Article 4 of 10 — ‘The Technological Twilight of the Romanian Lands’
Previous articles: ‘The Map of Powers in 1780’, ‘The Anatomy of Tribute’, and ‘Furnaces Across the Mountains’.
I. A December Night in Râmnic, 1778
At two o’clock in the morning, the printing press of the Râmnic Bishopric smelled of three things at once: black ink made from resin smoke and linseed oil, dampened paper to better receive the imprint of the type, and beeswax candles—not tallow, because tallow, as it melted slowly, gave off a smoke that clung to the freshly printed pages and stained them.
Deacon Mihail Popovici, engraver and typesetter, wore a leather apron blackened by fifteen years of trade. With a fine bone quill, he placed the final letters of a page that would open the Menaion for the Month of December—the second volume in a series of twelve liturgical books that Bishop Chesarie of Râmnic had envisioned in 1776, immediately after his enthronement. It was an editorial project the likes of which had never been seen in the entire history of Romanian printing. Twelve Menaia, one for each month of the ecclesiastical year, printed in Slavonic-Romanian ecclesiastical font, with red titles, ornate initials—a complete translation from Church Slavonic into Romanian, revised by scholars from Râmnic and the Metropolitanate of Bucharest.
Popovici worked by the light of three candles placed in a brass candelabrum. There were too few—he knew that—but the printing press could not afford more for a single night. Beeswax was expensive; the candelabrum itself had been a gift from Bishop Chesarie two years earlier, when Popovici had finished engraving the copper plates for the Anthologion of 1776.
On the press—a massive wooden device, made by a local carpenter from an oak tree felled twenty years earlier at Cozia—Master Radu Călin turned the threaded screw with a hand crank. Each sheet was pressed between two forms for a moment, then removed, placed to dry on ropes stretched between the ceiling beams. With every press, there came a deep, damp creak of waterlogged wood, like a cart on a frozen road.
That night, in the Râmnic printing press, thirty sheets were printed per hour. In a week, a thousand sheets. In a year, the Râmnic press produced between twelve and fourteen books—a modest rate compared to the great European printing houses. But compared to what was being done in 1650 on the territory of present-day Romania—under the coordination of Metropolitan Varlaam, in the printing press at Trei Ierarhi in Iași—it was a fivefold increase. And compared to 1500, when there was no printing press at all on the territory of present-day Romania, it was nothing short of a civilisation.
This Râmnic printing press—which we will use as a guiding thread for this article—was not an isolated case. It was a symptom. A symptom of a pre-industrial Romanian world that nevertheless had its own density. It was not industrial England. Nor was it Habsburg Banat. But neither was it an intellectual graveyard, as some 19th-century historians tried to describe it.
This article is dedicated to that density. What existed in the Principalities in 1780? Not what did not exist—we have already spoken about that. But what did exist, concretely, in the houses, markets, workshops, printing presses, hospitals, and academies of the Moldo-Wallachian world at the end of the 18th century.
This is an inventory. It is, at the same time, a form of respect.
II. What an Honest Inventory Means
There is a Romanian tendency to write about the local pre-industrial world either with idealising tenderness (the romanticism of Alecsandri, the traditionalism of Iorga) or with modernising disdain (the positivism of Xenopol, the Comintern-school Marxism of the 1950s). Both registers falsify. Idealisation turns the water mill into a miracle and the wayside cross into an icon. Disdain turns the same things into symbols of backwardness, obstacles in the path of progress.
An honest inventory demands something else. It demands that we say, with figures where we have them, what exactly existed, how much there was, who it served, how it compared to what existed at the same time in Banat, Transylvania, Constantinople, Vienna, Manchester. It demands that we distinguish between functional technology in a given context and cutting-edge global technology. It demands that we understand that a water mill in 1780, in Prunișor on the Motru Valley, was perfectly functional for the needs of its village—and, at the same time, three centuries behind what was functioning in central England.
