Conclusions

Chapter Summary

Increasing newspaper print-runs, intrepid couriers, stereotype printing and even the introduction of the telegraph or the creation of the Reuters agency in 1851 would probably not have been as effective as they were in the Romanians' ten-year exile without one essential, but largely imponderable dimension: the solidarity networks in which they became embedded. The women in the Romanian-French 'circle of friends' were sensitive to the portent of major, if still vague, political upheavals in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Irrespective of the power struggles and intrigues of that fateful decade, most of the members of the liberal group, moderates and radicals alike, shared an expectation that the heroic image of the Romanian past which they had disseminated in the Western media deserved a no less heroic future.

Keywords: nineteenth century; Romanian past; solidarity networks; stereotype printing