Chapter 5 Ottomans, Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks, Wallachians, Moldavians: Subjects, Protégés, and Their Journeys Through the Empires

In: Changing Subjects, Moving Objects
Author:
Constanţa Vintilă
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James Christian Brown
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We know little about Neaga, the wife of the merchant Ionașco, although her portrait by the painter Constantin Lecca is well known to connoisseurs of nineteenth-century Romanian art. It is said of Neaga and her husband that they amassed countless riches in the expectation that they would have legitimate heirs to enjoy them. But these hoped-for heirs never materialized, so Ionașco and Neaga invested their entire fortune in erecting places of worship, schools, and hospitals. In the church that they founded in Slatina, their portraits were painted in the pronaos, as was customary, around the end of the eighteenth century. It was from here that the painter Lecca would later give them new life and a place in the art of his time. In her portrait, Neaga wears ten strings of pearls around her neck, together with four strings of red coral and the omnipresent necklace of gold coins. From the same gold coins, she has had a pair of jangling earrings made, which emphasize her beauty. Her dress seems to be made of yellow silk, perhaps the material known as ghermeșut, and is bound at the waist with a belt fastened with gold clasps. A long jerkin (tivilichie) of atlas silk lined with mink completes her wardrobe.

Her husband, the merchant Ionaşcu, is simply dressed in the typical garb of the Balkan merchants who traded in grain on both sides of the Danube. He wears a yellow silk anteri fastened at the neck with three buttons and bound at the waist with a striped sash, under a white jacket (fermene) of which only the outline and the pearl serving as a button can be seen. Over this, he wears a long coat (cüppe) of blue felt trimmed with marten fur.1

On his gravestone, Ionașcu added to his name the designation osmanlâu (Ottoman). He was also known among his fellow merchants as Sârbul the mazil (petty boyar without an office), indicating that he had among his ancestors a Serb or a Bulgarian who had settled and married in the plains of Oltenia. I find the complexity of this merchant’s identity particularly interesting: Ottoman, or rather Ottoman subject, Serb, Orthodox Christian, bound to the lands of Oltenia by his founding of schools and hospitals. Virginia Aksan offers a complex definition, according to which to be identified as osmanlı, someone should be ‘a sincere Muslim, educated in the Ottoman imperial culture, dedicated to the perpetuation of religion and state as embodied in the sultan, and a member of the select group which protected the revenue-generating classes and promulgated the official ideology’.2 The definition is far too circumscribed for an Orthodox Christian Danube merchant who claimed the label of osmanlı through his involvement in trade with the Ottomans across the river Danube. However the designation affirms the status of Ottoman subject, an ‘essential element’ for merchants pursuing their commercial strategies between the Ottoman Empire, the southeast European spaces, and the Mediterranean.3

Fig. 4
Fig. 4

Constantin Lecca – Neaga, the wife of Ionaşcu cupeţu, 1840–1845, Art Museum of Braşov.

Fig. 5
Fig. 5

Constantin Lecca – Ionaşcu cupeţu (merchant), 1840–1845, National Museum of Art, Bucharest.

Ionașcu and Neaga settled where their business prospered, bought estates and built manors, established themselves as residents of Oltenia, and paid their taxes according to the register of the incorporation of merchants to which they belonged. Their foundations copied a model established by Christian merchants from the Balkans who wished in this way to show thanks to God for divine assistance in the thriving of their trading activities.4 At the same time, they testify to the strong bonds that they had managed to forge with the local community, which was the beneficiary of such places of worship and social assistance.

Mobility and ethnic and religious diversity make southeastern Europe a fertile ground for research into identity and cultural syncretism. As Brubaker writes, ‘self-identification and the identification of the other are fundamentally linked to situations and contexts.’5 Along the same lines, Eric Dursteler argues that ‘early modern identity was fluid and instrumental.’ People worked with this flexibility, which gave them the possibility of defining and redefining themselves according to the context.6 Nevertheless, as Dimitrie Cantemir writes, there are certain criteria for describing the others. He makes use of two of them: nation (here in the sense of place of birth and belonging to a certain territory) and religion. For some historians, religion is ‘a primary element of individual and group identity’, an essential key in the construction of identity.7 We may recall that in the Ottoman Empire, people were classified according to their religion and grouped in confessional communities, millets.8 As social and above all political changes transformed the region, language turned from a means of communication and differentiation into another instrument for the definition of national identities.9 To these three criteria may be added others that serve to fashion regional, confessional, and linguistic belonging: costume, culinary traditions, local practices, and the sharing of a common historical past.10 In the pages that follow, I shall try to demonstrate that self-identification is part of a dynamic process, one that is adaptable according to context, opportunities, and immediate needs. I shall show that, although religion is considered a key element in the process of identification, in certain situations it may become an instrument of manoeuvre adaptable to the local context.11

Who Are ‘The Subjects of the Prince’?

Princely charters (hrisoave) are always addressed to imagined subjects, identified generically as ‘the subjects of the prince’ (supuşii domniei). At the moment when the charter was issued, these subjects shared the same territory, paid taxes to the princely treasury, appealed to the princely law courts, prayed for the prince and his family in church, and could feel that they belonged to a community. The abolition of the army by Constantin Mavrocordat did not imply that subjects had been relieved of all military obligations, especially in the case of the boyars, who in return for these duties were exempt from taxes and enjoyed other privileges. In various circumstances, the prince would appeal to his subjects for military assistance, which was considered an obligation, either by direct participation in war, or in the form of indirect participation by building fortifications or bridges or ensuring provisions for the Ottoman army. All these obligations helped to establish a close bond between the prince and his subjects, offering the sense of belonging to a community. Ordinary folk in the most isolated hamlet could feed on the image of the good and wise ruler whose duty it was to protect them in exchange for the taxes they paid.12

In their petitions addressed to the prince, the population constructed a very close relationship with the sovereign imagined as a master, while the subject was no more than a ‘slave’ (rob). Analysing the relation between the tsar and his subjects in Russia, Valerie Kivelson argues that ‘Muscovites articulated their claims on the state through litigation or through other means of invoking the protection of legal norms and processes.’13 Thus, legal institutions and norms are important reference points in identifying the criteria for belonging to a society. In the eighteenth century, this formula of subjecthood, inserted at the end of a petition, was part of a well-aimed rhetoric. Reading between the lines of the petition, it is clear that the ‘slave’ raises himself up as a subject free to demand his rights by virtue of his payment of taxes: ‘I am a man with tax [obligations] and it is not right that I should perish through judgements.’ The subject underlines the importance of the time that is so precious in order to cultivate his crops and to pay his tax to the prince, but equally the prince must find the time and the mercy to protect him. The contractual relationship that exists between the apex and the base of the pyramid is evident: the subject pays the tax and enjoys the prince’s protection. Of course belonging to a community involves other aspects too: confessional, linguistic, relational, bonds of kinship and affinity. In this part, I shall focus on foreigners belonging to various occupational categories whose destinies brought them to Moldavia and Wallachia. What process of identification did a foreigner go through in order to be accepted? How did they negotiate their belonging to a community? As ‘identity’ is such an ‘ambiguous’ concept,14 I shall try to observe the process of identification operated by individuals in relation to their own criteria for analysing what they are. At the same time, I shall try to pick out the criteria of identification and categorization used by institutional agencies in defining a foreigner as ‘assimilated’ or not.15

The judicial archives of Moldavia and Wallachia testify to a very dynamic trans-border mobility throughout the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth. The people recorded by these archives moved with ease between empires, bearing with them information, tastes, and novelties, transporting what wealth they had in backpacks and carts, desperately seeking security, stability, a future. Wandering in search of a ‘home’, some settled in the Principalities, eager to start a family, to build a fortune, to find a lineage. However, the success of a trajectory in life depends on the context, on the individual, and above all on the connections necessary for one to anchor oneself in a not always friendly environment. Of course, the courts, by their very nature, tended to record the failure of such attempts, when people were unable to achieve their desired goal and set out on a new journey, towards a new destination. But their records are the living mirror of an acute need to become socially integrated, to model an identity, and to seek a safe ‘homeland’. These archives are complemented by personal or family records—property documents, testaments, dowry contracts, litigation over inheritance—which provide us with details about those who managed to settle, at least for a time. Taken together, they help us to characterize people based on the information offered to the authorities by the individuals themselves or by those who had dealings with them.

Seeking a Patron on the Danube Frontier

The migration was not all in one direction, from the Ottoman Empire to the Principalities, or from there to the Habsburg territories or Venice. Orthodox Christians from Wallachia and Moldavia also went to seek their fortune in the Ottoman Empire. Mobility might be collective or individual. It was often provoked by conflicts in the region when the population fled to save their lives and what little they owned. After each war, imperial fermans encouraged people to return to their houses and estates, granting collective pardons, privileges, and periods of tax exemption.16 The Phanariot princes too were urged to busy themselves with the repopulation and economic recovery of their countries in order to ensure the payment of tribute to the Porte.17

Whole groups of peasants migrated south of the Danube in hope of lighter taxes. Indeed, the phenomenon of peasant families migrating between empires is documented along all borders. This seasonal migration was encouraged by the need for labour in agriculture and the reduced level of a population decimated by the wars in the region and by frequent outbreaks of plague.18 In these conditions, explicit competition arose between boyars with properties along the borders and the provincial elites (ayans) and military notables of the three surrounding empires, both for the extension of their properties and, above all, for labour force.19 For example, along the Danube frontier, the development of large livestock farms (çiftliks) stimulated mobility and increased the power of the ayans.20 Boyars and ayans alike offered privileges and advantages to attract workers to their lands. The most capable of the peasants were hired in supervising posts, especially once they had proven their abilities and above all their loyalty.

The Brâncoveanu boyars held large estates in the south of Wallachia, with their main residence being in the village of Brâncoveni in Olt county.21 The grandson of the prince decapitated in Istanbul, named like his grandfather Constantin, became the rightful heir to the latter’s moveable and immoveable goods. Marica Brâncoveanu, his grandmother, went to considerable effort to have the right of succession of this sole male survivor of the lineage recognized, and for him to come into possession of his inheritance.22 Gradually Constantin Brâncoveanu built up a property empire in Oltenia and along the Danube. His wealth and his belonging to one of the most well-known boyar families facilitated his access to important administrative functions: grand comis (1730–1731, 1733–1734, 1739), grand stolnic (1732–1733, 1734, 1735), grand logofăt (1748–1752, 1755, 1756, 1758–1761), grand vornic (1753), grand spătar (1753–1754, 1755), and grand ban (23 July 1757–30 May 1758).23 His fame spread beyond the Danube, enabling him to form connections with the provincial elite of Rumelia. ‘To his excellency my honourable and able friend, the boyar Brâncoveanu, who is one of the well-known boyars of Wallachia’: so he is addressed around 1750 by the kehaya Mehmed. Mehmed was writing to him in the name of the military commander (muhafiz) of the citadel of Vidin, to request protection and assistance for two merchants who had to bring goods quickly from Bucharest.24 From the documents issued in this period, it would appear that the Brâncoveanus, father and sons, maintained amicable relations both with the kadı of Giurgiu (Yergöğü) and with his counterpart in Ruse (Rusçuk). Thus it was that a certain Ștefan (Istefan in the Ottoman documents) ‘the Latin’ from the Old Mosque district of Ruse came to cross the Danube and enter the service of the boyar Constantin Brâncoveanu.25 Soon after, having proven himself useful and won the boyar’s trust, Ștefan was leased the estate of Brâncoveni. With Brâncoveanu’s approval, Ștefan established a flourishing business, trading on both sides of the Danube and becoming well-known among the townsfolk and garrison of Vidin. As the ferman of Sultan Mustafa III of 11/20 January 1758 puts it: ‘Being a trustworthy man and renowned, he held estates in Wallachia, in the vicinity of Vidin, and had close connections with all the inhabitants of Vidin, taking something from them and giving them something else in exchange.’26 Though his place of origin is unknown, Ștefan the Latin was probably a Catholic who had come and settled in the Old Mosque district of Ruse, where his family were: his wife Lotissa and their four minor children, Matei, Anton, Maria, and Isaveta. His business activities were inspired by those around him, who for years had been trying their luck on one side or the other of the great river.27

