Name: Doina Anca Cretu
Affiliation: The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies
Foreign Assistance and Nationalism: Preliminary Perspectives on
American Humanitarianism in Interwar Romania (1918-1923)
-Working Paper-
After World War I Romania emerged as a multiethnic state patched together from
pieces of very different European empires. Recovering from destruction and additional
poverty, the incumbent elites of Romania’s Liberal Party attempted to engage in
nationalist politics of consolidation and modernization. While not a unique case for the
Central and Eastern European context, the implications of Romania’s experience in WWI
and subsequent Unification led to an attempted construction of coherence and control
through institutional reforms and establishment of domestic legitimacy. As such, the
processes of post-war transformations generated numerous crises rooted in the
establishment and legitimation of a new political order, conflicts among regional political
groups, the expansion of a state administration, its bureaucratic system and its relation to
local communities, the attempted assimilation of ethnic minorities, as well as dilemmas
of collective identity. Scholars have often explored the domestic dimensions, causes and
consequences to these crises in the Romanian case. Few have, however, attempted a
transnational analysis following of issues of modernization, consolidation and
legitimation. This paper addresses this gap by exploring a preliminary perspective on the
contentious relation between early nationalist politics in Romania and American
humanitarian involvement on its territory.1
1
I define humanitarian involvement as a benevolent action that, according to the agent undertaking it, is
intended to “contribute to improving the moral well-being, political, social and economic standards of other
human beings.” See Davide Rodogno, Francesca Piana and Shaloma Gauthier, “Shaping Poland: Relief and
Rehabilitation Programmes Undertaken by Foreign Organizations, 1918-1922,” in Shaping the
This paper argues that the post-Armistice period was marked by competing
nationalist and humanitarian agents, leading to mutually subordinating politics of
assistance. On one hand, Romania’s essential needs for emergency and long-term
assistance often found the interwar nationalism of the in-power Liberal elites were often
subordinated to the relief and reconstruction struggle. On the other hand, perceptions of
Romanian Liberal nationalists as acting against American interests led to political and
logistical antagonisms around humanitarian involvement. By exploring two instances of
convergence of nationalist domestic politics and American assistance actors, the paper
suggests that transnational interests played a vital role in the construction of Romania’s
national state. The first subsection highlights a few key points regarding the ideological
dimensions of Romania’s liberal nationalism. Secondly, it follows how foreign actors
such as American Relief Administration (ARA) and the Rockefeller Foundation (RF)
paradoxically became valid tools to address these challenges. More specifically, the
paper looks at the cases regarding the behind-the-scenes negotiations, trials and
tribulations related to the ARA’s entry conditions, and the delayed entry of the RF in
Romania. In the last part, the paper proposes a research avenue that highlights “Jewish
Question” in the Romanian context as a shaping factor in a possible dichotomy between
foreign humanitarian and nationalist forces in interwar Romania. Using political scientist
Keith Watenpaugh’s description, this paper suggests that the process of foreign assistance
as a tool of crisis “appeasement,” “cannot escape the prevailing norms, moral economies
and politics encircling it; it is shaped by the forces that act upon it-and consequently can
exert minor force, perhaps only in the form of resistance by its practitioners or its
subjects, the other way.”2
The Main Study
The project this working paper is based on, preliminarily titled “Appropriation
and Rejection of Interwar American Assistance Practices in Southeastern Europe : The
Transnational Sphere: Experts, Networks and Issues from the 1840s to the 1930s, eds. Davide Rodogno,
Bernhard Struck and Jakob Vogel (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2015), 259.
2
Keith David Watenpaugh, “Between Communal Survival and National Aspiration: Armenian Genocide
Refugees, the League of Nations and the Practices of Interwar Humanitarianism” (working paper/Human
Rights Initiative, Humanities Institute/UC Davis, 2010), 3.