This, by the way, is one of the methodological principles we promised in Article 1. Comparison must not be moralising. Not with neighbours, not with the paradigm. With neighbours—to understand the difference. With the paradigm—to understand the distance. But always with respect for what was functional in the local world. Because the people who lived in that world lived it with dignity, not with shame. And shame for what one is, is a disease that only posterity invents retrospectively.
So what do we inventory? Seven categories of ‘things that existed,’ which we will go through one by one.
Water mills and pre-industrial energy infrastructure. Printing presses and the circulation of books. Sporadic manufactories—proto-industrial workshops. Urban crafts. Fairs, postal roads, inns. Princely academies and medicine. Late public institutions—water conduits, salt mines, reformed postal services.
Each in its place, with what it was. Without pathos, without disdain.
III. The Water Mill: Pre-Industrial Energy Infrastructure
In 1780, it is estimated that on the territory of present-day Romania, there were about eight thousand water mills among the boyar, monastic, and princely estates. The figure is approximate—comprehensive inventories for the 18th century are lacking—but partial sources (monastic cadastres from Cozia, Bistrița, Neamț, plus a few boyar registers preserved in the national archives) converge on this order of magnitude.
Eight thousand water mills. The number sounds impressive. At the same time, it is a typical order of magnitude for any pre-industrial agricultural region in Europe. Pre-revolutionary France had, it is estimated, about 80,000 water mills. England, around 20,000. Prussia, about 15,000. Relative to population, the Moldo-Wallachian density was decent, not exceptional.
Technically speaking, what were these mills? Wooden structures, with vertical wheels (the most common) or horizontal wheels (older, less efficient, but simpler), powered by a river diverted through a flume. The useful power of an average Wallachian mill in 1780 was estimated by historians of technology at approximately 3–5 kilowatts equivalent—that is, the force of four to six horses. Enough to grind 200–300 kilograms of grain per hour. Insufficient for anything else.
What were they used for? Primarily for grinding cereals—wheat, millet, later maize, which would only spread widely after 1800. In a few places, for fulling cloth—a device for thickening woollen fabric—or for a trip hammer (for fulling wool). Very rarely, for a water-powered saw (a joagăr) in forested areas. Almost never for anything else.
Comparison with what could be done. In England of the same era, a well-built water mill (such as Arkwright’s Cromford Mill, from 1771) powered a spinning mill with 250 mechanical spindles. A water mill in Italy’s Valle d’Aosta powered a small blast furnace with a hydraulic blower. A water mill in France’s Vaucluse powered a paper mill that produced 5,000 sheets a day. The technology was the same—a diverted river, a wooden wheel—but the applications were infinitely more diverse.
Why, in our case, did the water mill remain almost exclusively for grinding? Not because local ingenuity was lacking. Documents show that there were Romanian masters who understood hydraulic mechanics perfectly—Petrache Poenaru, who would later invent the fountain pen, learned his mechanics precisely at these mills, during his Prahova childhood. The reason, time and again, was demand. Grain grinding was necessary for everyone; a spinning mill would have required mass-processed wool or cotton, which would have presupposed a textile industry that did not exist; a sawmill would have required a demand for industrial planks, which would have presupposed a construction industry that did not exist.
The water mill was, therefore, technology suited to a subsistence economy. It was not, as some 19th-century historians suggested, ‘primitive’ or ‘backward.’ It was functionally adapted. And functional adaptation to a subsistence economy is exactly what keeps an economy in subsistence. The circle closes.
IV. Printing Presses and the Circulation of Books
The printed book on the territory of present-day Romania has a history older than one might think. The first book printed here was Macarie’s Liturgy Book, probably printed in Târgoviște in 1508—just fifty-eight years after Gutenberg. It is among the first printed books in Southeastern Europe. A fact of which national historiography, with justified pride, has made much. But, as with much of our printing history, the follow-up was less fluid than the beginning.
