Governing madness before the asylum: Administrative practices in managing insanity in Wallachia, 1832-1839

This article reconstructs the administrative management of insanity in Wallachia between 1832 and 1839, prior to the establishment of the first psychiatric institution. Drawing on unpublished archival sources, it traces the procedural route through which individuals identified as insane were reported, evaluated, confined in monasteries and, in some cases, reintegrated into their communities. The analysis reveals a coherent administrative mechanism involving police authorities, central institutions and monastic infrastructure, within which madness functioned less as a medical category than as the outcome of a socially mediated process. The article challenges the dominant historiographical view that locates the beginnings of psychiatric governance in the emergence of the asylum, arguing instead for its earlier administrative formation.