page_title: Radu Rosetti
section_title: Agrarian historian and 1907 revolt
hierarchical_section_title: Radu Rosetti / Biography / Agrarian historian and 1907 revolt
caption_attribution_description: Română: Înmormântarea
context_page_description: Radu Rosetti was a Moldavian, later Romanian, politician, historian and novelist, father of General Radu R. Rosetti and a prominent member of the Rosetti family. From beginnings in traditionalist conservatism, he adopted progressive agrarian stances, and experimented with modernizing his estate in Căiuți. A Moldavian regionalist sitting on the left of the Conservative Party, he collaborated more or less formally with the National Liberal opposition during his tenure as prefect of Roman, Brăila, and Bacău. Also serving two terms in the Assembly of Deputies and briefly employed as general director of prisons, Rosetti adopted an anti-elitist and reformist discourse. This pitted him against Conservative chiefs such as Nicolae Filipescu and Titu Maiorescu, but he was protected by Lascăr Catargiu and, later, by Petre P. Carp.
  Rosetti was financially ruined by his poor investments in the grain trade, and, from 1898, withdrew to secondary jobs in the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Although he lacked a formal training, he was a treasured polyglot, and achieved his notoriety as a scholar and social critic.
context_section_description: Rosetti was a widower from September 1905, but enjoyed the moral and material support of his grown sons: Radu Jr was an officer and Henri a jurist, while Eugène had quit school and was prospecting for Standard Oil. He himself supplemented his income as an insurance investigator, assessing damages caused by hail. During this time, he became preoccupied with a looming social crisis. The first of his works to openly deal with the issue of agrarian inequalities and tensions over land was Despre originea și transformările clasei stăpânitoare din Moldova ("On the Origins and Transformations of the Moldavian Ruling Class"). His thesis looked back on the sources of Vlach law, suggesting that ancient Romanians were all free men organized into obști, that latifundia were imposed through boyar theft, and that serfdom was only cemented by the will of Michael the Brave in the late 16th century. Dealing more specifically with the genealogical claims of the Romanian nobles, Rosetti distinguished between an Uradel of knyazes and a later stratum of Phanariotes, with the latter including his own lineage.
  As noted by medievalist Ștefan Ștefănescu, this account was fundamentally inaccurate, but Rosetti still had the "merit [...] of breaking away from traditional Romanian historiography, which idealized the past." Cultural historian Z. Ornea also underlines that Rosetti's "harshness", although "not entirely unique", set him aside from other boyar literati. His "vituperation", Ornea argues, "has its bitter source in his own biography." In passing, Rosetti also touched controversial topics of the more distant past, offering his take on Roman Dacia and the origin of the Romanians. He viewed initial Roman colonization as weak, and believed that the nation was created by the invading South Slavs and captives from the Diocese of Dacia. This theory was immediately challenged by Dimitrie Onciul, who cited early sources which appeared to contradict Rosetti.
  Although Rosetti had kept his post under another Sturdza cabinet, Cantacuzino's return in 1904 signaled his downfall. His prophecy of an impending disaster clashed with the Conservatives' optimism, and he was pressured into resigning before April 1906. Without joining the PNL, Rosetti now sympathized with its left-wing and, beyond, with the emerging Poporanist movement, declaring himself disgusted with the Conservatives' National Exhibit of 1906. In December, he put out the tract Pământul, sătenii și stăpânii în Moldova ("Land, Villagers and Masters in Moldavia"). In the 1940s, Traian Herseni reviewed it as "one of the most precious works" of the period, a pioneering contribution to rural sociology. As noted by Rosetti's son, the work was much praised by Sturdza, but constituted an attack on the "sacrosanct principles" of Conservative theoreticians, above all Titu Maiorescu and Duiliu Zamfirescu, but also Filipescu, the "unrepentant reactionary"; Ornea also notes that Maiorescu was vexed and vengeful. However, in 1907, dismissing objections from Maiorescu and Ioan Kalinderu, the Romanian Academy voted to grant Rosetti its Năsturel Herescu Award.
  The peasants' uprising of February, which seemed to confirm Rosetti's foretelling, had erupted outside Hârlău, but soon spread throughout the land, prompting Sturdza's return as Prime Minister. During these events, Radu Jr was tasked with protecting Jewish property in Bucharest against antisemitic backlashes. Rosetti put out his other key work of history later in 1907. Titled Pentru ce s-au răsculat țăranii? ("Why Did the Peasants Rebel?"), it argued that the uprising marked a reaction against the latifundia and tenancies. Building on earlier observations, he documented the survival of serf-like obligations under the guise of a new regime. As he noted, peasants being forced to pay for fodder and informally pressured or terrorized into reimbursing corvées, and often reduced to lassitude and alcoholism. With this tract, Rosetti also emerged as a supporter of radical land reform, arguing that capitalism was remaking the village into a "plutocratic assemblage"
caption: A Funeral, 1908 painting by the Poporanist Octav Băncilă, purporting to show a massacre during the recent peasants' revolt
exif: {}