Approches roumaines de l'histoire ottomane

Stefan Lemmy : Rumanian studies of Ottoman History. This article shows how the dominating political presence of the Sultan in the Rumanian past influenced their historians' approach to Ottoman history. Until the end of the Seventeenth Century, interest in Ottoman history was to be seen only through references to relations between Rumanians and Turks to be found in the scant chronicles of Rumanian countries. A change came about at the beginning of the 18th Century with the Moldavian Prince Dimitri Cantemir's History of the Ottoman Empire, which was read and praised throughout Europe ; it was translated into several languages and used by Voltaire, who admired its author. After Cantemir, interest in Ottoman history died out. The poet and statesman Ianach Vàcàrescu was the last 18th-century Rumanian to write a History of Ottoman Emperors, but it remained unfinished in manuscript form and was inferior to Cantemir's work.