The 16th century was rich in printed works—Coresi in Brașov, Sibiu, then in Wallachia; the Palia of Orăștie (1582); Varlaam’s Cazania (1643); the New Testament of Bălgrad (1648). But these publications were, for the most part, personal or clerical works, not a structured printing industry.
Structure came in the 18th century. Under Constantin Brâncoveanu (1688–1714), with the support of Metropolitan Antim Ivireanul—a brilliant engraver himself, author of the most beautiful Cyrillic font in the entire Eastern space—the Metropolitanate’s printing press in Bucharest was organised. Antim brought masters from his native Georgia, ordered paper from Brașov, and printed Brâncoveanu’s Bible (1688) and dozens of liturgical and theological books. By 1720, under Prince Nicolae Mavrocordat—a Phanariote, but an enlightened man, correspondent of the French Encyclopaedists—the effort was doubled.
In Iași, the printing press at Trei Ierarhi operated systematically from 1642, when Vasile Lupu, through Metropolitan Petru Movilă, brought a press from Kiev. Here, Varlaam’s Cazania (1643) and later Vasile Lupu’s Code (1646) were printed.
In Râmnic, under Bishops Damaschin (1708–1725) and Chesarie (1774–1780), the printing press became the most productive in the entire Romanian space—between 1774 and 1780, in addition to the twelve Menaia mentioned at the beginning of this article, another eighteen major liturgical books were printed here. An impressive rate for the modest resources of a provincial bishopric.
At Neamț, the monastic printing press, re-established in 1806 by Abbot Paisie Velichkovsky (who, note, was Russian by origin, brought from Ukraine), would become in the 19th century the monumental centre of Romanian ecclesiastical printing—but in 1780, it was only just preparing.
How much was printed in total? Estimates for the year 1780 give, for the entire Moldo-Wallachian space, between twenty and twenty-five new books annually, in print runs of 500–1,500 copies each. That is, an aggregated production of approximately 15,000–30,000 new volumes per year.
By comparison: England in the same year printed about 400 new books annually, in print runs that could exceed 5,000 for the popular ones. France, around 500 new titles. Even Catherine the Great’s Russia—a country with modest printing production compared to the West—printed about 250 titles annually in St. Petersburg and Moscow.
The ratio between Râmnic and St. Petersburg was, therefore, approximately 1 to 10, and between Râmnic and London, 1 to 20. Not a small distance. But not a complete absence either—and this is the crucial nuance.
What did Romanian printing presses print? Almost exclusively religious books: Liturgies, Horologia (Books of Hours), Psalters, Menaia, Anthologions, Octoechos, plus a few homilies, apologies, lives of saints. Beginning with Alexandru Ipsilanti (1780), the first secular books appeared—legal codes (Pravilniceasca condică), a few school manuals for the princely academy, a grammar. But the percentage of secular books in total production remained, until 1820, below 15%.
The comparison is brutal here. In France, in 1780, religious books accounted for less than 20% of new titles. In England, less than 15%. In our case, over 85%. The difference was not just in volume. It was in content. A printing press that produces Books of Hours does not lead, not even in a thousand years, to a technological revolution. Books of Hours do not commission metal engravings, do not create demand for printer’s ink, do not train chemists who will invent wood-pulp paper.
And here we must make an ethical observation. The fact that our printing presses were almost exclusively religious was not a wrong choice by our ancestors. It was, simply, the demand of their market. Who bought books in 1780 in the Principalities? Churches, monasteries, boyars with religious preferences, a small number of lay intellectuals. They bought Liturgies, not treatises on mechanics. And the printing presses supplied what was bought.
An Enlightenment that does not reach the furnace is an Enlightenment that does not produce industrialisation—we said this in Article 1. A printing press that does not reach the scientific manual is a printing press that does not produce engineers. And without engineers, there are no furnaces.