As Virginia Aksan has shown, the Danube frontier always constituted a problem. Even if, in theory, Muslims were not allowed to build houses or buy land in Wallachia or Moldavia, many did so. At the same time, a series of raids took place across the Danube; Oltenian villages, as far as Craiova, were pillaged whenever the opportunity arose. The event analysed in these pages took place a few years before the enquiry carried out by an Ottoman commission regarding the complaints of princes, boyars, and locals who were discontented at the depredations of outlaws and janissaries, and at the abuses of the Muslims settled from Orșova to Craiova, who imposed unfair charges and prices and illegally took possession of the locals’ estates and shops. In 1759, Girid Ahmed was sent to restore order and to pacify the population.28 The case of Ștefan the Latin helps us to take the pulse of the region, showing the collaboration between Muslims and non-Muslims in the development of business and the appeal to Ottoman institutions for mediation, but also the inherent raids of outlaws. At the same time, it brings to light the power and influence acquired by the provincial elites, who attracted numerous clients seeking both protection and leverage for their own businesses.29 As Sophia Laiou has argued, the economic changes of the eighteenth century were profitable for a considerable number of non-Muslim Ottoman subjects, who were able to accumulate wealth that differentiated them not only from the other members of their communities but also from members of the Muslim community.30

It is in this context that Ștefan pursued his activity, doing business not only with the Christian locals, but also with the janissaries and other mercenaries in the region. Some of them are recorded as being ağas in Vidin: El-Hacı-Memed of the 30th bölük (company), El-hacı-Mustafa of the 64th regiment, Molla Mustafa of the 15th, and Fazlî-beşe of the 31st.31 These men lent Ștefan the sum of 3,300 kurușlar, counting both on the trust arising from the business activities they had been involved in together and, even more, on his renown through ‘all parts of Vidin.’ At the same time, Ștefan had managed to put himself under the protection of a patron who was powerful, rich, influential, and feared by those round about. Across the Danube, it was said that Brâncoveanu was ‘wealthy and possessed riches and villages,’ and that he was ‘one of the oppressors of that country, so much so that it is in no way possible to stand up to the aforementioned man in the aforementioned land.’32 In accumulating a considerable fortune, extending his network among the Danube ayans, and obtaining power and influence, Brâncoveanu was himself behaving just like an ayan, as Deena Sadat and Ali Yaycioğlu have argued, in analysing the behaviour of the Christian notables of the Empire.33

When Ștefan was found dead one day on the Brâncoveni estate, a series of abuses and networks of protection and power came to light. We do not know how wealthy Ștefan the Latin was, but rumour had it that he had extensive lands, ox carts, livestock, and bags of money. It was this presumed fortune, apparently kept at Brâncoveni, where he had his dwelling place as a lease-holder, that prompted his family to make a petition to the kadı of Ruse, requesting the right of inheritance. In her petition of 7 September 1757, Ștefan’s wife accused none other than his landlord and patron, the boyar Constantin Brâncoveanu, of killing her husband in order to take possession of his immense wealth.34 The same accusation recurs in the petition of the four agas who had lent Ștefan money: ‘the abovementioned Brancovan-oğlu Konstantin, of Wallachia, where the aforementioned Ștefan the Latin was present as leaseholder (mültezim) coveting the aforementioned’s wealth, had the aforementioned killed, in his own village, with musket shot and took and laid his hands on all the wealth that he owned, and also his money and the wealth coming from his estates.’35 The case was judged in several phases, according to Sharia law, by Kadı Ibrahim at Ruse and in the presence of Kadı Ilyas of Giurgiu. The investigation at the scene of the crime established that ‘the non-Muslim subject Ștefan’ had been killed by outlaws, who were very numerous in the area, and that Lotissa could not claim the ‘blood-price’ from the boyar given that the outlaws had not been caught.36 Brâncoveanu, represented by an estate manager named Polizu, proved generous, and gave the family 250 kurușlar, thus taking the heat out of the conflict.37 Ștefan the Latin was an Ottoman subject, but not a subject of the Phanariot prince of Wallachia. He had been under the protection and in the service of the Brâncoveanu family, but his extended family continued to live in Ruse, where he paid the cizye and other taxes to the Empire. For this reason, the case was brought from the start before the local Ottoman authorities, even though the murder had taken place in Wallachia.

The rumour of a huge fortune amassed by Ștefan the Latin and seized by the boyar Brâncoveanu continued to circulate, however, and led the four janissaries of Vidin mentioned above to request the recovery of Ștefan’s debts through a ferman of Sultan Mustafa III.38 In fact the trial served to enhance the renown of the Brancoveanus as rich and powerful boyars under whose protecting wing a client could make a living. Among those who sought their protection was one Ahmed bin Halil of Ruse. He asked the cămăraș Manolache (Emanuel) Brâncoveanu to take him under his protection and to give him the office of beşliagă (from the Turkish beşli ağası, captain of the princely couriers).39 To hasten matters, Ahmed offered the boyar by way of incentive ‘twenty-five shining gold pieces and twenty-three kurușlar, together with a package of twenty-six ocas of high-quality tobacco.’40

Ten years later, the fortune amassed by Ștefan the Latin from the Brâncoveanu estates was still haunting the members of his family. Thus it was that one of his sons, Mano (Matei) reopened the suit and sought his father’s inheritance from Constantin Brâncoveanu’s son Nicolae, whom he accused of having in fact been the murderer. In his petition, he writes that the fortune amassed was made up of ‘sixteen thousand one hundred kurușlar, two thousand one hundred sheep, and four hundred and sixty horses and four carriages and two gold rings,’ plus a further forty bags of kurușlar borrowed for the purposes of trade.41 That Ștefan the Latin did indeed amass a very considerable fortune from his activity as a tenant farmer and merchant is perfectly plausible. On the basis of the documents supplied by the Ottoman commission of 1760, Aysel Yıldız and İrfan Kokdaş have shown how fertile the region between the Danube and Craiova, Caracal, and Teleorman was, and how advantageous for raising livestock and for the (sometimes illicit) development of intensive animal farms.’42 Indeed, the colossal wealth of the Brâncoveanu family was based on the raising and selling of cattle.

But let us return to the trial. Nicolae Brâncoveanu was brought before the kadı of Giurgiu, the same Ilyas who had judged the case ten years previously. The kadı confirmed the previous judgement on the basis of Muslim witnesses brought to Ruse and of the certificates issued earlier.43 That the trial was re-opened shows in the first place that an existing judgement had no authority, but it also highlights the differences of status between non-Muslim Ottoman subjects depending on their residence in the Ottoman Empire itself or in the autonomous vassal provinces.44 At the same time, as we shall see in other cases of litigation between Christians and Muslims, the document underlines the inferior status of non-Muslim Ottoman subjects, who could not testify as witnesses in a case where one of the parties was a Muslim.45

A House Here, Kin Over There: Multiple Belongings

The mere fact of settling in a city or town did not automatically turn a foreigner into a subject. The cities of Moldavia and Wallachia did not enjoy the autonomy necessary for the establishment of a juridical framework capable of creating a class of burghers by defining the attributes of their inhabitants and granting them rights. Cities were directly subordinated to the prince, administered via the princely office-holders, to whom they were sometimes even concessioned.46 As such, we find little sign of a ‘juridical reality’ managing the presence of foreigners by granting them rights and institutionalizing those rights.47 Likewise, the absence of urban statutes regulating residence and access to the resources of the city makes it necessary to base any hypotheses on the analysis of individual cases.

First, the foreigner was recorded in the treasury register as a payer of the tax owed by any foreigner who carried out activity in the country, which was established according to the nature of the activity. The next step consisted of buying a house to live in, a necessary requirement in order to establish residence. Immoveable patrimony was protected by the right of pre-emption (protimisis).48 For example, in 1773, Zaharia the Greek, a ‘foreign man’, bought a house in Iași from Maria Ghirgicăi, after being assured that there were no heirs who might lay claim to it. Having become the owner, Zaharia busied himself with repairing and enlarging the house, investing the sum of 45 lei. In the autumn of 1775, Ambreni, Maria’s daughter, returned from Constantinople, where she had been ‘abroad’ for a time, and contested the sale, requesting ‘her right to exercise pre-emption to recover the house from Zaharia.’ Ambreni had every right to make this claim to the house, ‘it being the parental home,’ especially as it had been sold without her knowledge. Zaharia seems to have depended on the support of his neighbours to be able to keep the house and his place in the community. However, on the day of the trial none of them turned up to confirm that Zaharia had looked into the situation and had made enquiries as to whether there were any heirs. Instead the court sent a vornic de poartă (a judge of minor cases), the pivnicer Toader, to evaluate the repairs and convert Zaharia’s investment into money. It cannot be said that Zaharia the Greek’s efforts came to nothing, as with the money he received he tried again elsewhere, in a different neighbourhood.49 Property owning was a first step towards establishing residence, just as the length of time spent in a community might be another indicator of one’s desire to settle there.

Important information also comes to us from the content of testaments, which show, as Simona Cerutti has demonstrated in her analysis focused on the foreigner, that belonging may be multiple.50 Integration in the host country did not mean breaking connections with one’s place of origin, one’s family, kindred, or hometown. The best example of this is Cernea Popovici, who, on 1 December 1823, drew up his testament, relating in detail his wanderings in search of a home.51 Born into a modest family in Philippopolis (Ottoman Filibe, today Plovdiv in Bulgaria), Cernea decided at the age of eighteen, after his parents’ death, to leave his hometown to escape poverty: ‘not to go to ruin in my country, Philippopolis, remaining only in a parental home that was left to us three siblings […] making myself a foreigner I went to Anadol (Anatolia), to Arvanitea (Albania), to Rumele (Rumelia), and to many other places in the Turkish Land.’52 Mobility was not yet regulated and tamed at the end of the eighteenth century,53 especially on the peripheries of empires, where political instability was very pronounced. It is true that some princes tried to regulate the mobility of foreigners, charging officials in border areas with identifying, recording, and reporting them to the political authorities. However in the absence of effective political stability, the regulation process was renewed with each successive reign and failed to become a long-term administrative and policing measure capable of protecting the population from foreign wrongdoers or from the abuses of Turkish merchants and soldiers at the borders.54 In spite of this instability, we may observe, as I have already shown in this chapter, an intense social life along the Wallachian–Ottoman border: what Mariusz Kaczka terms ‘frontier society’.55 In other words, the inhabitants of the border zone did what they could to forge peaceful social relations and to profit from the advantages of the region for the development of their own economic activities.

