use of material provided by Dimitrie Gusti's comprehensive surveys. On feudalism and serfdom According to Pătrășcanu, Moldavia and Wallachia had forsaken feudalism by the mid 18th century, maintaining instead a form of serfdom which had not been affected by the reforms of Hospodar Constantine Mavrocordatos. He argued that, whereas feudalism was supported by metayage, legislation passed by Mavrocordatos had endorsed and prolonged corvées, a system consecrated in the 1830s by the new Organic Statute. In his view, capitalism had manifested itself mainly as a reactionary force inside Romanian economy during the time of Phanariote rules. Thus, despite characteristic underdevelopment (which he also noted), the local economy had not contrasted with the stages postulated by Marxian economics. Pătrășcanu contended that the first relevant social conflict had occurred in 1821, at the time of Tudor Vladimirescu's Wallachian uprising. He rejected the notion that, despite Vladimirescu's statements to the contrary, the rebellion had a peasant character, and argued instead that it was evidence of low-ranking boyars and merchants ("the embryo of a class, that was to become the bourgeoisie") attempting to emancipate themselves from Ottoman pressures. In his view, its nationalist character (see Rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire) had been manipulated by high-ranking boyars as a measure to dissuade adverse reactions to privileges. On radicalism and reformism The Wallachian Revolution of 1848, the most successful of similar revolts at the time, was, according to Pătrășcanu, a mature reaction of bourgeois circles against boyar supremacy ("it only sought [...] to replace a [privileged] minority with another"), but was generally not opposed to preserving an estate-based economy. He similarly rejected Junimea's traditional criticism of post-1848 realities, indicating that, in its theory of "forms without substance", the group had failed to note that, as a means to preserve several conservative tenets, Westernization in Romania had willingly, and not accidentally, adopted an incomplete form. In analyzing the history of liberalism and radicalism in Romania, he concluded that many of the most extreme social reformists had rallied in opposition to land reform (he saw this phenomenon as having made possible the toppling of Romania's Domnitor Alexandru Ioan Cuza, whom he saw as a supporter of industrialization). He extended this criticism to socialist groups other than his own, arguing that the prevalent reformism was "the cult of legalism". These views placed Pătrășcanu in opposition to other left-wing authors in Romania — namely, the influential Poporanists, most of