V. Manufactories: Attempts, Semi-Failures, a Few Successes
Manufacture, in the economic vocabulary of the 18th century, is a precise term. It is not the individual artisan workshop (a goldsmith, a shoemaker, a tailor). It is the concentrated workshop, with multiple workers (from ten to several hundred), with an internal division of labour, with serial production, with sales outside the village or city of origin. It is the pre-industrial form of industry—the obligatory step between craftsmanship and factory.
How many manufactories existed in the Principalities in 1780? We do not know the exact figure, but the sources—inventories of the princes, boyar memoirs, monastic cadastres—suggest a total of thirty to forty units, most of them with short lifespans (a few years, sometimes less than a decade).
A few concrete examples.
Chiperești, Moldavia. In 1764, boyar Iordache Rosetti-Roznovanu, a Moldavian from a great family with extensive properties in the Iași region, opened a cloth manufactory in Chiperești. He employed thirty workers—serf peasants from his own estates, plus a master brought from Brașov. It produced medium-quality cloth, intended for the princely army and boyars who wanted uniforms for their servants. The manufactory operated for seventeen years. It closed in 1777, when Rosetti-Roznovanu died, and his heirs divided the estates and had no interest in continuing.
Călugăra, Wallachia. In 1795, Prince Alexandru Moruzi (during his second Wallachian reign) authorised the opening of a glass manufactory in Călugăra, near Câmpulung. The capital was mixed—60% from the princely treasury, 40% from a Greek merchant, Ioan Papazoglu. Masters were brought from Cluj and Zlatna (Transylvania). The manufactory produced household glassware, jars, a few window panes. It operated for six years. It closed in 1801, when Papazoglu died of typhus, and the princely treasury—under a new prince, Constantin Ipsilanti—lost interest.
Podgoria, Moldavia. Here, traditionally, Moldavian viticulture had produced wines exported as far as Constantinople and Poland. In 1770, boyar Constantin Balș attempted to systematise production—he imported vine cuttings from Hungary, employed a French émigré winemaker (probably a Catholic refugee who had fled the Revolution), built stone cellars. Production increased by 40% in five years. But exports collapsed in 1787, when the Russo-Turkish War began and the northern trade routes closed.
The general pattern. The Romanian manufactories of the 18th century had three common characteristics. One—they were small-scale (rarely more than fifty workers). Two—they depended heavily on a single person (the boyar owner, the associated merchant, the foreign master brought in especially). Three—they closed when the key person died, left, or lost interest. They did not have the institutional continuity we spoke about in the previous article—the thirty-five years of Andreas Bauer in Reșița.
Why? Because there was no legal structure of the joint-stock company (which would only arrive in our lands in the 1830s and become common after 1860). There was no commercial bank to continue credit when the owner died. There was no commercial register to record the firm as an entity distinct from its owner. The manufactory died with the boyar.
Here is another structural observation highlighted by economic historians: social capital—in the form of institutions of continuity—is perhaps the most subtle of all the factors that make the difference between industrialisation and stagnation. It is hard to see. Hard to measure. But when it is absent, its absence explains phenomena that neither tribute, nor geography, nor mentality can explain alone.
VI. Urban Crafts: A Real Density
Here, things change. When we descend from the level of concentrated manufactories to that of urban crafts—the family workshop, one or two apprentices, production for the local market—the Principalities look infinitely better.
Bucharest, in 1780, had approximately 40,000 inhabitants, of whom an estimated 4,000–5,000 were craftsmen organised into guilds. Iași, with 30,000 inhabitants, had 3,000–3,500 craftsmen. Both cities were, in terms of craft density, comparable to Ottoman Belgrade, Ottoman Sofia, or Russian Odessa—but less dense than Sibiu, Brașov, or Timișoara (where the percentage of craftsmen rose to 20–25% of the population).
