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Infrastructural Development, Corruption, Xenophobia, and Colonization in Central and Southeastern Europe book cover

1st Edition

Infrastructural Development, Corruption, Xenophobia, and Colonization in Central and Southeastern Europe

Edited By Silvia Marton, Andrei-Dan Sorescu Copyright 2026
302 Pages
by Central European University Press

Infrastructural development is most often understood as shorthand for the arrival of ‘modernity’, both holding the promise of prosperity, and carrying with it the threat of disruption. The present volume examines historical attitudes to the infrastructural revolution that transformed Central and Southeastern Europe in the long nineteenth century, homing in on the scandals and controversies that... Read more

Part I – Conceptual Framework

1. Malte Fuhrmann, On Hegemony and Connectivity: A Short History of Infrastructure-Political Struggles and their Discourses

2. Silvia Marton, Transportation Infrastructure and Corruption Scandals

3. Jens Ivo Engels, Writing the History of Critical Infrastructures: Some Conceptual Remarks

4. Andrei-Dan Sorescu, The Infrastructural Power of the “Colonial” as a Concept

Part II – (Transportation) Infrastructure, Corruption Debates, and Colonization

5. Alex R. Tipei, Accusations of Tyranny: Mobilizing the Ottoman Imperial Past in Service of West European Informal Empire in the Early Greek State

6. Constantin Ardeleanu, British Investors and the “Kustendjie Harbor Dues Issue”

7. Gábor Egry, Steel and Wood: Railway Construction and Rent-Seeking

8. Toader Popescu, Hoping and Coping: Local Anxieties and Railway Development in Romania

9. Mihai Chiper, Regional Competition, Economic Interests, and Military Stumbling-Blocks in the Making of the Moldavian Railway Network

10. Raul Cârstocea, Conduits of Violence: Railway Infrastructure and Student Antisemitism in Interwar Romania

Index

Biography

Silvia Marton is associate professor at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest, and senior researcher at the New Europe College – Institute for Advanced Study, Bucharest. Her scientific interests include the history and sociology of political corruption, and nation-state building in Central-South-East Europe. She is principal investigator of “Transnational histories of ‘corruption’ in Central-South-East Europe (1750-1850)” (ERC-2022-AdG no. 101098095).

Andrei-Dan Sorescu is a cultural and intellectual historian of nineteenth-century Europe, with a focus on Romania in a transnational context. His current research interests include the role of self-comparison in nation-building, the historical semantics of the “colonial”, the transnational and global dimensions of antisemitism, and the critical study of temporalities.

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