiliu Eliade, op. cit., p. 124.
10 Ibidem, pp. 113-118.
11 See Sorin Mitu‟s special analysis of the research directions and main contributions in imagology investigations in Romania, in Sorin Mitu, Transilvania mea. Istorii, mentalităţi, identităţi, Iaşi, 2013, pp. 93-98.
12 An interesting description of the border types in Europe, but indeed for contemporary realities, see Mircea Brie, Ioan Horga, Le frontiere europee – espresisioni dellidentità, in Transylvanian
Review, Vol. XXIII, Supplement, No. 1, 2014. Categorie europee. Rappresentazioni Storiche e Letterarie del Politico. Edited by Sorin Şipoş, Federico Donatiello, Dan Octavian Cepraga, Aurel Chiriac, Cluj, 2014, pp. 202-216. Closer to our research theme is the volume coordinated by Romaniţa Constantinescu, Identitate de frontierăîn Europa lărgită. Perspective comparate, Iaşi, 2008, 349 p.
13 Michael Metzeltin, Geneza frontierelor în Europa şi valoarea lor emoţională, in Romaniţa
Constantinescu, op. cit., pp. 23-39.
level of our research wishes to identify, define and comment those things noticed by the foreign travellers which can become landmarks, indicators and witnesses defining the border. The second level of our investigation focuses on the things which let the traveller know that he is getting close to the state line or away from the border. The third level of our investigation looks at the impact on the travellers of crossing from one country to another, from Transylvania to Wallachia, for instance, from Moldavia to Transylvania, from the Ottoman Empire to the Romanian principalities etc. The time frame of our research comprises the interval between 1797-1810. Therefore, given the reduced chronological span, we are aware that some of the conclusions we have reached are relevant only for the period investigated and, consequently, it is not recommended to extend them to other time intervals. For that reason, in our future research we will expand the analysis to at least a century, so the results of our investigations should be based on a larger time interval. The analyzed timespan has been randomly selected and was marked by political and military conflicts, more precisely by the Russian-Turkish war between 1806-1812. However, the wars waged by the Great Powers in the 18th century had become a normality for the Romanian space.
Before processing and analyzing the information from the foreign travellers‟ memoirs, diaries, reports and correspondence, we ought to mention our research methodology. First we endeavoured to identify the travellers who crossed the Romanian space and left us documentary records. This category includes both travellers who aimed at reaching the Romanian principalities, and those who only transited the Romanian space. We have started from the principle that it is important to establish as precisely as possible the number of travellers who kept records on the Romanian world. If a certain piece of information on the border is also mentioned by other authors, such as the state of the communication ways in the Romanian principalities, a historian can take it into account and compare it, in the end, with other internal documentary sources to check the reliability of the information.
We also wish to clarify from a methodological perspective three other problems, related to each other: establishing the travellers‟ formation, the reasons for their journeys and the directi the direction from which they entered on their entered the Romanian countries. The travellers‟ intellectual formation is important for the quality of the documentary source, as an educated, well-read traveller, can make thorough, manifold, but most important critical observations.
Their intellectual formation also enables them, at least theoretically, to obtain information from previous works and from their contemporaries. The reasons for their journeys are also important for the information gathered. A traveller hurrying to his destination has little time and interest to describe the places he has crossed and the people he has met, while travellers arriving in political and economical missions draw much more documented reports and, consequently, much more useful ones for historians.
The Image of Europe at the Eastern Border of Europe
In our view, the direction from which the foreigners penetrate the Romanian space is also important for their attitude at crossing the border. This is a topic linked to the relation between the centre and the periphery, between the civilized space, where there are laws and institutions which enforce the order, and the uncivilized one, where arbitrariness and corruption are the main coordinates. A traveller passing from Transylvania to Wallachia has certain feelings, different from those shown by the accounts of one leaving Moldavia or Wallachia to enter Transylvania, Maramureş, Bukovina or Banat. Yet, compared to Austria, Transylvania is, in its turn, a periphery. In other words, establishing the centre is crucial for finding out where the periphery is. And the centre of a certain geographical and cultural space can become the periphery of another space. For instance, Count of Ségur, passing from Prussia to Poland in the winter of 1784-1785, was very aware that he had crossed a very important boundary. He felt that he “had completely left Europe” and more so that he “had travelled ten centuries back in time”14. Several decades later, Marquis de Custine, in Russia, noted the following as a conclusion to his visit: “One must have lived in this restless desert, in this prison without respite called Russia, to properly feel the entire freedom one enjoys in the other countries in Europe, regardless of their form of government. If one encounters discontent people in France, one should use my method, and tell them: “Go to Russia. It is a journey useful to any foreigner; he who will have properly seen this country would be happy to live anywhere else”15. Undoubtedly, both travel stories contain an idea pervasive in most travellers, that they were either at the edge of Europe, but outside its Eastern border, or in a different world, in another continent, having little in common with Europe.
History is a discipline by means of which experts reconstruct the past of the human communities. To achieve this goal, historians interpret critically the information from the documentary sources and place them in a certain order according to the work methods used16. For such sources, and also for others, the subjective factor is often present: superficiality, haste, lack of knowledge etc, which makes some pieces of information conveyed in the accounts of foreign travellers devoid of truth, of an equivalent in the reality of the period.
14 Larry Wolff, Inventarea Europei de Est. Harta civilizaţiilor în Epoca Luminilor. Traducere din engleză de Bianca Rizzoli, Bucureşti, 2000, p. 21.
15 Marchizul de Custine, Scrisori din Rusia în 1839. Ediţie, prefaţă şi dosar de Pierre Nora.
Traducerea din franceză de Irina Negrea, Bucureşti, 2007, p. 337.
16 See the work proposing methodological and thematic innovations, Istoria României prin concepte. Perspective alternative asupra limbajelor social-politice. Editori Victor Neumann, Armin Heinen, Iaşi, 2010, 527 p.