Women in the Ottoman Balkans: Gender, Culture and History
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like Barbu Ştirbei himself (Dumitrana’s son) at the spa in Karlsbad, where his
Pasha-like appearance did not fail to attract the attention of the central and
western European residents and travellers.56 However, the orders of new fashion
accessories such as stockings, gloves, and parasols introduced an alien element
that was surreptitiously revolutionizing sartorial preferences and trends, and was
to turn Romania by the 1840 into Europe’s—and gradually mainly France’s—
satellite in fashion, amenities, politics, ideologies, and mentalities.
As I have already suggested, the vision of a civilized, “enlightened” Europe to
which the Principalities belonged de jure by virtue of their Latin origins and socio-
cultural aspirations was already in place as a topos in the period’s writings. Before
it became a political slogan, however, it emerged as an increasingly obsessive
keyword for the élite’s consumption patterns and lifestyles. The diplomat and
polymath Ienăchiţă Văcărescu, whose Oriental furs and heavy brocades, like
Ştirbei’s, had been admired by the Viennese ladies on a diplomatic mission in
1786, was rich and fashion-conscious enough to be lured into the race for West-
European luxuries that engulfed the Greek-Romanian upper classes in the 1780s
and 1790s. A document of 1773 from the Văcărescu family archives appears to be
a list of silver and china tableware ordered from abroad: “Two large serving dishes
( tipsii, Turkish: tepsi) for meats, with handles as is customary in Europe, without
feet or lids,” reads one of the entries; “twelve pairs of silver knives and forks, as
well as twelve spoons; the forks should be of the English type, that is with three
prongs,” “one sugar bowl, with a tong such as the Europeans use for picking
up the sugar to place it in the cups,” “twelve Viennese china deep dishes, for
serving soup.” And the finishing touches: “The silverware should be of moderate
weight, not too heavy and not too light, but as is customary nowadays among the
nobles of Europe,” insisted the demanding customer, possibly the great boyar
Ienăchiţă himself.57 There is a considerable amount of nouveau-riche vulgarity
in this, and yet Văcărescu the elder, polyglot author of a scholarly history of the
Ottomans and Romania’s first lyrical poet, was no mere bourgeois upstart intent
on conspicuous consumption and display. Both he and his sons were distinguished
writers, and their 170-volume library, the catalogue of which has survived, was
a very impressive collection of classical and contemporary works, ranging from
Homer to Fontenelle ( Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes, Lyon, 1810) and
unnamed works by Mme de Genlis.58 And yet even this politically savvy and
literate family was engulfed in the hard-to-resist Europeanizing trend to which
women and their fashion choices were the earliest contributors.
Conclusion
Fragmentary though they may be, the narrative and documentary sources presented
here point to several interlocking and inter-dependent strands of cultural influence
and choice which transformed to a large extent the contents of the wardrobes,
libraries, and larders of late eighteenth-century Romanian élites. While on the
surface, sartorial and culinary choices are a sheer competitive display of wealth
Jianu, Women, Fashion, and europeanization
221
and status, I would argue that in less obvious ways, the newly adopted trends
in lifestyle helped the members of the boyar élites and rich merchant class and
professionals re-define themselves in terms of a French-dominated “European”
cultural, political, and secular identity as opposed to the traditional, Byzantine-
Oriental, Orthodox one. This was not a straightforward process, as native
doctrines of self-sufficiency and westernizing programmes competed with each
other throughout the nineteenth century, a competition which gained momentum
towards the end of the century. The convoluted and paradoxical nature of the
Romanian Europeanizing process was compounded by the fact that both the
Phanariot circles around the princes and the Russian occupying armies could
see themselves as the civilizers of Balkan “barbarians.” Adding to the issue’s
complexity was the fact that the “barbarians” themselves believed that they were
“Latin” Europeans whose natural progress towards civilization had been deflected
artificially by “Asian” Ottoman-Phanariot domination—and increasingly, too,
by the politically conservative Russian protectorate. Placed between a declining
Ottoman Empire, a competitive Austria, and a growing czarist empire, the élites
of Wallachia and Moldavia chose to look westwards, and increasingly towards
France as the source of a new political culture meant to redeem a country which,
in the fatalistic words of a seventeenth-century chronicler, was located “on the
pathway of all evils.”
