Towns between Empires
Good Governance and “Police” in Case Studies from Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia, 1500s–1800s
9789633869000
266 pages
Amsterdam University Press
Overview
The volume contains contributions regarding urban administration and governance in the historical regions that are now in Romania, and that fall under the early modern concept of good governance. Chapters give insight into the concepts and solutions applied by urban governments to political, social and economic issues that were under their care and control. The authors approach various aspects of this topic: town councils as political and economic elites of early modern towns, urban political systems as models of early modern ideas of administration, relations between towns and central authorities (the Prince), healthcare as good governance.
The chapters in the volume capture the widest possible variety of political and administrative systems in the region. Transylvanian towns were structured and governed similarly to other small Central European urban centers, however significant diversity can be discerned following the Reformation. Moldavian and Wallachian towns in the 18th and 19th century are little known to international scholarship, and the chapters in this volume will fill this gap.
Author Bio
Mária Pakucs-Willcocks (maria.pakucs@iini.ro) is a senior researcher with the “Nicolae Iorga” Institute of History and a research fellow of the New Europe College in Bucharest. Her research has focused on trade and merchants between Transylvania and the Ottoman Empire in the early modern period, and on urban history and political discourse. Most recent publications include “Trade Routes and Commercial Networks in Early Modern South-Eastern Europe in the Light of Transylvanian Sources,” in Cities and Economy in Europe. Markets and Trade on the Margins from the Middle Ages to the Present, ed. Katalin Szende et al. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2024), 266-284 and the edition of the customs accounts of Sibiu, Zwanzigstrechungen aus dem Archiv der Stadt Hermannstadt (1536-1623) (Sibiu: Honterus, 2023).
Julia Derzsi is a senior research fellow at the Romanian Academy, the Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities Sibiu. Her main research interests are institutional, economic and urban history in premodern Transylvanian, particulary Saxon towns. Her previous publications include Delict .i pedeaps.: Justi.ie penal. în ora.ele s.se.ti din Transilvania în secolul al XVI-lea [Crime and punishment: The functioning of criminal jurisdiction in the Transylvanian Saxon towns in the 16th century] (Cluj-Napoca: Egyetemi M.hely Kiadó, 2022).
