ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the status of nationalism in the first part of the nineteenth century in Moldavia and Wallachia. Dealing with the force of nationalism from a point a century and one half removed is difficult, but finding an adequate definition of that force is even more of a challenge. Part of the problem is that there is no universally acknowledged ideology of nationalism. The political developments of the French Revolution helped break down the social barriers that had confined this sharing horizontally. Under nationalism sharing transcends a class or estate base, and leads to a national unit that participates in common dreams through the channel of the state. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there is serious doubt that nationalism existed in the Danubian Principalities, as measured against the definitions discussed above. At the time under consideration there was no national state of Romania and existence of a generally held feeling of a Romanian community can be questioned.
