“Curls and Forelocks”: Romanian Women’s Emancipation in Consumption and Fashion, 1780–1850

Abstract

The history of the Romanian principalities in the 18th and early 19th centuries is fascinating in respect to the relationship between consumption, luxury, and the circulation of ideas. Under Ottoman rule, the regime in the Romanian principalities restricted travel to the rest of Europe. The establishment of the Phanariot regime, with rulers directly appointed by the sultan and selected from among the Greek elite of Phanar, noticeably limited access to Vienna, Paris, Geneva and even St. Petersburg for a certain part of the population. After 1711/1716, the boyars avoided travelling to that part of Europe for fear that they would be seen as traitors and that they and their families would incur the sultan's wrath.Whereas in 1719 a boyar could still hope that his sons might gain an education by attending the schools of Vienna and, above all, by learning the foreign languages that were part of assimilating a culture of governance, by the mid-18th century, fear of Ottoman reprisals ruled out foreign travel.1 When prince Constantin Mavrocordatos (1735-1741) sent fourteen young boyars to be educated in Venice, he was forced to recall them at the end of their third year. News of this "educative escapade" had reached the sultan's ears, albeit in a somewhat truncated form: it was said that the prince had made use of the young men in order to send his fortune to Venice. It was an act that was to result in his deposition.2 After this experience, the boyars ceased to venture any farther than Brașov or Sibiu, but even then, only to sit out the period of military occupation in exile.