Coming from Russia, Becoming a School Principal: politics, education and state public school for girls in mid-nineteenth century Wallachia

Foreign teachers are transnational intercultural educators that participate in shaping educational systems in the receiving countries. This study explores the immersion of foreign female teachers into local structures and communities in Wallachia, a principality in the southern part of present‑day Romania. It discusses the state school for girls established in Bucharest in mid‑nineteenth century and its principals, two Russian ladies. The paper argues for entanglements between politics and education, its first principals being embedded in Russian imperial policies and practices, and their presence being both an act of power and a negotiation with the Romanian local elites. Ultimately it demonstrates the attempt through such educational institutions to transform the principality of Wallachia in a client state and to forge a similar bourgeois elite.