Cernea Popovici carried his goods and his life with him as he sought his fortune through the Ottoman Empire. Of Serbian birth and Orthodox faith, Cernea was an Ottoman subject and devoted his life to trade. When he had amassed considerable wealth, after his experience of mobility through many Ottoman towns, he decided to settle in Wallachia. The Serbian merchant justified his settling in Wallachia in terms of the success of his business activities.56 For years he had wandered the Empire, increasing his wealth and probably taking stock of the advantages and disadvantages of each place that might potentially be a ‘home’57. In his case, it was not the ‘Ottoman yoke’ that led him to cross the Danube, but simply the economic advantages. As we shall see, he had friendly relations with Christians and Muslims alike, both south and north of the Danube. For a time, he returned to his ‘homeland’ of Philippopolis, and he maintained connections with his relations: he was not a refugee, but simply a Christian in search of a home.58 We do not, unfortunately, know at what point Cernea received local rights and acquired the status of princely subject. The assimilation process has its ‘ambiguities and frictions’, as Wolfgang Kaiser puts it, moving forward tacitly on the basis of ius domicilii and the passage of time.59 Our candidate had considerable property in the south of Wallachia, belonged to the majority Orthodox confession, and was a merchant, which meant that he travelled with his goods. It is not very clear from his testament how he came into possession of his estates, given that, especially in the countryside, property was protected by the right of protimisis. However this right could be evaded at any time, by donations, by forming a bond of blood-brotherhood, by the purchase of monastic land, or by mortgage loans.60 One of these procedures must have been resorted to by Cernea Popovici, who had no wish to marry or to have heirs (‘I did not have it in my plans to marry’). The wealth he amassed from his trading activity he invested in estates purchased in Teleorman county: the villages of Zmârdioasa, Găuriciu, Cervenia, and Răteasca. From the moment he bought the estates, Cernea Popovici began the process of integrating himself in the rural society of the county, collaborating closely not only with the local community, but also with the political authorities. Cernea proved to be an able landowner, concerning himself with the good administration of his estates, but also a good master to the peasants who worked his fields. In order to live comfortably (‘for the peace of my life with plenty’) and as befitted his social status, he build a house with ‘rooms of brick in the earth’, barns, kitchen, and bakehouse, all of brick, he repaired the mill, cleared the fields, planted orchards (120,000 trees), expanded the vineyards, and looked after the hayfields. All this was done with the help of the peasants of Zmârdioasa, whom he advised and urged to do the same on their patches of land. As I have already pointed out, depopulation was a pressing issue in the region, and the labour shortage was often compensated for by the colonization of whole groups, encouraged to leave their ‘homeland’ by the offer of privileges. Cernea implemented such a colonization policy on his estates, at his own initiative but with the approval of the prince. Acting on the prince’s approval, but also in the interests of the ‘good use and adornment of his estate,’ Cernea brought ‘eighty-two families of Serbs from the Turkish Land,’ and settled them on his lands in Teleorman, thus forming the small village of Găuriciu, close to his own manor house. He obtained a princely decree (hrisov) giving them a considerable tax reduction, with just a single annual payment required. He also took charge of building the village, digging wells, planting orchards, clearing the space ‘for the use and ease of the families,’ and offering food and assistance to the newcomers. Colonization with families of Serbs and Vlachs brought from the ‘Turkish Land’ also took place at Cervenia.61 Cernea Popovici’s success in obtaining privileges for his Serb co-nationals is evidence of his collaboration with the political authorities, and supports the hypothesis that he was already a princely subject. We do not know when exactly the colonization of the region by Serbs brought from the Ottoman Empire took place, but it was probably after the outbreak of plague that wiped out a large part of the population.62 Prince Ioan Caragea (1812–1818) encouraged this policy of colonization, especially after the Russian–Ottoman war (1806–1812) and the plague that followed.63 The pressing need for revenue, and thus implicitly for tax-paying subjects, called for extreme measures: the placing of guards along the Danube border who were to let ‘no taxable inhabitant nor any of the old Serbs, who came before the war’ cross to the other side, in other words into the Ottoman Empire. Meanwhile, Cernea Popovici did his best to create the most propitious environment possible for his colonists, so that they would put down roots and become useful to him in the exploitation of his estates.64

As his wealth increased, the Serbian merchant built a further two brick houses, at Găuriciu and Zimnicea, and fitted them out with all that was necessary. Architecturally they belonged to a type specific to the Ottoman Empire and the world of southeastern Europe: the kula.65 As his estates were in a frontier zone, populated by outlaws, brigands, and soldiers, Cernea had in his possession Turkish muskets, English pistols, and a silver sword. It was for the same reason that he adapted his home to a specific building type that would give protection in case of armed raids. Two Serbs, Gheorghe from Dervet and Neculce from Kanzalıc (today Stara Zagora, Bulgaria), were his faithful servants, ready to assist him day and night. In an area subject to frequent invasions, the memory was kept alive of the violent raids of Osman Pasvantoğlu’s men, the incursions of Alexandru Ipsilanti’s Etairists, the rising of Tudor Vladimirescu’s pandours, and the frequent interventions of the Ottoman army.66 As a witness to these aggressions, Cernea Popovici adapted to the dangers, fortifying his houses, arming himself, and ensuring the safety of his valuable belongings. Important documents—the title deeds of his estates and the registers of debts that he had to recover or to repay (26,000 lei loaned out in Wallachia and 9,000 lei borrowed)—were deposited in an ‘iron chest’ stored safely in Bucharest, ‘in the vault at Mr Ianachi Naum’s under the house of Mr Iona.’ Clothes, bedding, and various items of silverware he also kept in chests, but in Ruse.’67

As both a princely subject and an Ottoman subject, Cernea Popovici built for himself a cross-border network of friends and business associates linking Teleorman to Istanbul, Ruse, and Bucharest. Of some, he says only that they were his friends, as in the case of the ‘merchant friends’ in Bucharest who warned him about the fraud committed in his name by a nephew; others he mentions by name, such as the grand clucer Nicolae Trăsnea, whom he designated as his heir, and Velișco, the kaymakam (interim governor) of Ruse, in whose care he left many of the chests containing his wealth. To these friends, Cernea Popovici entrusted his life, his wealth, and the memory of his name. Although he had kept in contact with family members still living in Philippopolis—a brother and a sister—and helped them whenever he could, they tried to trick him and even to poison him in order to get possession of his wealth sooner. It was this that led him to leave his entire wealth and indeed to entrust the commemoration of his soul to a friend: Nicolae Trăsnea.68 When this friend declined, however, on the grounds that the task was too difficult, Popovici was left to die alone, leaving his vast wealth to fall inevitably into the hands of his relatives in Philippopolis.69 The wealth of foreigners who died without heirs went by rights to their relatives and not into the Phanariot prince’s treasury, as was the practice elsewhere.70 For thirty years, relatives, no matter how distant their relationship, could claim the deceased’s goods if they could prove a family connection.71 No matter much how he tried to keep his relatives at a distance, the absence of direct heirs forced Cernea Popovici to fall back on his family roots.

From the information he offers and from his actions, he would appear to belong to the Serbian nation, but when he defines himself it is as ‘an Ottoman subject’. He was also a princely subject by virtue of his services to the community and his close collaboration in the colonization process, in which he proved himself useful and to have an interest in his new homeland. The Greek signature on the document shows that he had become Hellenized through his profession: commerce.72 Indeed the use of the Greek language was part of the cultural baggage of the southeast European Christian elite.73 In fact, Cernea Popovici built for himself a small Serbian community, which he looked after, obtaining for them fiscal privileges, local rights, and the right to practise their faith freely. For this population, he erected churches in three of his villages. Contrary to the general pattern of the period, Popovici did not rise to boyar status by purchasing an administrative office74 ; rather he preferred to remain in the ranks of the merchant class and to collaborate with the local notables on the Danube by way of a system of patronage, maintaining close connections in both Muslim and Christian worlds.75 As a bachelor, Cernea Popovici excluded family from this network, relying on bonds of friendship and clientelary relations.76 However he was an exception; the majority of commercial networks were based on the extended family, because business involved a considerable measure of trust and loyalty.77

It should also be noted that the vast wealth that he managed to accumulate was invested, as his death approached, in the building of churches, or simply in Christian charity, forgiving all his debtors and cancelling all their debts, including the money and provisions borrowed over the years by the peasants on his estates and the 26,000 lei owed by his business associates. His charitable works served to consolidate his prestige in his country of adoption, but also among his Serbian co-nationals. His behaviour was common and specific to the southeast European Orthodox elite, which displayed its generosity by visible charitable actions with profound social significance: Gypsy slaves were freed and household servants were generously recompensed. In the absence of heirs, generosity was the only instrument by which one’s memory might be perpetuated, as one’s name was preserved for a time among the beneficiaries of charity, moved by gratitude to light a commemorative candle. Cernea Popovici’s weakness lay precisely in his lack of heirs in whose hands to place his estate, his affection, his memory, his future.

One Individual, Different Subjecthoods: Sudiți and Protégés

With the end of the eighteenth century, the intervention of the state in the definition and identification of foreigners began to make itself felt. It started to become of the most important agents in naming, identifying, categorizing, and stating who was what. The necessity of economic development in a region lacking professional categories meant that there was an interest in attracting foreigners. The absence of a middle class has been much discussed in Romanian historiography.78 In fact the phenomenon is a general characteristic of southeastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire, where the bourgeoisie, as it is generally termed, only began to take shape or to become visible in the nineteenth century.79 For this reason, the princes encouraged master craftsmen to come to the Principalities, either to practise their trades or to open manufactories that would be of use to everyone.80 Their contribution to the economic and cultural development of urban life was recognized by the granting of tax exemptions. For example, on 3 September 1772, at the height of the Russian–Ottoman war, when Moldavia was under Russian military occupation, the Italian Petru Mați (Pietro Mazzi) bought the glass and paper workshops at Hârlău from the Jew Hegel Marcovici. Marcovici had set these up during the reign of Grigore Callimachi (1767–1769), from whom he had obtained privileges and tax exemptions on 30 March 1768. (These were later reinforced by Field Marshal Pyotr Rumyantsev on 1 April 1771.) Petru Mați had been one of the foreign master craftsmen brought in to establish the manufactories. Marcovici’s reasons for selling them to his employee are not stated.

However, the document recording the sale is essential evidence for the insertion of a foreigner into the administrative fabric of the state. Petru Mați was a skilled master craftsman who had to be kept. For this reason, the boyars of the Divan and Field Marshal Rumyantsev transferred to him the privileges previous enjoyed by ‘the Jew’ (jidovul) Hegel Marcovici: exemption ‘from all taxes and demands of the Divan’. He was also granted the right to bring in ‘sixty foreigners’, qualified master craftsmen to work in the paper and glass manufactories. As the foreigners he brought were exempt from taxation, the Italian was obliged to register them at the Treasury, including them in a process of identification (name, origin, appearance) to distinguish them from the tax-paying population round about. According to the document: ‘these foreign men whom he will bring from elsewhere, as soon as they come he is to bring before the grand vistier to investigate them. And it being proven that they are foreign, after the recording of their names, which he will give to the Treasury, they will be given certificates with their features so as to be known from the other inhabitants of the country.’ As long as they are employees of the manufactories, ‘they will not be troubled in any way’: in other words, they would not pay taxes. However if they left this privileged condition, they would come into the category of ordinary foreign residents (rândul străinilor) and would be subject to taxation.81 The certificate is thus an official document containing the identification details necessary for a foreigner to enjoy the privilege of tax exemption.

A further step in the recognition and registration of foreigners and the regulation of their status took place in the context of the construction of the category of sudiți. The establishment of consulates in Iași and Bucharest created new centres of power and influence. The new Russian consulate had barely opened before it was attracting the Wallachian elite, boyars and wealthy merchants alike, like a magnet. Writing to Chancellor Kaunitz, Internuncio Herbert von Rathkeal enviously described the atmosphere in the house of the Russian consul, Sergei Lazarevich Laskarev. The consul ‘enjoyed such great favour in Bucharest that his house was much frequented by the boyars, he gave grand assemblies twice a week, and he involved himself in protections and intrigues.’82 ‘Protection’ was the key word that attracted Christian Ottoman subjects, implying not just fiscal privileges but the right to elude princely justice and to benefit from a favourable judgement through the intermediary of the consul-patron.

