Military Uniform: Boyhood, Youth, and Country in a Mid-Nineteenth-Century Romanian Principality

Abstract

This object lesson uses military uniforms as an instrument to reveal the path toward becoming a young cadet, a path taken by those boys who wanted to pursue a career in the newly founded Romanian army in Wallachia. Given the country’s status as a principality under the dual political jurisdiction of a suzerain power (the Ottoman Empire) and a protective one (Russian Empire), the situation remained difficult and nuanced regarding the implementation of a military educational system. Military uniforms encompassed individual and national transformations, and the object lesson follows boys’ motivations and emotions, as well as the confrontation between their aspirations and the country’s needs. Military uniforms are a symbol of becoming, of a process in which boys become adults while caught in between multiple, sometimes contradictory, cultural influences.