2
Case of Romania (1918-1938),” proposes the exploration of interwar American
assistance practices in Southeast Europe with a particular glance at the case of post-1918
Unification of Romania. By means of a transnational study, the project aims to decenter
the sole dominant focus on the actions, organizations and interests on the side of the
American donor nation, and explores instead American relief and reconstruction work
from the “receiving end.” It introduces not only the largely unknown agendas of recipient
groups, but also highlights America’s humanitarian expansion as a process of selective
adoption. By understanding relief and reconstruction not as linear expansions of
American models and methods, and focusing on how recipients perceived, negotiated,
appropriated or rejected American methods, the project calls into doubt the strict
active/passive dichotomy usually constructed between donors and recipients.
The geographical scope of the study further aims to depart from an isolating
conceptualization post-WWI nation-building and state-building along domestic modular
lines in Southeast Europe in general, and in Romania in particular. While studying the
effects of external aid on political trajectories and local lives, this project aims to separate
from universalistic frameworks dominated by discourse on state and national
consciousness, and refocuses on interactive historical players. While I do not assess the
case of Romania in relation to American assistance as unique, by exploring issues of
assistance, this study highlights that it is both within the local and international realm that
historical transformation takes place, not as isolated domains of action, but interactive
and, perhaps, co-dependent. In brief, the case of Romania provides ample evidence that
the experience of foreign assistance in the new states of Southeastern Europe is a series
of multiple and simultaneous political, cultural or social contestations and exchanges.
More specifically, rather than assuming local communities cannot be heard, this study
explores patterns of relief and reconstruction supported by foreign actors while shaped by
the domestic’s own transformations.
A Note on Sources
This working paper is mainly based on the preliminary research I undertook in
Romanian National Archives and the National Library In Bucharest. The National
3
Archives have perhaps the most accessible collections for the Romanian research
standards. In the initial phases of my research I consulted materials on diplomatic/foreign
relations in order to establish the Romania-US relation status during the WWI and during
the interwar period. This was a mandatory approach to this preliminary research, as there
are no studies on the relationship between the two states in the time frame of this paper
and the larger project. In these collections I found reports of legations, American Red
Cross documents, a few American Relief Administration documents, letters between
diplomats regarding sociopolitical tensions in the region, as well as papers of American
companies present in Romania, such as Standard Oil.3 Further, I consulted a large set of
files of the interwar Ministry of Propaganda. These included newspaper collections, as
well as diplomatic reports in relation to Romanian-US political and non-political
activities. Issues of prestige and need of American legitimation in the post-war phase
were, surprisingly, recurrent aspects discussed in reports and Romanian media at the
time. Further, I found the National Library an extremely important source in tracing
publications of the time; here I managed to find a few copies of interwar journal Arhiva
Pentru Stiinta si Reforma Sociala (Archive for Science and Social Reform). A few
articles of the 1920s highlight perceptions and visions on modernization and national
consolidation.
This working paper has also been informed by memoirs and diaries, as well as
annual reports of American Relief Administration and Rockefeller Foundation, the main
organizations that I chose to analyze. I envision that a more complete analysis of the
competing views and negotiation dynamics between Romanian representatives and their
American counterparts would be developed once a thorough research would be
undertaken at the Hoover Archives at Stanford University and Rockefeller Foundation
Archives.
1. Liberal Nationalism
It is important to overview the ideological trajectory and transformations of liberal
nationalism in Romania in order to understand the “interaction” with American
3
USA Microfilms, Rolls 650, 660, 686, 659, Inventory 1737, 1803, National Archives of Romania,
Bucharest.