Russia, Austria, Prussia, France, and Britain appointed consuls to Iași and Bucharest to protect their subjects,83 but also accepted under their jurisdiction not only non-Muslim Ottoman subjects and foreigners who did not have consular representation in the Principalities, but also locals. The provisions of the capitulations were now extended to cover foreign subjects (sudiți) in the Principalities. In the late eighteenth century, litigation between sudiți and re’ayas was judged by the justice departments of Wallachia and Moldavia, but the nineteenth century brought the imposition of consular jurisdiction as a parallel institution privileging the sudiți as a distinct social category. By their interventions before the princes or the Porte, the consuls managed to obtain privileges for their subjects; likewise they strove to ensure consular assistance in case of litigation, and to firmly impose respect for their rights.84 In this context, some inhabitants of the Principalities, native or foreign, purchased the right to be ‘protected’, attracted by the privileges it involved. In the absence of regular income, consuls encouraged this practice in their countries of residence, and sold ‘patents of protection’.85 The consuls were copying the model of the Ottoman Empire, where ambassadors and consuls had been granted the right to employ non-Muslim Ottoman subjects, offering them protection by means of berats.86 The founding of the Chancellery of Foreign Affairs (Logofeţia Străinilor Pricini) thus came as a necessary step towards countering the growing power of the consulates and of their protégés in relation to natives and the power of the princes.87 As I mentioned in the Introduction, there is not yet agreement among historians with regard to the founding of the two Chancelleries (in Moldavia and in Wallachia), but their activity is increasingly well documented for the nineteenth century.

The increase in the number of sudiți led to the intervention of the Porte, which demanded the exclusion from the protected category of those already resident in the Principalities.88 To this end, on 27 January 1813, Prince Ioan Caragea ordered the grand vistier to draw up a register listing the ‘genuine’ sudiți, while re’ayas who had purchased patents of protection were to be returned to the ranks of taxpayers:

Honourable and faithful boyar of My Highness, you, grand vistier, since the Most High Devlet [the Porte] has been informed that in this country a great abuse is being carried on with the making of sudiți by the consulates of foreign courts that are here, in this connection we have been sent a Most High Imperial ferman comprising and commanding the order that is to be applied from now on for sudiți, namely: as many as may be inhabitants of the country from their ancestors or may be subjects of the Most Puissant Empire and, having their dwelling elsewhere, happen to come to this country for some temporary matter of their business […] to be subject to tax, remaining again [subjects] of the Most Puissant Empire and to follow the old rule.89

The command was to be sent to local ispravnics, whose mission was to make an inventory of all those who were or had ‘made themselves’ sudiți, confiscating their patents and returning them to the list of taxpayers.90 These measures must be analysed in the economic and social context of the moment: the Russian–Ottoman war (1806–1812) and the plague epidemic. The Ottoman Empire, and implicitly also the Principalities, had a pressing need for human resources to restore their treasuries. Making a register of these resources was one of the priority measures of the reign of Ioan Caragea, especially after the great boyars in the Divan informed him in May 1814 that ‘the total of the Treasury’s fiscal units has come to be very much reduced,’ and that consequently it was difficult to cover the country’s expenses.91 To find out the extent of the country’s taxable human resources, Caragea resorted to a fiscal census of the population of Wallachia. The project involved counting all the inhabitants of the principality, rigorously noting each social category with the privileges and exemptions that it enjoyed. Among these categories were foreigners and sudiți in towns and villages. It is clear from his order that the register requested in 1813 had not yet been compiled.92

Making a register of the population made heavy demands on the princely authorities in general and on the officials charged with carrying out the count in particular. What is of interest to us here is the recording of the sudiți. The following example is provided by the vornicie of Bucharest (the department which collected taxes and judged various court cases in the city). The official Petre Nenciulescu writes to the grand vistier:

I draw to your attention that the vornicie has no register of French sudiți and could not make a register without a princely command. Second, I humbly beg that it be explained to me which patents are to be gathered, that is, only from those who are good French sudiți or also from the others who previously were French sudiți and now have become English sudiți, because these too, after they have in their hands French patents also have English patents.93

The confusion was sustained by the multiple games of self-fashioning advanced by foreigners and natives alike according to their interests and profiting from the authority vacuum created by the competition between the consulates and the princely administration. The fiscal census of the population, now termed by Caragea the ‘settlement’ (așezământ), showed the difficult of knowing one’s subjects in the absence of functional institutions and functionaries capable of handling such a task. The abuses committed by the officials were numerous, and equally the unwillingness of the population to be recorded was evident.94

On 27 September 1814, the register counted 1,723 sudiți in Bucharest, specifically ‘956 Russian, 694 German and 73 French’. The officials noted that ‘most were men married to local women, with houses and outbuildings, some acquired as dowry, others bought by themselves and are in good condition.’95 All the same, the officials were faced with a major problem: they did not know the criteria by which they were to establish who were the ‘real’ sudiți, so they asked the Treasury for guidance. ‘May we be sent the register, so we can pick out the good sudiți from the others,’ writes Grand Vornic Iordache Văcărescu.96 I shall not insist here on the privileges of the sudiți or on the political disputes between princes and consulates regarding jurisdiction over these foreigners. What is of interest here is the manner in which the status of sudit was used in the process of identification and obtaining social or fiscal advantages.

As word spread that the fiscal burden on sudiți and foreign settlers in village colonies was much lighter, some townspeople and villagers purchased patents and refused to continue paying taxes, while others fled to the colonies and declared themselves ‘foreign’.97 Some were defended by the consuls who issued the patents, while others were defended by landowners who needed labour. A process of collective identification was thus triggered which involved the local and central authorities, the consulates, and the village and town population, each having its own specific interests: the political authorities were interested in avoiding the creation of precedents and in recovering their taxpayers; the consular agencies were interested in enhancing their power and increasing the number of their subjects; and the subjects did not want to pay taxes. The situation led to inter-communal conflicts and the intervention of the authorities to restore peace and impose some degree of order.98

Under the capitulations, foreign subjects, the sudiți, did not have the right to own immoveable property in the host country.99 The investigations carried out by the authorities showed, however, that many of them had permanent residence in the Principalities, with houses and land, families and kin.100 The reports of these investigations point with precision to important indicators in defining the boundary separating sudiți from ‘locals’: foreigners who settled in Moldavia or Wallachia could not be considered sudiți if they lived ‘in this country with their own houses, buying also outbuildings and making plantations and other appurtenances.’101 The report of the great boyars to Prince Alexandru Suţu bases itself on the provisions of the ‘sacred capitulations’, which establish that ‘a sudit who is placed under some foreign protection is not free to have outbuildings and appurtenances on the land of the country.’ Possession of properties, their administration, and economic and social concern for the growth of one’s income were privileges restricted to the ‘local’; consequently, the sudit, and also his protector, knowing ‘the sacred treaties’ (‘sfintele tractaturi’), had assumed a social transformation: ‘wishing to obtain such possessions and uses on the land of the country that belong to the locals, he can no longer be considered a sudit, but is a local and as a local is obliged to answer to the country with his duty.’102

The point of view expressed by the leading boyars and put in practice by the prince did not correspond to the expectations of the Austrian consulate, which had requested protection for its subjects. Such disputes were relatively numerous in the first half of the nineteenth century. Some princes appealed to the Porte to mediate and indeed to intervene by charging the European powers to respect the true provisions of the capitulations,103 but at other times the disputes were settled more directly in the street, as Hugot, agent of the French consulate, reports:

Some Austrian subjects, found in the evening in the street, were beaten a few days ago by the Moldavian Guard. Two days later, the Moldavian Guard was beaten by Austrian subjects whom it had attacked without reason when they were returning from their work. Tranquillity is now completely re-established. Despite the cessation of the Austrian Agent’s relations with the local authorities, the department of foreign affairs receives the Austrian, Russian, and English subjects who present themselves, and judges their trials with the subjects of the principality.

He proceeds to give details on the diplomatic conflict between the prince and the diplomatic representation of the Habsburg Empire.104

As I shall show in the following chapters, taking as examples Dumitrache Merișescu and Iorgu Hartulari, the population continued to purchase sudit patents, using the protective umbrella of consular power to further their own interests by changing their political status. The patents could only be sold by consuls, and only to Christians. The phenomenon grew so chaotic and expansive that at a certain point it became hard to control. Just as princes sold ranks, so consuls sold patents to whoever wished to buy.105 Ridiculous situations sometimes arose, like that of the British subject Costea Papadopulos in Saac county:

I was at first re’aya, but this autumn, the honoured Consulate of the Britons being at Vălenii de Munte, Saac county, on the urging of some or other of my friends, sudiți of the consulate, deluding myself, I too obtained a patent to count myself an English sudit. And, later, I see that this patent is of no use to me, because I am here with my family in this land and a subject under the protection of the honoured Treasury from the beginning.106

A Greek judging by his name, settled in Wallachia with a family, properties, and wealth, Costea Papadopulos thought it would do no harm to have a subject’s patent too, if others had.107 Indeed he invokes this patent in a trial that he had with another British subject, Hristodor Kaloian, and his heirs. As in this case the status of re’aya would have been more useful to him, Papadopulos wrote to the Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Departamentul Vornicia Treburilor Dinlăuntru) requesting support in recovering his former identity.108 Unfortunately, we do not know how much the status of ‘British protégé’ cost him. In Moldavia, in the same period, a merchant could buy a patent for 2–3 ducats from the Austrian consul or 5 gold pieces from the French vice-consul in Galați.109

The fabrication of an identity was not guided according to the criteria of the present day, but drew on specific sources connected to a social, political, and cultural context. The status of sudit was for some an opportunity that they would access whenever they needed it. ‘The sudiți relying on their status as sudit’ (‘Rezemându-se în puterea sudiţii’) is an expression we find in some documents, when certain individuals take advantage of their status as foreign subjects to avoid respecting the norms of the country in which they live.110 Others changed their religious confession along with their subjecthood. Avram Berman was a Jew, a foreigner settled in Bucharest. The process of his integration in the local community is best described by his wife, ‘Haela the Jewess’, who offers the following information necessary for the process of identification:

I being at the age for marriage [and living] at my parents’, and one Avram Berman the Jew, Prussian sudit repeatedly asking for me to take me as his wife, my parents did not want to give me to him, for the reason that he was a foreigner, unknown and then recently arrived here. And later, my parents trusting in the testimony of the Prussian consul (under whose protection the abovementioned was) and the attestations that we saw in his hands about the schools where he had studied, and that he had knowledge of several foreign languages, and likewise the trade of doctor, for all that he had no wealth but my parents considering him of good behaviour, they were deceived into giving me to him as his wife, about five months ago, the Prussian consul too being present at the wedding.’

Avram Berman was a foreigner trying to integrate himself very quickly in the local community by marriage. The protection of the Prussian consul, Baron Louis Kreuchely-Schwerdtberg, was essential in his case, intervening before ‘Maer the Jew’, and recommending Avram Berman as a good prospective son-in-law.111 After five months, however, Avram Berman left his wife and his home. Having set out in search of him, Maer discovered his son-in-law’s multiple tricks with his identity: now he had presented himself as Jewish, at other times variously Orthodox, Catholic, again Jewish, again Orthodox, again Catholic, ‘holding to no law’ (‘neţinându-se de nici o lege’). One’s religious confession was an important element in the process of identification, but also an essential lever in becoming anchored in a community. A change of religion (‘and again he turned to other laws’ (‘şi iarăşi s-au întors în alte legi’) was not well regarded by the community, who considered it tantamount to an act of betrayal.

