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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
300 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

Researching Infrastructural Development, Corruption, and Colonization in Central and Southeastern Europe: An Introduction
Silvia Marton & Andrei-Dan Sorescu

Part I – Conceptual Framework

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

Malte Fuhrmann

2. Transportation Infrastructure and Corruption Scandals

Silvia Marton

3. Writing the History of Critical Infrastructures: Some Conceptual Remarks

Jens Ivo Engels

4. The Infrastructural Power of the “Colonial” as a Concept

Andrei-Dan Sorescu

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

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

Alex R. Tipei

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

Constantin Ardeleanu

7. Steel and Wood: Railway Construction and Rent-Seeking

Gábor Egry

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

Toader Popescu

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

Mihai Chiper

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

Raul Cârstocea

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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