This project explores the pathways of publications exchanges developed by the Romanian intellectuals and learned societies in order to have their writings disseminated in Europe (1856-1914/1916). I analyse the transnational commercial networks developed by publishers and booksellers. Institutional policies are also of interest. The main expected result is a better understanding of the position of the Romanian culture and intellectual life within the European frameworks.

A full-length study is available here.

Bogdan Popa and Alex Drace-Francis propose to pursue a research agenda which was pioneered by Alexandru Lapedatu in an article of 1934. In this insufficiently-known study, A. Lapedatu published some accounts of Scottish missionaries in the Romanian Principalities in the 1830s, Andrew Bonar and Robert McCheyne. These accounts are exceptionally valuable for their insight into relations between Romanian and Jewish communities in this period, yet have been only intermittently valorised by recent historiography.

Drace-Francis and Popa will use Lapedatu’s study as a starting point for a reconsideration of intercultural (religious, ethnic, social) interrelations in 19^th-century Romania, particularly in the urban environment. Bucharest and Iaşi were very cosmopolitan cities in this period, and especially after 1830 the place was opening up to foreign visitors both from Western Europe, Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The dynamics of interactions between the different groups is an interesting and valuable theme for our times. This would help set Lapedatu’s work into a broader context and maintain its relevance.