4
humanitarian involvement. In their ideological framing, Romanian Liberals did not
attempt to trace the fundamental liberal principles back to their Western European roots,
but to the national past, its traditions and values. As the leading liberal Mihail
Kogalniceanu pointed out, “the real civilization is the one that derives from our bosom,
by reforming and improving the institutions of the past with the ideas and successes of
the present.”4 The motto under which the Liberal Party functioned was framed through
the ideological tag prin noi insine [by ourselves]; this was essentially an expression of
indigenous adaptation of Western models of modernity. The focus on the “indigenous”
was highlighted by liberal leader and eventual Prime Minister, Ion I. C. Bratianu. He
noted in 1905 that
‘The National Liberal Party’ was not born as a spontaneous and theoretical entity, as a mere scholarly
conception…The National Liberal Party emerged as the expression of a real and major need of our
state and people. It was constantly the agency that fulfilled Romania’s vital necessities and the first
need it had to respond to, the one that preceded and encompassed all others, the one from which it took
even its national-liberal name, was the need to warrant the national existence of the Romanians.5
At its basis, this formula captured Romanian Liberals’ protectionist and nationalist
concerns, but also their belief in self-help as means of social and political modernization.
It meant an economic policy, pursued strictly with the aid of the state institutions, a
mobilization of all productive national resources, human and material against the
prevalence of foreigners and their potential capital in Romanian economy.6 This
approach was particularly evident in the words of the Prime Minister and Liberal leader
of the late nineteenth century Ion C. Bratianu who assessed that a nation conquered by
arms kept its right to freedom, but if it was “conquered by economic means, it is
destroyed forever, legally, as well as factually.”7 The guiding policy according to the
Liberals was, therefore, the creation of a state-protected national industry, without
involvement of foreigners in trade, and defense for the properties of “local owners.” The
idea of “national existence” was to be translated to national unity and political
Eugen Lovinescu, Istoria Civilizatiei Romane Moderne (Bucharest: Minerva, 1972), 122.
Daniel Barbu and Cristian Preda, “Building the State from the Roof Down: Varieties of Romanian Liberal
Nationalism,” in Liberty and the Search for Identity: Liberal Nationalims and the Legacy of Empires, ed.
Ivan Zoltan Denes (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2006), 378
6 See Diana Mishkova, “Balkan Liberalisms: Historical Routes of a Modern Ideology,” in Entangled
Histories of the Balkans-Volume Two: Transfers of Political Ideologies and Institutions, Roumen Daskalov
and Diana Mishkova eds. (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2013), 99-198.
7
Ion C. Bratianu, Acte si cuvantari, Vol.2, Part 1 (Bucharest : Editura Cartea Romaneasca, 1938), 249-250.
4
5
5
consolidation through the assimilation of not only the liberal doctrine and institutions but
also the major social issue into a system of “national priorities.”8 It was strongly rooted at
the basis of the Liberal group and it shaped post-war aspirations. Future Prime Minister
Ion G. Duca later summarized this position by noting that the Liberal Party of Romania
“embraces all forms of nationalism-theoretical, cultural and economic.”9
The “foreigners,” especially Jews, were perceived as burdens for the envisioned
prevalence of Romanians in sectors of the economy that the Liberals considered crucial
for their projects of modernization.10 Given their nationalistic logic, the Liberals came out
as opponents to Jewish emancipation despite previous stances about “natural rights” and
equality of humans. In one instance, Kogalniceanu, who had previously fought for the
emancipation of the Gypsies, now argued that if certain rights were denied to Jews,
Bulgarians and Armenians, this was because of their greater numbers. The actual
meaning of this change was made evident when he urged the Parliament, during the
debates on the politics of nationalization of Dobrogea, “to make national laws before
making liberal ones.”11 This is a declaration that, in many ways, marked the co-existence
of liberalism and nationalism in the Romanian context.
2. Emergency Relief
The historiography of interwar Romania treats the 1918 moment of the Great
Unification as an epoca de aur, the golden age of Romanian history, as the post-war
peace treaties resulted in expanded borders, population and potential of natural wealth.
This, in turn, put Romania in the position of being one of the best-rewarded combatants.
The war, however, had brought Romania to its knees. In October 1919 a letter signed by
Natalia Costachi, a Romanian peasant, found its way to the American State Department.