Avram Berman’s identity games did not stop here: Haela and her father took their case to the office of the Jewish haham, to the Chancellery of Foreign Affairs, and to the Prussian consulate. Each institution added another element to the identification of Doctor Avram Berman. The Prussian consulate continued to protect him, to represent him, and to keep his belongings and documents safe when he was out of town. When asked, the consulate sent to the Chancellery, by way of its representative the vechil112 Sotir Floronulo, an appeal signed not by Avram Berman but by Iosef Leopold Berman (sometimes written ‘Bermann’) in which he affirms ‘that no enacted law code commands him to give an act of separation according to the decision of the hahams’ (‘că nici o legiuită pravilă nu-i poruncește ca să dea carte de despărțeniie după hotărârea hahamilor’). In refusing to recognize the ruling of the Jewish court, which had decreed his separation from his wife Haela and the return of her dowry, Berman was, in fact, refusing to recognize the authority of the community to which he belonged. This is not to say that he had much more respect for the rules of the host country that had received him: he did not turn up in court, but left the city and sent his vechil with applications for compensation ‘for time lost’ in court hearings that had caused considerable prejudice to his image. One of the criteria for integration and assimilation is respect for the norms of one’s country of adoption. Shortly after, he changed his mind, probably on the advice of the Prussian consul, and addressed a complaint to Prince Grigore Dimitrie Ghica (1822–1828), asking to be heard. He was supported by the consul, who wrote to the prince in this connection.113 Two years later, the sudit Joseph Leopold Berman again benefitted from the assistance and protection of the consulate, which tried to protect its subjects in wartime. When he was arrested by Russian troops and sent to Bessarabia during the Russian–Ottoman war of 1828–1829, the consulate intervened for his release.114

Ahmet, Ahmet, and Ahmet: Ottomans and Christians

The foreigners listed by Dimitrie Cantemir as living in Moldavia also included Ottoman Turks. Relations between Christians and Muslims did not always find expression in violence and abuses. They may have been separated by religion, but, especially in border zones, there was frequent collaboration and interaction between the two ethnic groups. As merchants and money-lenders, the Turks did business with the local population, trying to survive, to build themselves a home and a future.115 One of the Muslims who tried to make a living on the Moldavian border was Ahmet ‘who was previously called Murtaza’. Ahmet Murtaza was a distinctive figure who wandered Moldavia in search of patrons and business. A licensed honey-merchant (Tk. balğy), he went from village to village buying honey for the Ottoman Empire. He was just one among many Ottoman merchants who enjoyed the privilege of having first option on certain products that were needed to feed Istanbul.116 Alongside the honey trade, Ahmet Murtaza also dealt in money-lending, providing loans to whoever needed them, but focusing particularly on those with resources, in other words, the great boyars. His honey-trading and money-lending activities helped him to enter the network of great boyar families such as Neculce and Racoviță.117 Thus it was that he became close to hatman Dumitraşco Racoviţă, the brother of the prince of Moldavia, Mihai Racoviţă (1716–1726), to whom he made numerous loans of money. The money was lent at interest, based on contracts, on a series of occasions in 1726 and 1727.118 When Dumitraşco Racoviţă plotted against Prince Grigore Ghica (1726–1734) in hope of bringing his brother back to the throne, Ahmet Murtaza joined him. The plot failed, and in the autumn of 1727, Dumitraşco Racoviţă took refuge among the Tatars of Budjak to escape punishment.119 From there, he proceeded to Istanbul to save his head, with Ahmet Murtaza as his guide and adviser. Ahmet helped him to cross the Danube and to reach Babadag, where he hid him in his brother’s house for several days. To reach Istanbul, where Dumitraşco’s brother, Mihai Racoviţă, was, who he hoped would help him, Dumitraşco and Ahmet joined up with a group of celepi (livestock-merchants) on their way to the capital (most likely changing their clothes for the latter’s garb). When they were close to Istanbul (at the village of Küçük Köy), Dumitraşco sent Ahmet as an emissary to his brother, but Mihai Racoviţă refused to receive him or indeed to get involved in any way, for fear of losing his head. Left helpless, Dumitraşco Racoviţă put himself in the hands of Ahmet Murtaza, who did what he could to conceal him, travelling again among the celepi in order to cross imperial territory without being caught. As they wandered through Dobrogea, their contemporary Ion Neculce writes, Dumitraşco Racoviţă took shelter in the home of a Turk in Silistra.120 It was not long, however, before he was denounced by the Turk, captured, and imprisoned. Murtaza, ‘his guide on all his journeys’, did not escape unpunished: ‘The prince brought the Turk Murtaza too and judged him in the Divan, with the Divan-Efendi present together with many Turkish merchants settled in Iași’, writes the chronicler. Having been ‘whipped on the soles of his feet’ as an example to others, Murtaza was imprisoned, and later, on the sultan’s orders, banished across the Danube.121

But Ahmet Murtaza’s story does not end here. Time passes, rulers change, people die, and some things are forgotten. So it was that he returned to Moldavia, and indeed to Iași, and renewed his trading and money-lending activities. In 1737, he was serving as vechil122 for two Muslim merchants, the brothers Ismail and Mahmud. In this capacity, he was sent by his employers to recover a debt from the grand vornic Ion Neculce. At this point, we discover that Neculce had had commercial relations with the brothers (‘the vornic having much business with my master, hagi Ismail, and with his brother Mahmud’), to whom he had offered the agricultural produce they were looking for: honey, butter, hides, large livestock. The deal had gone well, but the Russian–Ottoman war of 1711, followed by Neculce’s exile until 1720, had interrupted their relations for a time. Mahmud had recovered part of the debt by forcibly taking ‘some honey and some beehives’ from the vornic’s estates. He had then left for Anatolia, leaving Ahmet with the task of recovering part of the remaining debt. Years had passed and for a long time their paths had not crossed: Neculce had wandered in Russia, waiting for the sultan’s pardon, Ismail had left for Mecca, while his brother Mahmud had wandered in Anatolia. It was only on 18 May 1737 that they met again, each adding to their process of identification the experience accumulated on their travels through the empires. For Neculce this had meant Muscovy and then the office of grand vornic. Ismail had become a hajji, and Mahmud had acquired wealth and possibly some education, enough for him to call himself çelebi. Their understanding was authenticated with four signet seals in smoke and the Turkish signatures of the protagonists.123 From his signature, we know that Ahmet also called himself çelebi: probably the experience of exile had helped him to raise his financial and social status. This gave him the courage to produce the contracts recording his loans to Dumitraşco Racoviţă and to seek their repayment. In the meantime, Dumitraşco Racoviţă himself had died intestate, leaving an uncertain inheritance and three sons (Radu, Dumitraşco, and Ion), who dissociated themselves from their father’s past, including his debts.124 Radu Racoviţă declared that the four contracts recorded a ‘hereditary debt’ (‘datorie părințească’) which would have to be recovered from his mother and brothers, who had all settled in Wallachia. He had already paid heavily due to the ‘danger’ (‘primejdia’) into which his father’s actions had pushed him: ‘On the flight of his parents, the prince [Grigore Ghica] sent [men] to arrest him, he being in the country, in his house, and not being in any way associated with his father in his actions, and as he escaped from the hands of those sent, they took from him what they found in his house, everything, inside and out, to the value of 60 bags and more of money.’125 Radu Racoviță is here recalling the year 1727, when his father had made an alliance with Aadil Giray against Grigore Ghica, encouraging Tatar rebellions and incursions into Moldavia.126 Radu considered that there was no reason why he should also be held responsible, given that he was already separated from the ‘parental home’ (‘casa părintească’), married and an office-holder, while his mother, Ilinca Cantacuzino, and his brothers, Dumitraşco and Ion, had followed the ‘traitor’ to Budjak and then on his journeys for survival through the empire. The hatman’s treachery had brought repercussion on the whole Racoviţă family: their wealth had been confiscated, the hatman himself had died shortly after his release from imprisonment, his younger sons had taken refuge in Wallachia, and his wife Ilinca Cantacuzino had had to sell their houses and vineyards in Iași and Huși to Grigore Ghica in order to cover part of the damage caused by the Tatars in Moldavia. Ahmet Murtaza was not so much interested in the dramas of the Racoviţă family, however, as in recovering his debt, which was a considerable one. It was more than twenty years since the contract for the first loan had been signed, and the family had recovered both socially and economically. Radu Racoviţă had managed to obtain the prince’s pardon, to recover part of the confiscated goods, and to have a relatively distinguished career as an office-holder.127 The other two sons, Dumitraşco and Ion, had also managed to advance in administrative office and by marriage and inheritance they had amassed substantial wealth. In court, the Racoviţă brothers threw the debt onto one another, forcing Ahmet (and his companion Ahmet Chiosea, another creditor of the boyar Racoviţă) to go now to Iași, now to Bucharest, starting trials both in Moldavia and in Wallachia. In the end, Ahmet had to travel to Istanbul and request (probably buy) from Patriarch Neophytus a letter of anathema against the Racoviță family in order to establish the truth about their fortune.128

Through the intervention of the prince, Ioan Mavrocordat (1744–1747), Murtaza received in lieu of the money owed two estates, which Radu Racoviță, having risen to the office of grand vornic, later bought back from him, thus effectively repaying the debt. On 18 August 1747, Ahmet was identified as ‘Ahmet aga Buiucli, merchant from here in Iași’.129 It is not known what became of him after that date. Given the nature of the sources, it is far from surprising that we should lose track of him on his journeys between Iași, Silistra, and Istanbul. Moreover, Ahmet is such a common name that the researcher has to distinguish between various possible figures whose ‘tracks’ could match those of the Ottoman Murtaza.130

Ahmet, Mehmet, and Osman were the most common names associated with Turks in the Principalities. In the absence of other criteria of identification, the researcher’s ability to follow trails and construct working hypotheses is very much a matter of luck. For example, in the same period, another Turkish merchant named Ahmet was also travelling around Moldavia, but his fate was a tragic one. His story offers us precious information about the need for collaboration between Christians and Ottomans in a time when the two groups had common interests. In this case, fear of the sultan’s punishment led to a local reconciliation, and recourse to the imperial Divan was avoided. So what happened?

In the spring of 1745, there was a conflict between a group of Turks and a group of Moldavian peasants in the village of Ţigăneşti, in the region of Tecuci. The four Turks, one of whom was Ahmet Pirpiriul (Tk. pırpırı = weak, poor), were guarding the vineyards and casks of the surrounding inns. They thus made up a sort of patrol, which regularly went along the same roads, as the grand armaș Iordache Mavrodin131 wrote in his report to the princely administration:

Now on the day of Easter, here in Tecuci, in a village, namely Ţigănești, a tragedy has taken place, for the peasants being drunk, a Turk came, namely Ahmet Pirpiriu, who also in previous years had frequently passed by those villages around Ţigănești, guarding the vineyards and the melons.

Both parties were drunk, the document tells us. The meeting on a day of such importance for Orthodox Christians was sufficient to trigger the dispute (pricina). The peasants jumped on Ahmet and disarmed him: ‘They took his musket from his hand and his pistols and beat him’. Ahmet fled in terror, as did his three comrades. The conflict seemed to be over: the peasants returned to their drinking and the frightened Turks withdrew. However, Ahmet had the misfortune to bump into an old woman, with tragic consequences:

The Turk escaping from the hands of the peasants took flight, and in his flight he knocked into an old woman, and the old woman fell down and started to scream, and the peasants thinking that he was beating the old woman, some of the peasants rose and pursued the Turk. And when they pursued him to the banks of the Bârlad, the Turk jumped into the Bârlad for fear and was drowned.

