Authors

Discussion

When, in 1786, Nicolae Mavrogheni ascended to the throne of Wallachia, Ianache Văcărescu (1740-1797) wrote disdainfully that he was not a man “who had grown up in the Phanar”, the Istanbul neighborhood that lent to the Phanariotes their name. Mavrogheni was thus equally a stranger to the “rules of the Phanar”, and lacked the requisite political abilities for imposing good governance, by contrast to his predecessors. Văcărescu saw this in contrast to what he described as the virtues and duties of a good Phanariot, and concluded that Mavrogheni, a mere parvenu, could never rise to the challenge. For several decades, Văcărescu occupied high positions in the Wallachian state apparatus, and left significant testimonies on the inner workings of Phanariot governance in his History of the Ottoman Empire. Starting from his observations, our paper aims to analyse the concept of “Phanariot good rule”, and how it gradually became, in the writings of later observers, synonymous with abuse and corruption. From among such contemporary observers of the late Phanariot era, the notes and recollections of another office holder help us grasp which practices became defined as arbitrary, abusive, or corrupt. Grigore Andronescu (1778-1858) wrote on his life and times as a second-rank functionary in the local administration of Bucharest, providing us with important information on what qualified as “minor” or “major” in terms of “abuse”, and what was therefore seen as tolerable or outright intolerable. These two testimonies complete each other in how they define governance, good or bad, and help us trace the emergence of a political discourse that ultimately equated Phanariotism with corruption.