The letter aimed to ask for the already renowned American Relief Administration
8
Mishkova, “Balkan Liberalisms: Historical Routes of a Modern Ideology,” 174-175.
Ion G. Duca, “Doctrina Liberala,” in Doctrinele Partidelor Politice: 19 Prelegeri Publice, Dimitrie Gusti
et al. (Bucharest: Editura Nationala, 1923), 103-105.
10 William Oldson, A Providential Anti-Semitism: Nationalism and Polity in Nineteenth Century Romania
(Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1991), 139-164.
11 Constantin Iordachi, Citizenship, Nation and State-Building: The Integration of Northern Dobrogea into
Romania, 1878-1913 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002), 270.
9
6
assistance in order to help feed the fifteen members of her family. The image fit the one
of American observers in the ARA regarding the ravages generated by the WWI in
Romania. The first Bucharest Mission head, US Army Captain Joseph Green was
essentially amazed by the severity of the poverty in Bucharest during the winter of 19181919. He reported to Hoover that the population of the city was “the most starved
looking lot of people I have seen in Europe [and] all of them complained that their
children had died for lack of food.”12
For some American leaders, including Herbert Hoover, their presence in the
region was correlated with avoiding social disorder and a subsequent dissolve of
Bolshevism threat. In one instance, Hoover noted on the ARA’s activities in Romania
that “…the dangers of Bolshevist insurrection have been greatly lessened if not entirely
obviated by the arrival of our food cargoes…It is, however, still the chief topic of
conversation.”13 In relation to the domestic politics of the time, an interpretation suggests
an overlapping of agendas. In fact, I argue that it is also possible that Romania’s Prime
Minister Ion I.C. Bratianu and the leaders of the Liberal Party assessed their post-war and
post-unification nationalist concerns regarding the social agitations in Bessarabia, the
famine and the threat of Bolshevism in the newly acquired territory as complementary to
the ARA agenda.14 In his memoir titled Secrets of the Balkans Envoy Extraordinary and
Minister Plenipotentiary to Romania Charles Vopicka recollected that Bratianu “has
asked us to send another appeal to our governments for food and relief, because he fears
that Romania, which all through the war has resisted the Bolshevik influence, might now
offer a new home for it if the famine is not immediately remedied.”15 Despite this aspect,
current research shows that the emergency post-war needs of relief also trumped the
long-term liberal nationalist aspirations in the immediate aftermath of the war. At the
Paris Peace Conference Bratianu found himself in the position of subordinating
nationalist politics to American “humanitarian” presence.
12
Herbert Hoover, An American Epic, Vol.3: Famine in Forty-Five Nations, The Battle on the Front Line
1914-1923 (Chicago: Regenery, 1961), 141
13
Herbet Hoover, Memoirs: Years of Adventure, 1874-1929 (New York, NY: The Macmillan Company,
1951), 409
14
Irina Livezeanu, Cultural politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building and Ethnic
Struggle, 1918-1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 98.
15
Charles Vopicka, Secrets of the Balkans (Chicago: McNally & Company, 1921), 288
7
In Romania and everywhere else in Europe, Herbert Hoover and the ARA focused
their work on food distribution, clothing, and medical assistance or railway
reconstruction. However, the ARA assistance was loan-based and the implications of this
modus operandi proved to be crucial for Romanian political elites who were faced with
the crises generated by the war destruction. The long-term solutions envisioned by
Romanian political elites were through the indigenous means of sovereignty
establishment, national consolidation through nation-building, political, economic and
social modernization and legitimacy through state-building. This approach was, however,
at odds with the realities of the Romanian internal ability to address relief and
reconstruction challenges and the subsequent dependency on American aid became clear.
In the political sphere, the Paris Peace Conference was marked by behind-the-scenes
clashes between Romania’s Premier, Ion I.C. Bratianu, and the American representatives
regarding conditions of aid. Those clashes suggest that the nationalist stance or
aspirations of Romania’s political elites were, in fact, put in check by the soon-to-be
American assistance presence. This was evident in the negotiation scheme with American
representatives in Paris that pressured Romania to use natural resources, oil fields in
particular, as leverage to the ARA’s “humanitarian” support.