His three comrades (the word used is ioldaș, from the Turkish yoldaș) looked for him and found his body in the waters of the River Bârlad. This was the starting point of a series of petty negotiations and complicities in the attempt to reach a solution that would avoid any repercussions. The grand armaș seems very scared: ‘I took all possible steps to assuage the dispute’ (‘m-am sălit în tot chipul pentru a potoli pricina’), he writes. First, he bought the silence of Ahmet’s three Turkish comrades: ‘And I settled with the Turks for them not to say that he drowned because of the peasants, but to say that he drowned being drunk’. Then he asked them to put down on paper a credible story that would throw all responsibility onto the dead man. The testimony is written by Ismail aga of Brăila and goes as follows:

I have given this letter of mine into the hands of the villagers of Ţigănești so that it may be known that I, Ismail, having a comrade, namely: Ahmet from Ruse, bachelor. That he getting drunk at a tavern, he proceeded towards his lodgings, in the village of Săsăștii, and wanting to cross the Bârlad by a footbridge he fell from the footbridge into the Bârlad and drowned. And I hearing from a man that he had seen him falling into the Bârlad and he had drowned, I asked the villagers of Ţigănești to jump, to search for him in the water, to get him out. And many people jumped and got him out of the water, and they buried him on the banks of the Bârlad.

This distortion of the truth was apparently not sufficient to avoid an imperial enquiry, which appears to have brought to light the local complicities of Muslim and non-Muslim subjects. Ismail aga diminishes the subject Ahmet as much as he can: ‘I testify upon my soul that that comrade of mine […] was completely poor, not a penny did he have, being a drunkard’. Ismail was backed up by his Turkish comrades, Ahmet, son of Boșnici of Brăila, Abdula[h] of Fiștok, Mustafa hagi beșleaga of Tecuci, and Ismail of Galați. The testimony is accompanied by five signatures, two of them simply handwritten and followed by signet seals in smoke, while the other three are confirmed with finger prints.132 The villagers of Ţigănești had to pay no less than 100 lei to obtain the testimony that absolved them of guilt. So said the grand armaș, sending the document to the prince of Moldavia, Ioan Mavrocordat, and asking him to obtain for them an ilam from the kadı of Brăila.133 Three weeks later, the kadı of Brăila, Molla Mehmed, issued the hoget (Tk. hüccet) requested by the pârcălab (governor) of Tecuci, Iordache Mavrodin, in which he reiterates the story of poor Ahmet the Turk, drowned in the waters of the Bârlad. The tale has acquired new details, however, both in the outlining of the character and in the shaping of the fiction. According to the hoget, Ahmed was a merchant from Ruse, who was in the region of Bârlad for purposes of trade, and fell ‘by chance’ into the river, which was bursting its banks due to heavy rain. His body, pulled onto the banks, was examined by his three comrades, who reported that: ‘he had no marks of any kind of a wound on his body and that he had simply drowned.’134 The hoget also provides elements for the identification of the Muslims who are listed differently in the document issued in Moldavia. The witnesses are: Abdullah beşe bin Mehmed, of Shumen; Ahmet aga bin Ali, of Brăila; Ismail beşe, of Ruse; Halil beşa bin Ibrahim; and Matarcı-zade Osman aga.135

The rearrangement of the story reminds me of Natalie Zemon Davis’s excellent study of Fiction in the Archives and the protagonists of the tales that she analyses.136 Most likely, the kadı of Brăila received a substantial gift together with the documents and the request to issue an ilam. The three texts use the same information, but shape it differently, providing or omitting details and changing the order of events according to the recipient.137 Ismail aga of Brăila shows an astonishing capacity for transforming the narration into a ‘credible fiction’ by manipulating language, reinterpreting facts, and reordering action. Of course, I am starting from the hypothesis that Ismail was the author of the testimony, and thus that he knew the Moldavian language and Cyrillic script. Even the kadı participates in the rewriting of the narration, enhancing the credibility of the fiction with a detail that is not to be found in the other accounts: the Bârlad overflowing. April is indeed a month characterized by heavy rain, which might indeed have resulted in the river bursting its banks.

*

In this chapter, I have tried to sketch some portraits of foreigners interested in building a home and a career in southeastern Europe. These figures belong to the ‘little people’, with none of the family, social, and political interconnections that underpinned the careers constructed by the Phanariots, by the high office-holders, or by the ayans of the Danube border. Writing about those who held power in the provincial areas of the Ottoman Empire, Ali Yaycioğlu shows the levers on which they relied in order to maintain their wealth and status and transmit them to the next generation. ‘A large household community’ depended on ‘dozens, even hundreds of servants; household officers, […] armed units, […] clients or allied groups of the central household from lesser families in the locality or broader regional setting.’138 Ștefan the Latin, Cernea Popovici, and Ahmet Murtaza occupied the position of clients in a wide trans-border network of which they tried to take advantage. The positions they occupied did not offer them the visibility of their patrons or the strength to impose themselves. All the same, they moved within quite well outlined groups in which ethnicity, confession, or social status could be made or unmade depending on political circumstances and above all on the solidarities of common interests. Their mobility from one region to another played its part not only in the circulation of information and objects, but also in the mediation of a certain type of religious and social acceptance. However, cohabitation also implies multiple tensions, often generated by confessional differences. People adapted to times and institutions, skilfully using them for day-to-day survival. ‘Protection’ is one of the best examples that permits us to observe adaptability to the political and social changes of a period.

1

For the churches founded by Ionaşcu the merchant and Neaga, see George Poboran, Istoria oraşului Slatina (Slatina: 1908).

2

Aksan, An Ottoman Statesman, xi–xii. See also Maurits H. van den Boogert, ‘Resurrecting Homo Ottomanicus: The Constants and Variables of Ottoman Identity’, Journal of Ottoman Studies, XLIV (2014), 9–20.

3

Mathieu Grenet, ‘“Grecs de nation”, sujets ottomans: experience diasporique et entre-deux identitaires, v. 1770–v. 1830’, in Jocelyne Dakhlia and Wolfgang Kaiser (eds.), Les musulmans dans l’histoire de l’Europe. T. 2. Passages et contacts en Méditerranée (Paris: 2013), 326.

4

Lidia Cotovanu, ‘“Qu’on prie pour moi là-bas et ici”. Donation religieuse et patriotism local dans le monde othodoxe (XVIe–XVIIe siècles)’, in Radu G. Păun (ed.), Histoire, mémoire et devotion. Regards croisés sur la construction des identities dans le monde orthodoxe aux époques byzantine et post-byzantyne (Seyssel: 2016), 207–255; Mihai-Cristian Amăriuţei, Lidia Cotovanu, Ovidiu-Victor Olar, ‘Phanariot Donations to the Mega Spileon Monastery (18th Century)’, Annales Universitatis Apulensis. Series Historica, XVIII/1 (2014), 219–250; Petronel Zahariuc, ‘“Au milieu de l’étranger”. Deux documents de donation pour le monastère de Lipnic de Bulgarie’, in Snezhana Rakova, Gheorghe Lazăr (eds.), Au Nord et au Sud du Danube. Dynamiques politiques, sociales et religieuses dans le passé (Brăila: 2018). 153–166.

5

Rogers Brubaker, ‘Au-delà de l’ «identité»’, Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales, no. 139, 4 (2001), 66; See also Roger Brubaker, Frederick Cooper, ‘Beyond “identity”’, Theory and Society, 29 (2000), 1–47.

6

Eric Dursteler, ‘Identity and Coexistence in the Eastern Mediterranean, ca. 1600’, New Perspectives on Turkey, 18 (1998), 114.

7

Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople, 13.

8

Elizabeth A. Zachariadou, ‘Co-Existence and Religion’, Archivum Ottomanicum 15 (1997), 119–129; Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (eds.), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire. The Functioning of a Plural Society (New York and London: 1982).

9

Zanou, Transnational Patriotism, 2; See also Peter Mackridge, Language and National Identity in Greece, 1766–1976 (Oxford: 2009).

10

Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople, 18.

11

Grenet, La fabrique communautaire, 219–220.

12

See, in this connection, Constanţa Vintilă-Ghiţulescu, ‘Legal Process and the Meanings of Justice (dreptate) in Eighteenth Century Romania’, in Crime, Histoire & Sociétés/ Crime, History & Societies, 23, 2 (2019), 5–27.

13

Valerie Kivelson, ‘Muscovite “Citizenship”: Rights without Freedom’, Journal of Modern History, 74 (2002), 468.

14

Brubaker, ‘Au-delà de l’ «identité»’, 66.

15

Ibid., 75.

16

Documente turceşti, II, 5–6, the ferman of 7/16 September 1775.

17

Ibid. 8–9, Ferman of 20/29 May 1776 commanding ‘that the old re’ayas of Wallachia, who have scattered, be picked up, by the intervention of the prince, from wherever they may be and in whoever’s villages and huts and farms they may be found and be brought back and settled there.’

18

For these episodes and the sultan’s repeated interventions, see Damian Panaitescu, ‘The Ottoman Empire and the Preservation of Wallachia’s Fiscal Potential (1730–1774)’, Revista Economică, 66/6 (2014), 56–76.

19

For economic change in the region, see Fikret Adanir, ‘Tradition and Rural Change in Southeastern Europe During Ottoman Rule’, in Daniel Chirot (ed.) The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe (Berkeley–Los Angeles: 1989), 131–176. For the border with Russia, see Ştefania Costache, ‘The Ottoman-Russian-Habsburg Information Networks and the Negotiation of Ottoman Affairs on the Danube (1800–1820s)’, Revista Istorică, XXVI, 3–4 (2015), 249–280.

20

Halil İnalcik, ‘The Emergence of Big Farms, Çiftliks: State, Landlords and Tenants’, in Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont, Paul Dumont (eds.), Contributions à l’histoire économique et sociale de l’Empire ottoman (Louvain: 1983), 105–126, Gilles Veinstein, ‘On the Çiftlik Debate’, in Çağlar Keyder, Faruk Tabak (eds.), Landholding and Commercial Agriculture in the Middle East (Albany, NY: 1991), 35–53.

21

Iolanda Ţighiliu, ‘Domeniul lui Constantin Brâncoveanu’, in Paul Cernovodeanu, Florin Constantiniu (eds.), Constantin Brâncoveanu (Bucharest: 1989), 123–138.

22

See the document of 17 June 1717 published in Nicolae Iorga (ed.), Studii şi documente cu privire la istoria românilor (Bucharest: 1907), vol. XIV, 331–333.

23

Rădulescu, Sfatul domnesc, 116, 119, 128, 295, 316, 321.

24

Documente turceşti, I, 261–262.

25

Ştefan the Latin probably belonged to one of the Catholic families who managed to escape from the town of Chiprovtsi, which was home to one of the largest Catholic communities in the Balkans, at the end of the seventeenth century. The town’s revolt against Ottoman rule in the autumn of 1688 ended in failure, leading to the flight of the population to other towns along the Danube, in Wallachia and the Banat. Those who did not manage to flee were captured, and the city was pillaged and destroyed. See Dzeni Ivanova, ‘Ottoman Subjects, Habsburg Allies: The Reaya of the Chiprovtsi Region (Northwestern Bulgaria) on the Front Line, 1688–1690’, in Colin Heywood, Ivan Parvev (eds.), The Treaties of Karlowitz (1699): Antecedents, Course and Consequences (Leiden: 2019), 110–130.

26

Documente turceşti, I, 269.

27

In this connection, see Rossitsa Gradeva, ‘War and Peace Along the Danube: Vidin at the End of the Seventeenth Century’, Oriente Moderno, 20, 81 (2001), 149–175.

28

Virginia Aksan, ‘Whose territory and whose peasants? Ottoman boundaries on the Danube in the 1760s’, in Frederick F. Anscombe (ed.), The Ottoman Balkans 1750–1830 (Princeton, NJ: 2006), 61–86.

29

For a mathematical analysis of the social networks created by the ayans, see Nilüfer Alkan Günay, ‘A Study of Social Network Analysis: The Âyan of Bursa in the Late 18th Century’, Journal of Gazi Academic, 5/10 (2012), 30–49.

