EDIT Mistery solved, thanks to /u/tangus. It's „wax”, not „onions”... this is freakin embarrassing...
I know the question is oddly specific, but maybe it isn't limited to Wallachia, and is a more widespread phenomenon that people are aware of.
The idea is this: I found the numbers regarding Exports of Wallachia in 1839, and given that I had both quantity and value, I could get the price of each item. I then converted the "imperial" units into metric (the source had conversion tables in this regard) and the value of currency into today's curency using the price of Gold. Long story short, I get some nice per kilogram prices, and most things were within reasonable margins, but the one that stuck out was the price of onions, way higher than today's prices.
Any idea why?
Here is a table with values converted into 2015 Euro and US dollars:
| Item | Price EUR | unit | Price USD | unit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wheat | 1.1 | €/kg | 1.3 | $/kg |
| Tallow | 7.9 | €/kg | 8.9 | $/kg |
| Wool | 12.5 | €/kg | 14 | $/kg |
| Beans | 2.4 | €/kg | 2.7 | $/kg |
| Swine | 188.4 | €/piece | 211.3 | $/piece |
| Corn | 0.6 | €/kg | 0.6 | $/kg |
| Cattle hides | 166.7 | €/pair | 187 | $/pair |
| Sheep and goat hides | 18.1 | €/pair | 20.3 | $/pair |
| Cattle | 352.2 | €/pair | 395 | $/pair |
| Salt | 1.4 | €/kg | 1.6 | $/kg |
| Barley and oats | 0.7 | €/kg | 0.8 | $/kg |
| Sheep and goats | 55.2 | €/pair | 61.9 | $/pair |
| Butter | 10.7 | €/kg | 12 | $/kg |
| Horses | 1034.5 | €/piece | 1160.2 | $/piece |
| Honey | 6.6 | €/kg | 7.4 | $/kg |
| Wine | 1.6 | €/litre | 1.8 | $/litre |
| Flax seed | 2.2 | €/kg | 2.4 | $/kg |
| Rabbit hides | 8.5 | €/piece | 9.5 | $/piece |
| Spirits (Alcohol) | 6 | €/litre | 6.7 | $/litre |
| Tobacco | 4.7 | €/kg | 5.3 | $/kg |
| Millet | 0.5 | €/kg | 0.6 | $/kg |
| Onions | 36.3 | €/kg | 40.7 | $/kg |
| Salo | 4.2 | €/kg | 4.7 | $/kg |
| Mules and donkeys | 766.9 | €/piece | 860.1 | $/piece |
| Horse hides | 55.5 | €/piece | 62.2 | $/piece |
The error is not in the original source, but lost in transliteration. It wasn't about onions, but about wax.
The guy who made the blog post was likely not familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet being used for Romanian at the time, so he mistook the word Чеаръ (Ceară, Wax) for the word Чеапъ (Ceapă, Onions).
Hope this clarifies it for everyone.
Could you go into slightly more detail on how you got to these unit prices? Did you just translate/convert a table, or did you break it down from other numbers?
I tried digging a little bit (I know it's not 100% within the rules of the sub, but hopefully okay). There is a reference on this page of "The Economist, Weekly commercial times" to the production of grains in wallachia being so little that they are considering banning exports, and that worse production is expected next year. This refers to grain though, not onions, and the grain prices don't seem to be that high.
You also have the Vrancea Earthquake in 1838, that could have further hit production.
Do you have a link to the original document with the export data?
Could it be that there's a special counting measure for onions?
Have you checked other years? This is definitely odd.
Just some things I've come across that may prove helpful
1 - Interfaces: Society, Nation ,Conflict and Memory in...?
2 - International Trade and Diplomacy at the Lower Danube
3 - Balkan Economic History, 1550-1950
The 3rd source says: 'Before 1850, Moldavian grain exports continued to be channeled to the Eastern Mediterranean for consumption except for one exceptional year, 1847. Then the disastrous harvest in France and England (plus Ireland) prompted the combined purchase of 56%... of Moldavian exports'. There's also a table further down that lists the distribution of Wallachian/Moldavian exports from 1843. Not from the time, and it's grain, but maybe something can be gleaned from this?
I know it's speculation, but a poor onion harvest in 1838/9 in Western Europe could have prompted a hike in onion prices in Romania due to increased demand. Think about who onions feed aswell: typically farmers, peasants, poor people in cities, slaves even; if there's a population rise for one these demographics in the 1830s then the same theory applies. Maybe both are intertwined - poor harvest in Europe, combined with increased rural/poor population results in greater onions prices.
Yet another possibility to consider is a mistake or typographical error in the original source. Unless this anomaly can be found in another independent source, we cannot discard this possibility.
Are those 2015 dollars?
Can you link the source for this data?
Does the source provides other data points beside 1839?
Could time of the year matter? Or a poor onion harvest that year?
I'm really curious about what the source is. Is this a study that someone else did, or is it directly from a ledger somewhere?
