Historical [Pre-]Modernism and the Entangled Networks of the Enlightenment. Dimitrie Cantemir’s Descriptio Moldaviae During the Long 18th Century and the Beginning of the 19th Century

Dimitrie Cantemir’s Descriptio Moldaviae is considered the first [pre-] modern historiographical text of national history/geography and is celebrated as the first academic work written by a native Romanian that can still be used as a scientific reference today. We postulate in the present article that  the modernity of the Catemirean writing is not derived from its academic virtuousness and informational value, but rather from its long  history  and circulation throughout the Enlightened Western and Eastern Europe. For the reconstruction of the text circulation, we will not follow the traditional linear pattern of cultural transfer, of publication and re-publication, of text production  and  translation,  but  we propose to reconstruct (even if only partially, given the information gaps) the complicated and entangled network that this text, as non-human actant, creates around it, and the effects and mutations it produces along its various  stops  in space and time. Following a chronological path, we aim to highlight the entanglements of various actors and actants and less so the unidirectional relationship between humans and artefacts. Thus, Descriptio Moldaviae becomes an important actor in a complicated and  globally  active network that highlights the intrinsic interconnectedness of the pre-modern world, still so familiar today.

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