30

Sophia Laiou, ‘Patronage Networks in the Aegean Sea, End of the 18th—Beginning of the 19th Century’, in Marinos Sariyannis (ed.), New Trends in Ottoman Studies (Rethymno: 2014), 413.

31

On the involvement of the janissaries in the exploitation of the peasants and estates across the Danube, see Aysel Yıldız, İrfan Kokdaş, ‘Peasantry in a Well-protected Domain: Wallachian Peasantry and Muslim Çiftlik/Kışlaks under the Ottoman Rule’, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 22, 1 (2018), 175–190.

32

Documente turceşti, I, 269.

33

Deena Sadat, ‘Rumeli Ayanlari: The Eighteenth Century’, Journal of Modern History, 44, 3 (1972), 350; Ali Yaycioğlu, Partners of the Empire: The Crisis of the Ottoman Order in the Age of Revolutions (Stanford: 2016), 149.

34

Documente turceşti, I, 266.

35

Documente turceşti, I, 269.

36

This customary practice was also present in Wallachia, under the name of ‘redemption of the throat’ (răscumpărarea gâtului), and involved the reconciliation of the parties by the payment of a sum of money to pay for the life of the person who had been killed.

37

Documente turceşti, I, 266–269. The certificate was reinforced on 19 November 1757 by the new kadı of Ruse, Abdulkerim.

38

See the ferman of 11/20 January 1758 by which Prince Constantin Mavrocordat is required to oblige the boyar Constantin Brâncoveanu to pay the dept or to send him before the kadı of Rahova. Documente turceşti, I, 268–270.

39

Manolache Brâncoveanu was grand cămăraş in 1762. See Rădulescu, op. cit., 660.

40

Documente turceşti, I, 276–277, 16 September 1762. Ten years later, Ahmed bin Halil was still waiting either to receive the post of beşleagă or to be given his ‘gift’ back (Ibid., I, 305–306, 18 May 1768–6 May 1769).

41

Documente turceşti, I, 306–307, 3/12 September 1768.

42

Aysel Yıldıx, İrfan Kokdaş, op. cit., 178–180.

43

Documente turceşti, I, 307–308, 11 November 1768.

44

Nándor Erik Kovács, ‘The Legal Status of the Danubian Principalities in the 17th Century as Reflected in the Şikayet Defteris’, Güney-Doğu Avrupa Araştırmaları Dergisi, 1 (2014), 11.

45

Baki Tezcan notes that religion was an important factor in social distinction throughout the eighteenth century, resulting in a ‘second-class status’ for non-Muslim subjects. Baki Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire. Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World (Cambridge: 2010), 235–237.

46

Simion Câlţia, Aşezări urbane sau rurale? Oraşele din Ţara Românească de la sfârşitul secoului al 17-lea la începutul secolului al 19-lea (Bucharest: 2011).

47

Do Paço, ‘Extranéité et lien social’, 126.

48

Valentin Al. Georgescu, Preemţiunea în istoria dreptului românesc. Dreptul de protimisis în Ţara Românească şi Moldova (Bucharest: 1965).

49

Documente Iaşi, VII, 27 October 1775, 183–184.

50

Simona Cerutti, Étrangers.

51

BAR, MS 614, f. 120r-126r; The testament has been published by Gheorghe Lazăr: ‘Un testament şi o poveste de viaţă: Cazul negustorului Cernea Popovici’, in Cristian Luca, Claudiu Neagoe, Marius Păduraru (eds.), Miscellanea, historica in honorem Professoris Marcel-Dumitru Ciucă septuagenarii (Brăila: 2013), 597–624.

52

BAR, MS 614, f. 125.

53

Cerutti, Étrangers, 21.

54

See the numerous documents issued by Constantin Mavrocordat in an attempt to regulate the conflicts generated by foreigners on the ‘margin’. To this end, the prince made sure of the help of the Ottoman officials in Moldavia, whose collaboration he requested. Condica lui Mavrocordat, ed. Cornel Istrate (Iaşi: 2008), III, 9–17.

55

Mariusz Wieław Kaczka, ‘The Gentry of the Polish–Ottoman Borderlands: The case of the Moldavian-Polish Family of Turkuł/Turculeţ’, Acta Poloniae Historica, 104 (2011), 149.

56

BAR, MS 614, f. 125.

57

As recent research has shown, Filibe was an important trade center in this period. See Andreas Lyberatos, ‘From Stratum Culture to National Culture: Integration Processes and National Resignification in 19th century Plovdiv’, Balkanologie. Revue d’études pluridisciplinaires, XIII, 1–2 (2011), 1–24; Andreas Lyberatos, “Men of the Sultan: The Beglik Sheep tax Collection System and the Rise of Bulgarian National Bourgeoisie in Nineteenth-Century Plovdiv”, Turkish Historical Review, 1 (2010), 55–85.

58

In this connection see also Mathieu Grenet, ‘“Grecs de nation”, sujets ottomans’, 316.

59

Kaiser, ‘Extranéités urbaines’, 78.

60

It was in this way that he gained possession of the Răteasca estate in Teleorman county. The owner had borrowed a large sum of money against the property deeds of the estate. As he was unable to pay back the loan with interest at the appointed time, he lost the estate to his creditor, a certain Cernea Popovici. BAR, MS 614, f. 121.

61

‘Serbs’ was often used also for Bulgarian colonists from Rumelia.

62

In 1823, Cernea Popovici provides a rather vague indication of the time: ‘the colonies that I have recently established on my estate of Găurici and my estate of Cerveniia’. See BAR, MS 614, f. 122).

63

On 14 November 1814, 114 families of Serbs from Transylvania who had settled in Dolj county in Wallachia complained to prince Caragea that his ispravnic (administrator) of foreigners was not taking account of their privileges, namely exemption from taxes for a period of eight months. ANIC, Administrative Vechi, ds. 2152d/1814, f. 128; the logofăt Iane brought several families of ungureni (Transylvanians) to his estate in Fântânile, Saac county, promising them eight months tax exemption. See ANIC, Fond Administrative Vechi, ds. 2198/1818, f. 33, 45v, 20 April 1818.

64

On the competition between empires for human resources, see Benjamin Landais, ‘Enregistrer l’ethnicité au XVIIIe siècle: L’identification des migrants ottomans à la frontière habsbourgeoise’, Revue d’Histoire Moderne & Contemporaine, 66/4 (2019), 89–120.

65

‘My house in Zimnicea made by me, in the form of a kula, with a two-room cottage surrounded by a yard and with a stable and a large barn’. BAR, MS 614, f. 121. On this architectural form, specific to the region, see Maurice Cerasi, ‘The Formation of Ottoman House Type: A Comparative Study in Interaction with Neighboring Culture’, Muqarnas, 15 (1998), 116–156; Tchavdar Marinov, ‘The “Balkan House”: Interpretations and Symbolic Appropriations of the Ottoman-Era Vernacular Architecture in the Balkans’, in Roumen Daskalov, Tchavdar Marinov, Diana Mischkiva and Alexander Vezenkov (eds.), Entangled Histories of the Balkans, vol. 4. Concepts, Approaches and (Self-) Representations (Leiden: 2017), 440–593.

66

Rossitsa Gradeva, ‘Osman Pazvantoğlu of Vidin: Between Old and New’, Interdisciplinary Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (2005), 115–161; Sophia Laiou, ‘Entre les insurgés reaya et les indisciplinés ayan: la révolution grecque et la réaction de l’Etat ottoman’, in Marios Hadjianastasis (ed.), Frontiers of the Ottoman Imagination. Studies in Honour of Rhoads Murphey (Leiden: 2015), 213–228; Andrei Oţetea, Tudor Vladimirescu şi revoluţia de la 1821 (Bucharest: 1971).

67

BAR, MS 614, f. 122–123.

68

In Popovici’s testament, Trăsnea is recalled with much affection: ‘my chosen, most good and excellent heir’, ‘a wise person, honest and God-fearing’, to whom he was bound by a long friendship. BAR, MS 614, ff. 120r-v.

69

BAR, MS 614, f. 142v, 24 April 1826.

70

Cerutti, Étrangers, 35. Sahlins, Unnaturally French.

71

Îndreptarea Legii (1652) (Bucharest: 1962), 274–278. Valentin Al. Georgescu, Bizanţul şi instituţiile româneşti până la mijlocul secolului al XVIII-lea (Bucharest: 1980), 228.

72

Philliou, Biography of an Empire, 15–16.

73

Victor Roudometof, ‘From Rum Millet to Greek Nation: Enlightenment, Secularization, and National Identity in Ottoman Balkan Society, 1453–1821’, Journal of Modern Greek Studies 16 (1998), 14.

74

Lazăr, Les marchands, 233–293.

75

On the system of patronage in the Ottoman Empire, see Palmira Brummett, ‘Placing the Ottomans in the Mediterranean World: The Question of Notables and Households’, Journal of Ottoman Studies, XXXVI (2010), 75–91; Elena Frangakis-Syrett, ‘Networks of Friendship, Networks of Kinship: Eighteenth-Century Levant Merchants’, Eurasian Studies, 1, 2 (2002), 184–205; Metin Ibrahim Kunt, ‘Ethnic Regional (Cins) Solidarity in the Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Establishment’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 5, 3 (1974), 233–239.

76

Laiou shows that in the Ottoman world, ‘the patronage system was closely connected with the “household” organization,’ with kinship relations being dominant. Laiou, ‘Patronage Networks in the Aegean Sea’, 414.

77

Olga Katsiardi-Hering, ‘Christian and Jewish Ottoman Subjects: Family, Inheritance and Commercial Networks between East and West (17th–18th C.)’, in Simonetta Cavaciocchi (ed.), The Economic Role of the Family in the European Economy from the 13th to the 18th Centuries (Florence: 2009), 413.

78

Ştefan Zeletin, Burghezia română. Originile şi rolul ei istoric [1925] (Bucharest: 1997); Alexandru-Florin Platon, Geneza burgheziei în Principatele Române (a doua jumătate a secolului al XVIII-lea—prima jumătate a secolului al XIX-lea). Preliminariile unei istorii (Iaşi: 1997); Petronel Zahariuc, ‘Sugestii genealogice pentru o cercetare a începuturilor burgheziei române’, Revista de Istorie Socială, IV–VII (2005), 26–36.

79

Edhem Eldem, ‘(A Quest for) the Bourgeoisie of Istanbul: Identities, roles and conflicts’, in Ulrike Freitag, Nora Lafi (eds.), Urban Governance Under the Ottomans Between Cosmopolitanism and Conflict (London: 2014), 159–186; Edhem Eldem, ‘Un bourgeois d’Istanbul au milieu du XIXe siècle: Le livre de raison de Mehmed Cemal Bey, 1855–1864’, in Nathalie Clayer, Erdal Kaynar (eds.), Penser, agir et vivre dans l’Empire ottoman et en Turquie: Etudes réunies pour François Georgeon (Paris, Leuwen: 2013), 372–406; Fatma Müge Göçek, Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire: Ottoman Westernization and Social Change (Oxford, New York: 1996).

80

See in this connection the efforts of Prince Ioan Callimachi to support the settlement of Protestant German craftsmen at Filipeni, around a felt manufactory (1 July 1759). The privileges of these craftsmen, which included the right to freely practice their faith, were reinforced by Grigore Callimachi, only for Grigore Ghica III to consider that there would be better conditions for the development of the manufactory at Chiperești, which he bought, and to transport the German craftsmen to the new manufactory, which was named Filipenii Noi (23 August 1766). See Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu, and Petronel Zahariuc, Documente privitoare la începuturile coloniei protestante din Moldova, in Ovidiu Cristea, Petronel Zahariuc, and Gheorghe Lazăr (eds.), Aut viam inveniam aut faciam. In honorem Ştefan Andreescu (Iaşi: 2012), 451–466.

