Young Romanians in Paris (1830–1848): Between French Intellectuals and East European Political Exiles

• In Event: Between Integration and Isolation: Eastern European Expatriates East and West (1830-1939)

Abstract

The paper will explore the intellectual and ideological formation of younger Wallachian and Moldavian boyars, who came to Paris to complete their education during the 1830s and the 1840s. The paper will demonstrate that contacts with the leading French intellectuals and the Polish revolutionary emigres, paramount though they were, resulted in quite different ideological orientations and political attitudes among the young Romanians. As a result, the Parisian experience shaped not only the Romanian revolutionaries of 1848, but also some life-long critics of the emergent national-liberal mainstream of Romanian politics.

Author

• Victor Taki, Concordia U (Canada)