Compared to their Ottoman counterparts, Romanian women were not required
to wear the veil and were less rigorously restricted to homes and court harems.
This comparative freedom allowed them to make lifestyle choices earlier than,
and sometimes on behalf of, their spouses. Whether by accident or design, they
appear to have placed themselves on the frontline of the new cultural preferences.
Their eagerness, in the early nineteenth century, to abandon the picture postcard
prettiness of, say, Morritt’s “Turkish lady” tableau anticipated the enthusiasm with
which their western-educated sons would fight against Ottoman suzerainty and
Russian control from 1848 onwards. While men were more constrained in their
sartorial choices by the demands of court office and the emblems of Phanariot
hierarchies, women took the liberty to reject such codes and opt instead for
European fashions, in accordance with what they must have felt was the general
drift of forthcoming political change.
Elite-driven social and cultural change in nineteenth-century Romania arguably
led, as Alecu Russo suggested at the time, to the gradual erosion of visible class
markers such as dress, allowing for the emergence of a more individualistic,
“bourgeois” mentality where status would be based on purchasing power, taste,
and education rather than simply on class. The choices the élites made in the
period from the 1780s to the 1850s changed the culture of appearances, but also
created a new understanding of the power of culture in shaping identities and,
ultimately, politics.
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Women in the ottoman Balkans
Notes
1. Variants of this essay were presented as papers at research seminars at the
University of York (UK), the School of Slavonic and East-European Studies
(University College, London), and the Warburg Institute (London). I am
grateful to Dr. Jane Rendall, Dr. Geoff Cubitt (my doctoral supervisors at the
University of York, UK), Dr. Wendy Bracewell, and Dr. Alex Drace-Francis
(University of Liverpool, UK) for their judicious comments and support. Dr.
Adrian-Silvan Ionescu and Dr. Anca Popescu (“N. Iorga” Historical Research
Institute, Bucharest) were generous in sharing their expertise in fashion
history and Ottoman stu
dies, respectively. Dr. Lia Chisacof (The Institute
for Southeast European Studies, Bucharest) helped with the transliteration of
Greek names. The present text is a re-written version of a chapter from my
unpublished Ph.D. thesis Women and Society in the Romanian Principalities,
1750-1850 (University of York, UK, 2003). It has greatly benefited from
insightful comments from the editors of the present volume, Prof. Amila
Buturović and Dr. İrvin C. Schick.
2. The unifying name “Romania” for the two Romanian/Danubian Principalities
is an accepted anachronism for the period before 1848.
3. Two short studies addressing this issue specifically are Panaitescu 1947 and
more recently Maxim 1993.
4. For the dar-al-‘ahd system as a halfway house into the Islamic world, see
Goffman 2002: 46. For a Romanian perspective on Ottoman domination based
largely on Ottoman sources and legal terminology, see Panaite 2000.
5. Şevket Pamuk has argued that this type of arrangement—reached in places
like East Anatolia, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, the Romanian Principalities, and the
Maghrib—was a pragmatic way for the Ottomans to ensure the loyalty of
local elites, while causing minimal economic disruption and popular unrest.
Cf. Pamuk 2004: 225-47.
6. Greek Phanariot proper names of ruling dynasties in the Principalities appear
here in their Romanianised forms, as used in the documents of the period.
