Cahiers Balkaniques (Jul 2014)
L’émigration sud-danubienne vers la Valachie et la Moldavie et sa géographie (xve–xviie siècles) : la potentialité heuristique d’un sujet peu connu
Abstract
The study focuses on geographical distribution of the emigration oriented to Walachia and Moldova in the South-Danubian region in 15-17th centuries, which was established based on vast prosopographic and anthroponymic research. It shows that contrary to the long-lasting historiographic prejudices, the waves of South Slavic emigration did not stopped flowing to the north of the Danube after the disappearance of the old Balkan nobility, particularly Serbian, which was overshadowed during the first half of the 16th century. The research also points out that immigration commonly called "Greek" came from relatively close South-Danubian regions; meaning that the area of origin of immigrants rarely exceeded Macedonia on the East and Thessaly on the South. The survey data reveal a high concentration of migrants from Epirus and its surroundings. The Levantine area (Aegean and Ionian Islands) and that of Constantinople are much less represented compared to the Greek mainland. The geographical distribution of migrants’ homeland areas perfectly matches the distribution of religious donations (princely and private) coming from Wallachia and Moldova for South-Danubian religious institutions in that period, which confirms the results of the survey. It also corresponds to the geography of the places in which the Christian population enjoyed administrative and judicial autonomy from the Ottomans, which must have given to the population (specially single men) a certain freedom of movement within the Ottoman Empire and beyond its limits, including dependent North-Danubian provinces of the Porte. Among those who enjoyed such privileges there were numerous communities governed by the old Wallachian customary law (jus valachicum), some of them attached to the Greek-speaking Orthodoxy and others to Slavonic language one. Henceforth, it is justified to assume that a large number of Ottoman dependants settled Wallachia and Moldavia were Vlachs (known, particularly, for expansion of their trade networks to major cities of the Empire Habsburg, in the 18th century). All mentioned geographical correlations lead to the conclusion that we are dealing with migrants from areas where multilingualism was the order of the day and consequently they had to have shared appurtenance to several collectivities (spatial and linguistic, or cultural, generally speaking). This finding opens new avenues for research and interpretation of social representations of collective cultural differences and behavioral identity of the individuals at the time much before the political principle of peoples’ sovereignty.
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