Unlike its Balkan neighbor, Serbia, Romania did not represent a cause celebre for
Americans during the First World War.16 Even more so, historic sources attest that
serious diplomatic and reputation problems between the US and Romania were bluntly
manifested at the Paris Peace Conference. On the American side a few factors arguably
contributed to political antagonisms manifested at the conference: first, there is the
American interest in the civil liberties of the Romanian minorities; second, the prevailing
concept of Romanian backwardness among the main European and American leaders;17
third, according to an American observer of the postwar situation in Romania, Charles
16
See Linda Killen, Testing the Peripheries: US-Yugoslav Economic Relations in the Interwar Years
(Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1994).
17
When Bratianu took the floor, Lloyd George audibly said “This damned fellow, he cannot even get coats
for his soldiers without us.” Taken from Carole Fink, Defending the Rights of Others: the Great Powers,
the Jews, and International Minority Protection, 1878-1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004), 234.
8
Clark, “a remarkably sympathy with Hungary and some on part of Americans with
Bulgaria” in the context of a dispute around the established borders.18
For Romanians, the outcome of the Conference was not what Romanian Liberals
had in mind. In January 1919 Bratianu departed from a shattered and starving country to
attend the peace negotiations in Paris. Nevertheless, he publicly feared before his
departure that Romania was “regarded as an unfortunate deserving pity, and not as an ally
with full rights to justice.”19 Bratianu arguably did not intend to lose any potential peace
benefits and believed that bold diplomacy could counterbalance the defeat of the
Romanian military, and thus open the possibility for Romania to join the table of the
Great Powers. Despite an ambitious position, most certainly based on the confidence of
an enlarged country, what Bratianu found in the spring of 1919 was a blatant “oil
offensive” through the voices of the representatives of some great allied powers who had
specific agendas to take over the new country’s national resources. In the end, despite
Bratianu’s proclaimed “by ourselves” political philosophy, he eventually found himself
forced to use the country’s resources as a hidden leverage to negotiate credits assistance.
While this paper does not discuss the issues of credits and relief bonds, it is worth
emphasizing the exceptional post-war crisis of survival Romania found in WWI
aftermath. As Romanian historian Gheorghe Buzatu notes, “Romania’s interest in
obtaining credits from the Allies at the beginning of the year 1919 was so great that the
Ministry of Finance in Bucharest indicated to the Legation in Paris that the government
was ready to receive “any conditions” regarding oil as long as the solicited financial
support was not delayed.”20
In the context of a Romania highly pressured by its historical allies21 (i.e. France),
negotiations with the ARA and its entry on Romanian territory emerged as valid solutions
to the post-war relief crisis. An agreement in this matter was signed in Paris, on 28
February 1919, between Ion I.C. Bratianu and Herbert Hoover. According to the clauses
of the agreement, the Americans would send to Romania large quantities of food
supplies, equipment etc. Strict to the ARA’s modus operandi, according to the clauses of
18
Ecaterina Petrina, “The Impact of the Rockefeller Foundation on Romanian Scientific Development,
1920-1939” (unpublished PhD Thesis, Cornell University, August 1997), 138-139.
19
Vopicka, Secrets of the Balkans, 290.
20
Gheorghe Buzatu,A History of Romanian Oil, Vol. II (Bucharest: Editura Mica Valahie, 2004), 220.
21
France even pushed harder than the rest of the powers, increasingly until 1923.
