TRACES OF AMERICAN INFLUENCE IN THE ROMANIAN ABOLITIONIST MOVEMENT
TRACES OF AMERICAN INFLUENCE IN THE ROMANIAN ABOLITIONIST MOVEMENT

Summary/Abstract: The Romanian abolitionist movement was in close connection with the political reforms that took place in the first half of the 19th century in Moldavia and Wallachia, being strongly influenced by the wind of progress and modernization coming from the West. The present paper aims at offering a brief presentation of the American presence in Romanian literature and public sphere of the mid-19th century and to emphasize the elements that played an important role in the adoption of the final emancipation laws. The young intellectual generation of the 1848 Revolution saw the resemblances that could be traced between the slavery institutions from the United States and the Romanian Principalities as well as between the general attitude of supremacy of the dominant population towards the enslaved minority groups and used them to promote abolitionist feelings in the Principalities. The fact that the first American novel to be translated in Romanian was the antislavery manifestation “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and its enormous popularity in the Romanian space come to confirm the interest of the Romanian people in the information about the modern American society in those difficult times of change and political turmoil.

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