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    STUDIA HISTORIA - Issue no. 1 / 2013  
         
  Article:   FROM LOCAL CUSTOM TO WRITTEN LAW. AGRARIAN REGULATIONS AND STATE MAKING IN WALLACHIA 1740-1800.

Authors:  MIHAI OLARU. 		 
       
         
  Abstract:  The regulation of agrarian relations was treated in Romanian historiography mainly as a chapter of economic history, the impact of these regulatory practices upon the growth of the state’s infrastructure and power in 18th century Wallachia receiving no attention. The central argument of my article is that by subjecting the relations between landlords and tenants to a written legal text, the state extended its administrative reach and constituted its apparent neutrality in relation to various social groups. Empirically, my article relies on documents which illustrate the employment of agrarian regulations enacted after 1740 in adjudicating litigations between landlords and tenants. Theoretically, it draws on culturalist revisions of state theory, showing that the state is not merely an institutional assemblage but also a set of practices which produce and reproduce its illusory coherence and naturalize its power.

Keywords: agrarian regulation, state formation, law, infrastructural power, symbolic power. 		 
         
     
         
         
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