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"The Phanariote Century", the period between 1711 / 1716-1821, in which the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia were ruled by ethnic Greeks, loyal subjects of the sultan, from the rich Phanar district of Istanbul, was considered a period of decline characterized by the degradation of social life, by the accentuated impoverishment of a predominantly rural population, by the prosperity of the nobility, by the exacerbation of taxation and, last but not least, by the increase of corruption at all institutional levels in the two principalities. This paper is an analysis, based on documentary sources and historiographical studies, of the mechanisms of operation of local and central state institutions to determine the extent to which the facts we associate today with acts of corruption have significantly influenced, in a negative way, the Romanian society of that period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between banditry and revolution during the troubled events that captured Wallachia and Moldavia in 1821. While not neglected in Romanian historiography, the topic is rarely approached in an analytical and critical manner, the bandits associated with the uprising led by Tudor Vladimirescu always being portrayed as champions of the social and national ideals promoted by the revolutionary programme, although no concrete evidence is given in this sense. Therefore, the research questions posed here are the following: do the bandits participating in the uprising assume its ideology? Or are they just selfish opportunists on the look for plunder? If they do assume an ideology, is it progressive or conservative? Or do they join the uprising in order to obtain amnesty for their pre-revolutionary crimes, in case the uprising succeeds? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]