ABSTRACT
The core of the modern Romanian state lay in the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia which had fallen under Ottoman domination in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They were not placed under direct rule from Constantinople and retained extensive rights of self-government under the ruling landowners, or boyars, but attempts by these groups in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to take advantage of the Ottoman empire's wars with the Habsburg empire and with Russia to secure a greater degree of self-rule persuaded the Ottomans to replace the local rulers, or hospodars, with Greek administrators whose families came from the Phanar district of Constantinople. Phanariot Greeks were valued by the Ottomans for their efficiency and reliability; they were resented by Romanians for their venality.
