Demographic and Ethnic Aspects in the View of the Foreigners that Travelled to the Harbours of the Danube (1801-1853)
Demographic and Ethnic Aspects in the View of the Foreigners that Travelled to the Harbours of the Danube (1801-1853)

Summary/Abstract: The testimonies of foreign travellers hold an important place for the researcher who means to reconstitute the history of the Romanian Principalities. The offered image is that of a society which oscillates between tradition and novelty, between medievalism and modernity, both in terms of ideas and morals. Their testimonies regarding the Romanian territory, focused especially on the first decades of the 19th century contain elements which analyse the historical, geographical and economic environment. A large part of the visitors of the Romanian territory come into contact with the realities of the Principalities through the intermediary of the Danubian towns, the Danube offering the most favourable way of transport for people and commodities, while land transport was ensured only by diligences, extremely hard and depending on the weather. The demographical and ethnic aspects specific to Danubian towns in the first half of the 19th century appeared in the narrations of some foreign travellers who had passed through the Romanian space. Their descriptions had been influenced by their profession, by certain personal hobbies, by the purposes that had driven them to cross the Principalities. Population growth did not bring ethnic homogenisation, on the contrary, many foreigners settled here, creating significant communities of Greeks, Jews, Bulgarians, Armenians, Italians, Habsburg vassals, English, etc. The contacts between these ethnic groups influenced the daily life of these harbour towns.

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