Visiting the Danube "Museum" with Dimitrie Papazoglu's Guide de voyageur. De Severin à la Mer Noire. With an essay by Constantin Ardeleanu

Published in 1863 by private collector and former military officer, Dimitrie Papazoglu, in a bilingual version, Romanian and French, the travel guide was a consequence of a nuanced context. This context was marked by the success of the Danube steam ship company, operating between Vienna and Constantinople, the active Westernization process in the United Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, and the author’s aim to promote his private museum and reach a wider audience. The text offers a detailed description of both banks of the Danube, the Ottoman administration of the Danube kaza and citadels, their history, economy, natural resources, and the presence of antiquities. Written in the midst of the nation-building process of the future state of Romania, it is a significant source for the imperial to post-imperial transition process in the Ottoman Empire. The book project has two main objectives: 1) the editing of a primary source from the mid-19th century about the Danube river, fostering the diffusion of knowledge on the various types of source available for researchers engaging with the topic and the history of the Ottoman Empire; 2) critically engaging with the text of the source as the result of a wider phenomenon of compilation intrinsic to these types of sources, and with the agency of its creator who chose to have a bilingual version combining Romanian and French.