7. Mazower 2000: 55.
8. Georgescu 1987.
9. Ibid., 80–81.
10. Holban et al. 1968–2001.
11. Painters
of Phanariot and Romanian ethnic national dress include itinerant
artists such as Luigi Mayer (active 1790s and early 1800s), Louis Dupré (1789–
1837), Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702–1789), as well as the earliest producers
of formal portraiture in Romania such as Mihail Töpler (1780–1820?). See
Alexianu 1971, 1987; Cornea 1980; Ionescu 1990, 2001. Most of the works of
the Romanian “primitives” have been recently returned into the public domain
with the re-opening, after many decades, of the Gallery of National Art at the
Art Museum in Bucharest.
12. Although
the number of Turkish words denoting culinary and sartorial
categories used in the Romanian language has declined dramatically from
Jianu, Women, Fashion, and europeanization
223
the impressive one-sixth of the total vocabulary roughly a century ago, many
basic everyday objects have retained their Turkish denominators, e.g. boot
(Romanian: cizmă, Turkish: çizme), handbag (Romanian: geantă, Turkish:
çanta), slipper (Romanian: papuc, Turkish: pabuç), bed sheet (Romanian:
cearşaf, Turkish: çarşaf), frog fastening, clasp (Romanian: ceapraz, Turkish:
çapraz), etc. For a discussion of the Ottoman linguistic legacy in the Balkan
languages, see Lewis 1996.
13. Dowry
, 7 February 1775, given by “şetrăreasa” Maria Cucoranul, née Cuza,
to her daughter Aniţa, in Ghibănescu 1915: 53.
14. Sing.
leu, pl. lei, from the Turkish aslanlı, equivalent to a piastre.
15. Ghibănescu 1925.
16. Ghibănescu 1931.
17. She
was at one time tentatively identified by Paul Cernovodeanu as Ilinca
Argintoianu, from a well-known Romanian boyar family from Oltenia (Little
Wallachia), and her servants were most certainly Gypsy slaves rather than
Greeks. For the controversy surrounding her identity, see Tappe and Hope
1980: 591–615. See also the entry by Paul Cernovodeanu in Holban 2001:
1232–35.
18. In
all probability, a reference to a well-known society beauty, Lady Charlotte
Campbell, painted c. 1789–90 by J.W. Tischbein in Greek classical dress. See
Ribeiro 2002: 273, 275.
19. Marindin 1914: 62–63.
20. Alexianu
1987: 135. Some of the sketches, as well as fragments not published
by Marindin, may have in fact survived and may be lingering in the Constantin
I. Karadja archives in Bucharest, according to the editors of a catalogue of
these archives; see Filitti and Brad-Chisacof 1996: 62–71.
21. For
official permission granted to non-Muslims to wear Turkish dress, see, for
instance, Elliot 2004: 103–23.
22. For
two comprehensive studies of Liotard’s life and work, see Loche and
Roethlisberger 1978, and Herdt 1992. For his stay in Moldavia at the court of
the reformist Phanariot Prince Constantin Mavrocordat, see Niculescu 1982:
127–66.
23. Scarce
1987. This study is especially useful for the abundance of technical
details of the ways garments were cut and sewn, rather than for analysis of
their meaning or representational values.
24. See Lew 1991: 432–50; Mansell 1996: 43-49; Pointon 1993;
Thornton 1985.
25. Marindin 1914: 60.
26. Hauterive 1902b: 242–45.
27. Le costume est en général peu décent et seulement à l’avantage des femmes
qui n’ont pas encore dix-huit ans. Tous les inconvénients qui suivent l’age et
les grossesses se montrent au grand jour. Le vêtement ne cache, pour ainsi
dire, que la couleur du corps, dont il rend les formes dans toute leur mollesse
et leur altération. Jamais assises, rarement debout, leur corps à demi-couché
s’amollit et perd, en s’appuyant du matin au soir sur les coussins du sopha,
224
Women in the ottoman Balkans
l’habitude de se soutenir. […] Perpétuellement accroupies, jamais chaussées,
elles ne peuvent mettre leurs pieds en dehors et se traînent plutôt qu’elles ne
marchent. (Hauterive 1902a: 347–51, my translation.)
