Financing Social Care in the Romanian Principalities in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Abstract

Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, members of the local aristocracy, the Metropolitans of the two Principalities, or the Phanariot rulers created the first charitable foundations aimed at caring for the poor. The prince placed himself as originator of all organised welfare initiatives in the Romanian Principalities. By being very present in charitable actions, the prince ensured that the state controlled charity and set the direction it took, so that charity consequently became a matter of state. Despite constant appeals from the central authority, private initiative remained poorly organised. On the other hand, individual gestures, which certainly took place, are scarcely reflected by historical documents, being confined to families and having a smaller impact at the larger level of society as far as welfare and poor relief are concerned. In the first half of the nineteenth century, concern for the poor moved away from the religious sphere and became attributes of a good citizen’s civic and patriotic duty. Charitable foundations started to be described as "patriotic assets", and their progress to be linked to the country's level of civilisation. Charity therefore gradually became a "branch of administration", and thus strongly dependent on its limited and always insufficient budget.