Jean Alexandre Vaillant (; 1804 – 21 March 1886) was a French and Romanian teacher, political activist, historian, linguist and translator, who was noted for his activities in Wallachia and his support for the 1848 Wallachian Revolution. A Romantic nationalist and Freemason, he was an associate of the liberal faction in both Wallachia and Moldavia, as well as a collaborator of Ion Heliade Rădulescu, Ion Câmpineanu, Mitică Filipescu, and Mihail Kogălniceanu.

A tutor and later teacher at the Saint Sava School in Bucharest during the 1830s, he rose suspicions for his involvement in political conspiracies and was ultimately banned from Wallachia. Vaillant advocated the unification of the Danubian Principalities and other Romanian-inhabited areas, an ideal he notably expressed in his 1844 work La Romanie. Credited with having publicized the Romanian cause in his native country during the 1850s, and with having introduced the modern references to "Romania" in international discourse, he briefly returned to Bucharest and was naturalized by the new Romanian state in 1864. The state of the Roma community was another one of Vaillant's interests, and the practice of Roma slavery led him to express support for abolitionist goals.

Career

Private tutor

Vaillant arrived in Bucharest on November 4, 1829, being first employed as a French language tutor by the Great Ban George Iordachi, a member of the Filipescu family of boyars.Ursu, p.14 Joining a sizable community of French and other European expatriates,Giurescu, p.274; Iorga, La Monarchie de juillet... he was, according to historian Nicolae Iorga, "the only one [of them] whose literary activity was able serve the rapprochement between distant France and this Latin country on the Danube".Iorga, La Monarchie de juillet...

He terminated his contract in spring of the following year, and decided to open of school for boys aged 12 to 15; the initiative was publicized by Heliade Rădulescu's magazine Curierul Românesc. Vaillant's school was located in buildings owned by Serdar Popa, in the vicinity of Stavropoleos Monastery.Djuvara, p.211; Ursu, p.14 Together with the similar activities of Félix Colson (who was tutoring young members of the Văcărescu family), and those of the Moldavian-based Cuénim and the abbé Lhommé,Djuvara, p.211 this brought an important step in the Westernization of Romanian society, while contributing to enforcing admiration for France among young boyars.Drace-Francis, p.105; Djuvara, p.211; Giurescu, p.274 It also signified a breaking point with education in Greek, which had been the norm before and during the Phanariote age (ever since the 17th century initiatives of Prince Matei Basarab).Djuvara, p.211-212 The memoirist Ion Ghica later noted that, among Vaillant's pupils, were scions of the Filipescu family, as well as those of the Grădişteanus, Bălăceanus, Rosettis, Golescus and his own family (the Ghicas). Another of his pupils was the future radical politician and historian Nicolae Bălcescu. Vaillant was also a teacher at a school for girls, which functioned without tuition.Drace-Francis, p.104; Iorga, La Monarchie de juillet...

Saint Sava professor In 1832, he was appointed French-language teacher and head of the boarding house at the prestigious Saint Sava School,Drace-Francis, p.104; Iorga, La Monarchie de juillet...; Polet, p.953; Ursu, p.14 which he had been commissioned to modernize.Polet, p.953 This came upon the end of the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829, when Imperial Russian troops had taken over administration of Wallachia, without removing it from Ottoman tutelage. Vaillant was able to persuade the new authorities after authoring a poem in honor of Governor Pavel Kiselyov.Drace-Francis, p.104

The high standards he endorsed earned him even more popularity, as well as a salary worth twice that of local staff. Nevertheless, his contract was terminated in 1833 or 1834. The reason for this is unclear: some sources have attributed it to Vaillant's advocacy of nationalist tenets in front of his students, which reportedly rose suspicions from Russia, who was overseeing administration of the country under the Regulamentul Organic regime; others still indicate that he was involved in a conflict with Inspector Petrache Poenaru (in turn, this clash was attributed to Valliant's activities as Freemason or to him having continued to teach privately, thus competing with his state employers).

Vaillant also published a concise textbook of Romanian language and grammar (1836), intended as a learning instrument for French people (Grammaire valaque à l'usage des français). It featured a glossary, as well as a historical overview and translations of poems (notably, Vasile Cârlova's Ruinurile Târgoviştii and Heliade Rădulescu's Visul). In the preface to this work, Vaillant stressed the Latin origin of the Romanian language (in relation to other Romance languages), and, elaborating, argued that "Wallachian is nothing less than a dialect of the Roumannesque language, a name which in itself serves to indicate its descent".

Conspiracies and return to Paris By the late 1830s, Jean Alexandre Vaillant became involved with the liberal trend in opposition to the Regulamentul Organic regime, engaging in conflict with Prince Alexandru II Ghica. As such, he first associated with Ion Câmpineanu, who stood out in the Wallachian Assembly in opposition to Ghica's policies.Iorga, La Monarchie de juillet...; Ursu, p.15 According to Iorga, he was also sympathetic to the cause of other Balkan peoples in their conflict with the Ottoman Empire (including the rebellious activities of Bulgarian activists in Brăila and the plans devised by the former Prince of Serbia, Miloš Obrenović, who was residing in Bucharest at the time).