81

BAR, Fond Documente Istorice, CCCC/23. Before the arrival of the foreign craftsmen, Pietro Mazzi received thirty men (classed as liude: tax-paying subjects) who helped him in the glass manufactory and were given exemption from tax. Vezi BAR, Fond Documente Istorice, III/17, 4 September 1773.

82

‘[…] jouissait d’une si grande faveur à Bukarest que sa maison était très fréquentée par des bojars, qu’il donnait de grandes assemblées deux fois par semaine, qu’il se mêlait de protections et d’intrigues.’ See HHStA, Türkei, II/77, f. 415–419, 10 September 1782, Herbert Rathkeal to Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz.

83

On the official mission of the first consuls, Russian and Austrian, see Hurmuzaki, Documente, VII, 125, 380, 390–391, 405; XIX/1, 22, 25, 111–112, 116, 155–162, 187.

84

Mărieş, Supuşii străini, 37.

85

Ioan C. Filitti, ‘România faţă de capitulaţiile Turciei’, Analele Academiei Române. Memoriile Secţiunii Istorice, t. XXXVIII (1915–1916), 128–135.

86

In the Ottoman Empire, Christian subjects who were under the protection of the European powers enjoyed commercial privileges and tax reductions. In this connection, see Bernard Lewis, ‘Berātlı’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, (Leiden: 1990–1991), vol. I, 1171; van den Boogert, The Capitulations, 63–72.

87

See the example of the first Prussian consul in Bucharest, Ernest Frederic König, who had as his interpreters the Greeks Frangopulo and Sandu Panaiotti (ANIC, Microfilme RDG, Rola 46, c. 72–74, 30 November 1784, Iaşi and c. 150–151, 6 July 1788).

88

Indeed, the Porte opposed the appointments of the first consuls precisely because of their status as Ottoman subjects, as was the case of Ignatius Stefan Raicevich and Constantin Stamati. See Part I, chapter 1.

89

V.A. Urechia, ‘Justiţia sub Ioan Caragea’, Analele Academiei Române. Memoriile Secţiei Istorice, 2d ser., t. XX (1897–1898), 288–291.

90

Ibid.

91

BAR, MS 357, f. 51–55v, 28 May 1814. The fiscal units (lude) referred to were groupings of one or more families, treated together for tax calculation purposes.

92

BAR, MS 357, f. 64–67, 69–70, 70v–72, 1 August 1814.

93

ANIC, Fond Adminstrative Vechi, ds. 2152c/1814, f. 116, 8 September 1814.

94

See the examples mentioned in the petitions addressed to the princely chancellery and the solutions proposed, all in September 1814: ANIC, Fond Administrative Vechi, ds. 2373/1812, f. 16, 19, 26–31v; Fond Administrative Vechi, ds. 2152c/1814, f. 3, 24v, 27, 30, 33–39v.

95

Fond Administrative Vechi, ds. 2152c/1814, f. 3, 24v, 27, 30, 33–39v.

96

ANIC, Fond Administrative Vechi, ds. 2152c/1814, f. 208.

97

ANIC, Fond Administrative Vechi, ds. 2204/1818, f. 79, 94v, 22 June 1818.

98

Among other examples, see the document of 30 June 1818 where it is noted that many taxpayers in Ilfov and Dâmboviţa counties ‘have become Kaiserly and Kingly sudiți, and by virtue of the patents they have, this sort of people can no longer pay tax.’ ANIC, Fond Administrative Vechi, ds. 2198/1818, f. 80, 95v, 129, 142v.

99

Ignatius Mouradgea d’Ohsson, Tableau general de l’Empire ottoman, III/2 (Paris: 1820), 448.

100

‘For some time now, many of the young men of the guilds, namely exempted peasants, servants, priests, deacons, even sons of taxpayers and taxpayers themselves, finding the occasion, have become sudiți, declaring themselves foreign, and they are born and raised here, good inhabitants of this county,’ writes Constantin Caragea, the ispravnic of Muşcel, on 11 June 1818, presenting his conflict with the leader of the sudiți in the town of Câmpulung, who had taken under his protective wing all those who had declared themselves to be sudiți. ANIC, Fond Administrative Vechi, ds. 2198/1818, f. 64, 79v.

101

Note the similarity with the assimilation of foreigners who settled in the Ottoman Empire and proceeded to buy properties and cultivate them. See van den Boogert, Capitulations, 30–31.

102

Muzeul Judeţean de Istorie şi Arheologie, Prahova, Mapa 3/ II, Ţara Românească, no. 1650, doc. 32, II, file 131, 27 July 1819.

103

See the complaint addressed by Ioan Sandu Sturza to the sultan, in which he alleges that ‘the sudiți, wrongfully protected by the consulates, live as they please’ Nicolae Iorga, ‘Plângerea lui Ioan Sandu Sturza Vodă împotriva sudiţilor din Moldova’, Analele Academiei Române. Memoriile Secţiunii Istorice, t. XXXV (1912–1913), 4–6.

104

‘Quelques sujets autrichiens, trouvés le soir dans la rue, ont été, il y a quelques jours battus par la Garde Moldave. Deux jours après, la Garde Moldave a été battue par de sujets autrichiens qu’elle avait attaqués sans raisons lorsqu’ils revenaient de leur travail. La tranquillité est maintenant tout à fait rétablie. Malgré la cessation des rapports de M. l’Agent d’Autriche avec les autorités locales, le département des affaires étrangères reçoit les sujets Autrichiens, Russe et Anglais qui se présentent, et juge leurs procès avec les sujets de la principauté.’ Hurmuzachi, Documente, XVII, 39, 2/13 December 1824, Iaşi.

105

I have written elsewhere about the devaluing of boyar ranks by princes selling them in order to increase their income. The number of boyars grew so much that it gave rise to the saying ‘pitarii ca măgarii’ (‘pitars as [common as] donkeys). See Constanţa Vintilă-Ghiţulescu, Evgheniţi, ciocoi, mojici. Despre obrazele primei modernităţi româneşti (1750–1860) (Bucharest: 2013).

106

ANIC, Vornicia Treburilor Dinlăuntru, ds. 73/133. F. 5–7, 16 February 1834.

107

Van den Boogert shows that in the eighteenth century, protection became ‘a commodity’. Van der Boogert, The Capitulations, 76.

108

Ibid.

109

Mărieş, Supuşii străini, 132. Some of the consuls in Iaşi and Bucharest made considerable fortunes for themselves from the sale of such patents. In his report, Antoine-François Andréossy, ambassador of France to Istanbul, writes that the wealth of the Russian consul in Bucharest might be as much as 300,000 piastres. Hurmuzaki, Documente, I2, 739, 4 January 1813, Pera. On the price of the patents offered by ambassadors to their protégés in the Ottoman Empire, see also van den Boogert, The Capitulations, 80–84.

110

See the case of Haralambie, the owner of a club (‘clup’) in Bucharest and a British subject, who established his own rules with no regard for the local urban regulations. ANIC, Departamentul Spătăriei, ds. 829/1815, 1 December 1815.

111

For Baron Louis Kreuchely-Schwerdtberg, consul in Bucharest, see ANIC, Microfilme RDG, Rola 46, c. 352–356, 26 June 1830, Berlin.

112

An overseer, sometime empowered to represent his employer in litigation (from the Turkish vekil).

113

ANIC, Departamentul Spătăriei, ds. 1267/1827, f.1r-4v, 3 May 1827, 16 June 1827, 10 August 1827, 30 September 1827.

114

ANIC, Microfilme RDG, Rola 46, c. 394–397, 17 June 1829, Berlin; c. 407–409, 22 December 1830, The report of Consul Kreuchely.

115

See also Gheorghe Lazăr, ‘Marchands Ottomans en Valachie (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles)’, in Faruk Bilici, Ionel Cândea, Anca Popescu (eds.), Enjeux Politiques, Economiques et Militaires en Mer Noire (XIVe–XIXe siècles). Etudes à la Mémoire de Mihai Guboglu (Brăila: 2007), 291–314.

116

See the ferman of Sultan Mustafa III commanding that essential products be sold to Ottoman merchants and not ‘enemy’ merchants. Documente turceşti, vol. I, 21/30 June 1774, 278–279.

117

On this subject, see also Michał Wasiucionek, ‘Ethnic Solidarity in the Wider Ottoman Empire Revisited: “cins” and Local Political Elites in 17th Century Moldavia and Wallachia’, in Marinos Sariyannis (ed.), New Trends in Ottoman Studies (Rethymno: 2014), 232–245.

118

BAR, Fond Documente Istorice, CLXI/132. See also Mihai Racoviţă-Cehan, Familia Racoviţă-Cehan. Fişe nominale şi fotografii (Bucharest: 1942), 32.

119

Dumitraşco Racoviţă had alongside him his son-in-law, Iordache Costache. For the conspiracy of the two and the capture of Dumitraşco Racoviţă see Grigore Ghica’s letter to Chrysanthos Notaras, patriarch of Jerusalem. As I have shown in the previous chapter, family solidarities were set in motion when a member was in danger. On this occasion, Nicolae Mavrocordat, not only Dumitraşco’s cousin but also prince of Wallachia, wrote to Patriarch Notaras, an important figure respected by all political factions, seeking his assistance. The patriarch’s intervention led to the boyar’s being pardoned. Both letters are published in Hurmuzaki, Documente, XIV/2, 971–972, 19 May 1728.

120

Neculce, Letopiseţul Ţării Moldovei, 704.

121

Cronica Ghiculeştilor, 269, 283, 287.

122

Vechil, from Turkish vekil, administrater of an estate or household; a sort of lawyer who had the right to represent his master’s in justice.

123

BAR, Fond Documente Istorice, CXX/114.

124

Documente Iaşi, V, 300–303, <1746 June 28, Iaşi>.

125

Documente Iaşi, V, 300–303, <1746 June 28, Iaşi>.

126

Named Adel Gherei sultan in the document. He is Aadal Giray, kalga of the khan Mengi II Giray. On his rebellion see Gilles Veinstein, ‘Les tatars de Crimée et la seconde election de Stanislas Leszczynski’, Cahiers du monde russe et sovietique, 11 (1), 1970, 24–92.

127

See the document of 12 August 1747 by which Grigore Ghica grants to Radu Racoviţă, grand vornic of Ţara de Sus (the ‘Upper Land’) the houses and vineyards in Iaşi and Huşi that had been confiscated from his father. Documente Iaşi, V, 321–322.

128

Documente Iaşi, V, 304–305, 18 July 1746.

129

Documente Iaşi, V, 323–324.

130

Carlo Ginzburg and Carlo Poni, ’La micro-histoire’, Le débat, n° 17, 1981, 133–136.

131

Iordache Mavrodi(n) arrived in Moldavia together with Ianachi Mavrocordat (1743–1747), and then served the latter’s brother, Constantin Mavrocordat. See Cronica Ghiculeştilor, 585. In 1755, Iordache Mavrodi(n) is later recorded as grand paharnic. Documente Iaşi, V, 613–614, 12 October 1755.

132

BAR, Fond Documente Istorice, CCLXXX/79, 15 April 1745.

133

BAR, Fond Documente Istorice, CCLXXX/80, 21 April 1745.

134

Documente turceşti, I, 252–253, 12 May 1745.

135

Documente turceşti, I, 252–253, 12 May 1745.

136

Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Stanford, CA: 1987).

137

Davis, Fiction, 3.

138

Yaycioğlu, Provincial Power-Holders, 441.

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Changing Subjects, Moving Objects

Status, Mobility, and Social Transformation in Southeastern Europe, 1700–1850

Series:  Balkan Studies Library, Volume: 31