Sărăcia ș i Contrastele Societăţii Româneşti în Prima Parte a Secolului Al XIX-lea în Viziunea Călătorilor Străini
Poverty and the Contrast of Romanian Society in the First Half of Nineteen Century in Foreign Traveler’s Perspective

Summary/Abstract: This article tries to show a different perspective of day-to-day life of a part of society in Walachia and Moldova about Romanian historiography is not talking too much. In fact, those who are in a stance of poverty are leaving almost no written sources of which historians can analyze and discover those people’s difficulties, lifestyle or needs. Therefore, we looked for a source in which we can rely on in our mission of discovering what is causing poverty in the first half of nineteen century in Romanian Principalities. So, foreign travelers provided us the information we need to rebuild a lost world in which misery, war, bad harvests, thieves, famines, illnesses and other events that can provoke a generalized stance of poverty to a part of the society. They review from their grid of values and from their life or travel experiences all the situations and people that they encounter in the time of their journey through Principalities. Either good or bad, impressions were written down in journals and often, travelers seem to share same views about those places. Trusty and in most of the times objective, foreign travelers are maybe the best critics of Romanians life from which historians can see how was everyday life in those unstable periods of time.

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