Development and Economic Progress in Mihail Kogălniceanu’s Writings

Mihail Kogălniceanu (1817-1891) was an erudite historian, a lawyer, a liberal economic thinker, and an extraordinary rhetorician. He was a complex and prominent personality of the Romanian political life for more than half a century who emphasized the need for Romania to develop as a national, unified, democratic and independent state. He understood all too well the concept of progress as necessary evolution, as development in the positive way. In this paper, we identify the main coordinates of Mihail Kogălniceanu’s thinking about the importance of studying history as a factor of progress and analyzing the economic and social structures of those times as a premise for reforming society. Ferment of the revolutionary climate in Moldavia, Mihail Kogălniceanu considered that knowing the historic past was a prerequisite for asserting the national consciousness of the Romanian people. His writings followed two major coordinates: the criticism of feudalism and the national emancipation.