By that time, he was a noted figure in Wallachian Freemasonry, which reportedly owed inspiration to a conspiratorial system first applied by the Filiki Eteria during the early stages of the Greek Independence War; other people involved in this subversive movement were, among others, Câmpineanu, Heliade Rădulescu, Mitică Filipescu, Nicolae Bălcescu, Eftimie Murgu.Lăzărescu After Câmpineanu was defeated, Vaillant rallied with a conspiracy formed around Filipescu; on November 18, 1840, as authorities clamped down on Filipescu's movement, he fled Bucharest, heading for the Moldavian capital of Iaşi.Ursu, p.15 According to Iorga, Vaillant's involvement with the revolutionary milieu, and especially with Filipescu and Heliade Rădulescu, had made him the object of suspicion. It was in Iaşi that he became an associate of Kogălniceanu, after taking an interest in Moldavian chronicles which the latter was reviewing and publishing; later, it was proposed that Vaillant's 1844 volume, La Roumanie, featured sections of text actually contributed by the Moldavian writer. On June 19, 1841, the Wallachian Assembly voted to expel him indefinitely from the country for his role in Filipescu's revolutionary attempt.

Vaillant returned to Paris, where he continued publicizing his arguments in favor of Wallachian and Moldavian causes. On August 2, 1844, he spoke in front of the Société Orientale, of which he had been made a member, protesting against censorship imposed by Russia in the Danubian Principalities (he expanded on this perspective in La Roumanie). At the time, he became close to Édouard Drouyn de Lhuys, President of the Société Orientale, whose support for the cause of ethnic Romanians he consequently enlisted. He also contacted the poet Alphonse de Lamartine, who, in 1846, became head of Societatea Studenţilor Români (the Society of Romanian Students).

Vaillant continued to publish various works by Romanian writers, this time in the Revue de l'Orient — among its contributors were Vasile Alecsandri, Nicolae Bălcescu, Cezar Bolliac, Kogălniceanu, and Costache Negruzzi (the latter notably sent his novella Alexandru Lăpuşneanu). He would later publish a volume grouping several of Bolliac's works. Vaillant also welcomed Romanian students into any of three Parisian Lodges he had helped create: La Loge du Parfait Silence ("The Lodge of Perfect Silence"), La Loge de la Bonne Amitié ("The Lodge of Good Friendship"), and La Loge de l'Athénée des Étrangers ("The Lodge of the Atheneum of Foreigners").

Later activism and naturalization After 1848, when the Wallachian Revolution ended in occupation by Ottoman and Russian troops, and until the Crimean War, Vaillant continued to print pamphlets supporting the Romanian cause.Iorga, La Révolution de 1848...; Ursu, p.15 As Russian troops retreated, to be replaced by a provisional Austrian administration, in turn superseded by a protectorate of powers (including the French Empire), he issued text supporting a Moldo-Wallachian union and emphasizing the two countries' autonomy in respect to the Porte. In 1857, he authored an appeal to Count Colonna-Walewski, the French Foreign Minister, in which he called for "France's sympathies" in respect to "the Moldo-Wallachians", based on "their magnificent past and the hope of their future". At the time, he made several references to Romania as la langue d'or ("the golden language"), a name notably featured in the title of a Romanian literature collection he printed in 1851. Vaillant also wrote pieces criticizing Moldavian separatists.Iorga, La Révolution de 1848...

The union he supported was accomplished in 1859, through the election of Alexandru Ioan Cuza as ruler of both countries. Three years later, Vaillant was back in Bucharest for a few months, giving free lectures on ancient history.Polet, p.953; Ursu, p.15 He was naturalized Romanian in 1864, at the same time as his compatriots and fellow pro-Romanian activists Paul Bataillard and Jean Henri Abdolonyme Ubicini. In addition, Domnitor Cuza awarded him a pension worth 4,000 French francs.

Jean Alexandre Vaillant died in Paris 22 years later, and was buried with full honors at the expense of the Romanian Kingdom. The Romanian Legation, headed by its secretary George Bengescu, and other members of the Romanian community in the city accompanied the hearse. Bengescu spoke at the ceremony, referring to Vaillant as "a brother", he noted that he had been one of "the courageous and enthusiastic pioneers of the Romanian people's political and national regeneration".

Views

La Romanie

Vaillant's 1844 La Romanie (in its long version, the title was given as La Roumanie, ou Histoire, langue, littérature, orogrphie, statistique des peuples de la langue d'or, Ardialiens, Vallaques et Moldaves, résumés sur le nom de Romans) was notably reviewed by Nicolae Iorga in his 1918 essay on French-Romanian relations). He noted that Vaillant extended the scope of his researches into Romanian history out of Wallachia and Moldavia, and into Austrian-ruled Transylvania: "He preoccupied himself [...], for the first time, with the Romanians in Transylvania, [a region] which he named, taking in view the national [Romanian] term serving to designate this enslaved land, Ardeal (Ardial), whence Ardialiens (in Romanian: Ardeleni)".

Iorga also concluded that Vaillant was among the first persons to use the terms "Romania" and "Romanian" in the modern sense, after they had been in circulation for some time as designations of Wallachia and its citizens (commonly known in Romanian as Ţara Românească, the latter principality had, Iorga contended, come to adopt the term România as self-reference by the time Vaillant was writing his essay). The names were subsequently adopted by Mihail Kogălniceanu, Vasile Alecsandri and other Romanian revolutionaries. The French versions of the names "Romania" and "Romanians", in the form supported by Vaillant, were to be Romanie and roma[i]n, both alluding to Ancient Rome — these were not received as neologisms, and the enduring names in became Roumanie and roumain, probably based on the Romanian folk references to rumân.