The Guilds. The guild— the professional association with legal status, its own seal, taxes to the prince, control over prices and quality—was the central institution of craftsmanship. In 1780, Bucharest had about forty officially recognised guilds: goldsmiths, silversmiths, bootmakers, tailors, barbers, furriers, tanners, bakers, butchers, potters, carpenters, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, shoemakers, jewellers, locksmiths, farriers, glassmakers, saddlers, rope-makers, printers, engravers, and others.
A concrete example. The goldsmiths’ guild of Bucharest—documented since 1737—had about thirty-five members in 1780. The most famous master of the era was Constantin Argintarul (Constantin Argyros, as some documents also call him—because he was Greek by origin, but had learned the trade in Bucharest). His workshop—on Șelari Street, near the Old Court—produced liturgical vessels for the Bucharest Metropolitanate, necklaces and earrings for boyaresses, silver cutlery. Orders came not only from the Court in Bucharest but also from the metropolitanates of Iași, Râmnic, Buzău, and even from Constantinople, where Romanian silverwork had a good reputation.
Standard of Quality. The gold and silver worked in Bucharest passed through the guild’s mark—a small seal stamped on the finished piece, guaranteeing the metal’s fineness. In 1780, the standard for silver was 900/1000—comparable to the Viennese standard. Pieces that did not meet the standard were confiscated, and the master fined. The system worked. Honest masters survived. Dishonest masters are mentioned in documents by their full names, as a public warning.
Comparison with the West. Here we must be precise. The Romanian goldsmithing and silversmithing of the 18th century were not technologically inferior to those of Vienna or Germany. They were, perhaps, less abundant and less varied in styles, but in terms of execution, they could compare. The Romanian silversmith worked with the same tools as the Viennese, started from the same raw metal, used the same techniques of engraving, hammering, filigree. See the silver collections at Cotroceni Museum or the National Museum of Art—the 18th-century pieces are of excellent quality.
So why did Romanian silversmithing not transform into modern industry, as silversmithing in Sheffield or Birmingham did? The answer, time and again, is structural. Sheffield industrialised because it had access to cheap coal (for smelting), a maritime port (for export), a rich national market (England was the richest country per capita in the world in 1780), a banking system (that financed innovation), and legal systems for patent protection (the British Statute of Monopolies of 1624). Bucharest of the silversmiths had none of these.
The masters were the same. The institutional context was irreducibly different.
VII. Fairs, Roads, Inns: The Circulating Economy
The internal trade of the Principalities in 1780 was conducted through three complementary mechanisms: the permanent markets of the large cities (Bucharest, Iași, Focșani, Brăila, Galați), the periodic fairs of the small towns, and the itinerant trade of merchants on postal roads.
Permanent Markets. Bucharest had, in 1780, four main markets: Târgul Cucului (across the Dâmbovița, for livestock), Târgul din Lăuntru (approximately the current historic centre, for fine goods), Târgul Moșilor (for agricultural products), Târgul de la Curtea Veche (for craftsmen). Each had its own specialisation, its own rhythm, its own taxes.
Fairs. Here is a structure that deserves attention. These were periodic events—once or twice a year, for a week or two—that gathered merchants from three or four counties and, sometimes, from Transylvania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Poland. The most important: the fair at Focșani (twice a year, in June and October), the fair at Bârlad, the fair at Buzău, the fair of Saint Elijah at Târgu Jiu, the great fair of Saint Phocas in Bucovina.
Focșani, on Saint Peter’s Day—29 June—became, for ten days, a truly cosmopolitan city. It is estimated that the fair gathered, in 1780, between 15,000 and 20,000 people: merchants, craftsmen, peasant buyers, the curious. Goods sold included: pedigree horses brought from the North Pontic steppe, furs from Kiev, Bohemian glass brought through Bucovina, Ottoman fabrics from Vidin, Persian silks via Sofia, Hungarian wines through Transylvania, salt from Ocna Mare on its way south. A good merchant could make, in a single fair, what he earned in three months of ordinary trade.
