Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This book approaches the Wallachian revolution of 1848 and the counter-revolution that followed from a European and trans-imperial perspective and explores what the history of that revolution reveals about the wider mid-century revolutionary moment. Subject to the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire and the protection of the Russian Empire, it argues that Wallachia’s geopolitical context was unique among the revolutionary theatres of 1848 and that this trans-imperial context made the Wallachian revolution the most ‘European’ of all. Its five substantive chapters address revolutionary and counter-revolutionary ideas, the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary transformation of the state, the development and suppression of a revolutionary urban culture, the promotion and extirpation of revolutionary ideology among the principality’s peasant population, and the revolutionary government’s attempts to secure international assistance. Rather than a staging post on the road to Romanian unification, this book argues that events in Wallachia in 1848 are better understood in their local, trans-imperial, and European contexts. By adopting this approach, the book offers an alternative perspective on the European mid-century revolutionary moment: one from the peripheries of the continent rather than its major imperial centres.</jats:p>