28. Anteriile cele lungi şi largi, blănile cele multe, puse una peste alta, brâul
de şal lung, de câte cinci coţi, toate acestea înfăşurând şi îngreuind trupul
lor, îl înfierbântă peste măsură şi mai ales când le poartă în camerele lor
călduroase, provoc înăduşirea corpului, greutate şi atonie în toate membrele
lui. … Tot atâta vătămare aduce şi calpacul sferoidal de mărime colosală, …
cu care îşi acopere capul; pe lângă altele, acesta este şi costisitor prin făptura
lui, fiind compus din două-trei pielcele de miel foarte scumpe, aduse cu mare
cheltuailă din părţile dinăuntru ale Rusiei, … Afară de această falnică căciulă,
tot atât de mult încălzeşte şi fesul, care de obicei se poartă sub ea; acestea
cauzând sudoare continuă la cap şi fiindcă obiceiul de a se tot descoperi
pentru salutaţiuni, li se întâmplă deseori iarna şi primăvara guturaiuri, dureri
de dinţi, de urechi şi cap. (Samarian 1937: 107, my translation.)
29. Ribeiro 1979: 17–23.
30. The
terms “form” and “substance” allude to a late nineteenth-century debate
about Westernization in Romania. The writer and politician Titu Maiorescu
deplored the vacuous character of “forms without substance” in the Romanian
nation-building project.
31. Il leur a fallu peu de temps et elles ont eu peu de peine pour se soumettre à une
civilisation que désirait leur amour propre et que réclament leur esprit naturel
>
et leurs grâces voilées et emprisonnées sous les tristes et pesants habillements
asiatiques. Il n’y a que le fard auquel elles n’ont jamais voulu renoncer. Leur
visage est peint de toutes les couleurs. (Hurmuzaki 1876–1912: 3/Supl. 1–2:
75, my translation.) Count Alexandre Louis Andrault de Langeron (b. Paris,
24 January 1763) joined the Russian army in 1790 and took part in all of
Russia’s anti-Ottoman campaigns from 1790 to 1828 on Romanian territory.
His memoirs were published in [Langeron] 1902.
32. Russia’s sudden transition from “Asiatic” backwardness to European
sophistication in lifestyles is well-documented. For a recent contribution,
see Hughes 2001: 17–32; I am grateful to Prof. Lindsey Hughes for this
reference.
33. En 1806, nous trouvâmes encore beaucoup de ces dames en costume oriental,
leurs maisons sans meubles et leurs maris fort jaloux. Mais la révolution
qui se fit alors à Jassy, ensuite à Bucarest et dans les provinces, fut aussi
rapide que complète: Au bout d’un an, toutes les dames Moldaves et Valaques
adoptèrent le costume européen. De tous côtés il arriva dans les deux
capitales des marchands de modes, des couturières, des tailleurs. … Pierre
Ier ne changea pas plus rapidement la face de son Empire que notre arrivée
ne changea celle de la Moldavie. Quelques jeunes gens adoptèrent aussi le
frac, mais les vieillards et les gens en place restèrent avec leurs barbes et
avec leur longue robe de chambre. La danse éprouva aussi une révolution.
Les danses nationales furent proscrites, ou au moins méprisées. On apprit
Jianu, Women, Fashion, and europeanization
225
les polonaises, les anglaises, les valses, les françaises, et ces dames ayant
beaucoup d”aptitude pour tout ce qu”elles veulent apprendre, parvinrent en
un an à danser à merveille; lorsque nous arrivâmes en Moldavie, elles ne
savaient pas marcher. (Hurmuzaki 1876–1912: 3/Supl. 1–2: 79, note1, my
translation.)
34. The
Russians were not the only channels for the transmission of occidental
values. In De l’influence française sur l’esprit public en Roumanie (1898),