Roads. We have already mentioned, via Sulzer, the quality of Moldo-Wallachian roads: beaten earth, with provisional wooden bridges, sporadic inns, couriers who travelled when they could. Compared to Banat, it was a disaster. Compared to Ottoman Bulgaria or Ottoman Serbia, it was at a similar or even better level.
Inns. Here, a chapter that cultural historiography has rightfully highlighted. Manuc’s Inn—built between 1804 and 1808 by the Armenian merchant Manuc Bei Mirzayan, on the outskirts of Bucharest—was a remarkable structure: two storeys, one hundred and fifty rooms, an inner courtyard with stables for five hundred horses, warehouses for goods, a small theatre, two taverns. It served as the headquarters for the negotiations of the Peace of Bucharest in 1812, which ended the Russo-Turkish War and ceded Bessarabia to Russia. An inn that enters European diplomatic history. No small achievement.
Everywhere in Wallachia and Moldavia, there were more modest inns. In Bucharest Noi, Han Colței. In Constanța (still Ottoman at the time), an old caravanserai with a stone ceiling. In Craiova, Han Gărdești. In Iași, Han Ipsilanti, built during Alexandru Ipsilanti’s first reign. In Brașov (across the border, in Transylvania), for merchants coming from the south, the inns of Șchei.
A functional network, then—with average urban concentration, predictable circulation, its own institutions (guilds, fair taxes, negotiation protocols). A viable pre-industrial economy that sustained daily life for decades. It was not the England of the Atlantic. It was, in its own way, in its own place.
VIII. Princely Academies, Hospitals, Water Conduits
We come to the public institutions that, in the last decades of the 18th century, began to foreshadow Romanian modernity.
The Princely Academies. In Bucharest, the Princely Academy of Sfântul Sava—founded by Constantin Brâncoveanu in 1694, reformed by Nicolae Mavrocordat in 1707, then by Alexandru Ipsilanti in 1776. In Iași, the Academy of Trei Ierarhi—founded by Vasile Lupu in 1640, reformed by Grigore Ghica in 1728, then by Grigore Alexandru Ghica in 1766. Both operated after the model of the Greek academies of Constantinople and Mount Athos, with subjects taught in Greek, Latin, philosophy, rhetoric, theology, Byzantine law, elementary mathematics, later French.
How many students? In Bucharest, under Ipsilanti, about eighty at its peak (1780). In Iași, under Ghica, about sixty. Not large absolute numbers—but concentrated, dedicated, with teachers brought from Constantinople, sometimes from Padua, once even from Halle (a German professor of Christian Wolff’s logic, brought in 1774).
What was missing from the curriculum? We said it in Article 3: descriptive geometry, chemistry, metallurgy, applied mechanics. Precisely what was taught at Selmecbánya. The princely academies trained administrators, dragomans, secretaries, Byzantine lawyers, sometimes theologians. Not engineers.
But they did train people. Here are a few graduates: Ienăchiță Văcărescu (poet, grammar author), Iancu Văcărescu (poet), Naum Râmniceanu (chronicle writer), Constantin Cantacuzino Stolnicul (historian, author of the first history of Wallachia), later Gheorghe Lazăr (founder of Romanian higher education in the Romanian language), Petrache Poenaru (engineer, inventor, one of the first French-educated Romanians with a technical background).
Hospitals. Here, an achievement that historiography underestimates. In Bucharest, Colțea Hospital—founded in 1706 by Spătar Mihai Cantacuzino—was, in 1780, the largest medical institution on the territory of present-day Romania. Approximately forty beds, two doctors (one Greek, one Italian, paid from the princely treasury), a pharmacy, services for plague patients (segregated, with separate staff, to avoid contagion). Sfântul Pantelimon Hospital, founded in 1735 by Grigore II Ghica, had another thirty beds.
