Introduction: Colonial Anxieties, Corruption Scandals, and Xenophobia in Nineteenth-Century Infrastructure Development in Romania

Abstract

This thematic cluster examines the historical relevance of the rail and fluvial-maritime transportation infrastructure for nation-building and modernization of the Romanian Principalities (later Romania) from the 1840s to 1914. Since such transportation infrastructures were seen as both “progressive” and “disruptive,” their construction brought immense pressure on local decision-makers. The articles in this cluster share three common goals. First, they examine anxieties over the possibility that the Principalities/Romania would fall prey to economic and demographic colonization, fears generated by their asymmetrical political and economic interactions with Europe’s Great Powers and neighboring empires. We call these “colonial anxieties.” Second, contributions examine the corruption scandals befalling infrastructure construction, which generated and constantly reshaped colonial anxiety in the process of nation-state-building given the Great Powers’ imperial/colonial political and economic influence. Third, the articles historicize the semantic and political usage of “colonization” and “corruption” in nation-building and infrastructure construction, arguing that, on both accounts, reflexively situating their meanings can disentangle them from the ex-post analytical vocabulary scholars currently employ normatively.