A Provincial Imperialist and a Curious Account of Wallachia :: Ignaz von Born

Abstract

This article presents a hitherto little-known description of Wallachian (Romanian) communities in the Banat of Temesvar in the 1770s, which was reproduced, translated and commented upon in a wide variety of publications across Europe in the years to follow. The author is identified, and the account's genesis and reception placed in its contemporary intellectual and political context, in such a way as to challenge theories of the ‘invention’ of Eastern Europe by Western Europe. Attention is also drawn to the way in which different publishing circumstances and stylistic modifications affected the way in which this proto-ethnography was interpreted, and placed in relation to other colonial encounters, such as those of the British with native populations in India and America.