In Iași, Sfântul Spiridon Hospital, founded in 1755 by the Mihail Racoviță family, operated with thirty-five beds and a small pharmacy. Here worked, between 1782 and 1785, the German doctor Andreas Wolf—who would later publish, in Sibiu, the first systematic medical description of Moldavia.
They were not large institutions. They were not institutions with cutting-edge medical innovation. But they existed. They offered, within their limits, free care to the poor. They were part of a public infrastructure that, in 1780, could not compare with Vienna—but existed, nonetheless.
Alexandru Ipsilanti’s Water Conduits. Here, an achievement of which Ipsilanti can truly be proud. In 1779–1780, at his command, Bucharest received its first network of drinking water conduits—ceramic pipes that brought water from the springs of Bucureștii Noi to the city centre. It was not metal under pressure. It was ceramic with lead joints. But it was, nonetheless, running water in certain public fountains—Fântâna Boului, Fântâna cu Cadâne, Fântâna Filaret. Something that existed in Constantinople (where aqueducts had functioned since Byzantine times), in Vienna, in Paris. And, behold, it also existed in Bucharest, in 1780.
Are these achievements comparable to Reșița? Obviously not. A ceramic aqueduct for a few public fountains is not a pig iron furnace. A hospital with forty beds is not a Mining Academy with two thousand engineers trained in thirty years. A princely academy with eighty students is not a university with programmes in metallurgy and chemistry.
But they existed. They were there. They were not the cultural abyss that some pessimistic historians have tried to describe. They were, in their own way, a pre-industrial infrastructure in its place—imperfect, but real.
IX. What Was Missing, to Avoid Idealisation
To avoid idealisation—the second disease, after disdain, in our historiography—we must say just as clearly what was missing from the Romanian pre-industrial world.
In the year 1780, there did not exist, throughout the entire Moldo-Wallachian territory:
No blast furnace. No rolling mill. No armaments manufactory with more than ten workers. No mechanical spinning mill. No industrial paper mill (paper was imported from Brașov, Sibiu, or the West). No organised coal mine. No salt mine with modern extraction technology (Ocna Mare and Slănic Prahova operated with medieval techniques). No chemical plant. No astronomical observatory. No research laboratory. No school of engineering. No mining school. No medical school (doctors were trained in Padua, Halle, Constantinople). No learned society. No scientific journal. No commercial bank with joint-stock company status.
Nor did there exist what we might call networks of continuity. A boyar who started a manufactory in 1780 could not bequeath to his children, as transferable shares, the ‘cloth manufactory of Chiperești.’ He bequeathed the estate, with the manufactory as an annex. The sons, upon the father’s death, divided the estate—and with it, incidentally, the manufactory. Which died.
A merchant from Bucharest who made good profits in trade with Constantinople could not diversify into mines or furnaces, because there were no mines or furnaces in which to invest on the local market. Either he withdrew his capital into houses and gardens (unproductive activity), or he continued in the same circulating trade.
An enlightened bishop like Chesarie of Râmnic, who had a printing press of which he was proud, could not diversify the press into scientific printing—because there were no local scientific authors to offer manuscripts, and translations from the West would have required knowledge that he did not have in his library.
Each Romanian pre-industrial actor was, in their own way, a prisoner of absent institutional networks. They did not isolate themselves out of incompetence. They isolated themselves out of structural obligation.
X. Conclusion: The Density of an Imperfect World
Deacon Mihail Popovici placed, with a bone quill, the final letters of a page from the Menaion for the Month of December, in Râmnic, on a December night in 1778. He was doing serious, careful work, with professional conscience, in a printing press that had existed for decades and would exist for many more. It was not Cottonopolis. It was not Manchester. It was not even Reșița. It was Râmnic.
And Râmnic, in 1780, was what it was: a bishopric’s market town with a functional printing press, honest artisans, a living church, learned priests, minor boyars on the surrounding estates, dirt roads, three hundred hearths (houses), one thousand five hundred souls. A whole world, with its own density, its own dignity, its own limits.
It is important to see this world through its own eyes—not through the eyes of posterity that judges it. The people there did not live in shame. They lived with Sunday holiness, rich feast days, genuine grievances, domestic tendernesses. They had a chronicler at the metropolitanate who wrote their history. They had a bishop who printed their Menaia. They had a goldsmith in Bucharest who crafted their crosses for veneration. They had, in their own way, what they needed for life.
But—and here is the hardest nuance—what they needed for life was not the same as what they needed for modernity. And modernity, with its irreversibility, was coming. It was coming through the Austrian fast postal road, through the newspapers from Sibiu that arrived smuggled in Iași, through the Armenian merchant who brought from Vienna a pendulum clock unknown in our lands, through the Russian officers who described, in their reports, barracks with glass windows and clean latrines.
It was coming. And the Principalities looked at it, with the eyes of chroniclers and the hands of goldsmiths, as a foreign thing. Beautiful, perhaps. Perhaps impressive. But foreign.
Conclusion in Three Questions.
First: Did a Romanian pre-industrial environment exist? Yes. With water mills, printing presses, sporadic manufactories, urban crafts, markets, roads, inns, academies, hospitals, aqueducts. A real density, functionally adapted. It was not a wasteland.
Second: Could this density generate endogenous industrialisation? No. It lacked, structurally, five things: the legal framework of institutional continuity (joint-stock companies, patents), long-term investment capital (commercial banks), engineering education (technical schools), solvable internal demand (a mass market), and—perhaps most importantly—sufficient time and peace. Which, in a context of Russo-Turkish wars every fifteen years, was impossible.
Third—for the contemporary reader. What is today’s equivalent of the Râmnic printing press? The Romanian IT companies that provide services for European and American clients, that produce functional, even excellent software, but rarely their own global products. The Romanian start-ups that reach good funding rounds, but rarely the scale of a Unicorn. The Romanian musicians, filmmakers, writers who produce quality works, but with a local market. A real density, functionally adapted, functionally dignified—but not paradigmatic.
And the question that remains, the same as in 1780: Can we move from density to paradigm? Or will we remain, time and again, a ‘whole world with its own density,’ which others will look upon, with kind curiosity, as a beautiful but foreign thing?
Selected Bibliography
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Ariadna Camariano-Cioran, Les Académies Princières de Bucarest et de Jassy et leurs professeurs, Institute for Balkan Studies, 1974.
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Neagu Djuvara, Între Orient și Occident. Țările române la începutul epocii moderne (Between Orient and Occident: The Romanian Lands at the Beginning of the Modern Era), Humanitas: archive.org.
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Bogdan Murgescu, România și Europa. Acumularea decalajelor economice (1500–2010) (Romania and Europe: The Accumulation of Economic Gaps, 1500–2010), Polirom, 2010: archive.org.
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Nicolae Iorga, Istoria românilor prin călători (The History of the Romanians Through Travellers), multiple editions; for descriptions of Phanariote Bucharest: scribd.com.
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Wikipedia RO, Tipografia din Râmnic (The Râmnic Printing Press): ro.wikipedia.org.
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Wikipedia RO, Antim Ivireanul (Antim the Iberian): ro.wikipedia.org.
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Wikipedia RO, Spitalul Colțea (Colțea Hospital): ro.wikipedia.org.
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Wikipedia RO, Hanul lui Manuc (Manuc’s Inn): ro.wikipedia.org.
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Wikipedia RO, Academia Domnească din București (The Princely Academy of Bucharest): ro.wikipedia.org.
*The next article in the series: ‘The Russian Model: How a Peasant Empire Industrialises on a Foundation of Serfdom’—Peter the Great, the Metallurgical Urals, Demidov, factory serfdom. How Russia managed to do what the Principalities could not, against a backdrop of even harsher servitude. Coming in two weeks.*