9
the agreement, some products were sold with reductions up to 30 percent of their real
cost, and monthly credits of 5 million dollars were given as payment. The deal came with
its share of complications as Americans pressured Romanian officials not to close any
agreements with the British or the French regarding the eventual sharing of national
resources, particularly oil. In fact, Bernard Baruch, financier and Woodrow Wilson’s
close advisor on economic matters, even threatened that, if Romania closed any oil
agreement contrary to the interests of the Americans, then the US government would
cease the provisioning through the ARA regardless of the country’s actual needs; also,
Baruch concluded, Romania could not hope for the help of Washington “in any areas”
either.22 Baruch’s action was immediately followed by Herbert Hoover’s pressure. In a
note addressed to Bratianu, the president of ARA was clear that he was considering the
interruption of Romania’s supply. The pressure from the Americans, initially forced
Bratianu to call “to make […] a declaration that binds us to not close any agreement.”23
However, Bratianu’s fears were becoming a reality as “the Americans had been unwilling
to negotiate and had already ordered the cessation of the supply.”24 This was a
paradoxical approach considering that the same Hoover had agreed to use blockade as a
bargaining chip in bringing down the unwanted government of Bela Kun in Hungary, but
was now openly condemning the Romanian policies.25
Much can be said about the paternalism and the political and economic interests
of the ARA’s “humanitarianism” and conditionality pushed upon the aid receivers.
Through the umbrella of food relief ARA had become an important source of information
for American big business, with Eastern Europe becoming a new target area for future
American investments. On the side of the Americans this was a rather transparent
process, as part of the transfer of American scientific management to backwards
countries was to bring valuable revenue to American businesses on one hand, and also
portray the US abroad as a highly industrialized and modern nation. Further, food relief
22
Ion I.C Bratianu to M. Pherekyde, Radiogram, 23 April 1919, Fund 71/1914, E2 Petrol, Vol. 223,
Arhivele Ministerului Afacerilor Externe, Bucharest, Romania.
23 Ion I.C. Bratianu, Radiogram, 4 May 1919, Fund 71/1914, E2 Petrol, vol. 223, Arhivele Ministerului
Afacerilor Externe, Bucharest, Romania
24
Ibid.
25
See Tibor Glant, “Herbert Hoover and Hungary, 1918-1923,” Hungarian Journal of English and
American Studies, Vol. 8, No.2 (Fall 2002), 95-109.
10
helped to propagate the idea that the US could not only win the war, but also the war with
hunger; through this, US businesses attempted to gain access to foreign consumer
societies and add economic value to the post-war period. Bratianu assessed the
interrelated business-humanitarian assistance issues and the connected coercion as a
shrewd method to “take advantage of our difficulties in order to exploit us.”26 According
to the Romanian Prime Minister, the oil question should not have been attacked in the
conditions that Romania found itself in 1919-a state in full reorganization and dependent
under many aspects on the West. Otherwise, Romania would have been forced to make
important concessions regarding oil, many against its national interests.”27 In response,
Hoover described Bratianu as a “horse thief.”28 It can be argued that this clash was the
result of American capitalism and offensive investment strategies as coexisting with the
ARA’s humanitarian endeavors.29 Bratianu himself suggested that such pressures came
through the lobbying of corporate groups such as Standard Oil.30 At the basis of these
events however remained Bratianu’s and Liberal nationalists’ positions as eventually
reduced to the marriage between ideology and the view of “state and nation-building
from within,” and the realities “on the ground” as the relief crises essentially called for a
pragmatic attitude regarding external support. Hence, the Romanian government
continued an initial close, yet burdening, relationship with the US, who was transferring
significant aid to Romania.
The starvation and chaos that Romania was facing in the aftermath of the war led
to a compromise from the part of the political groups regardless of their nationalist
position. Bratianu seemed to know that any prejudice against the Romanian state and lack
of aid shipments from Hoover were to throw Romania in a fierce battle for survival while
at the center of an international dispute regarding its oil fields.
26
Ion I.C. Bratianu to M. Pherekyde, Radiogram, 23 April 1919.
Buzatu, A History of Romanian Oil, 234.
28 Stephen Bonsal, Suitors and Suppliants: the Little Nations at Versailles (Port Washington, NY: Prentice
Hall, 1969), 170-171.
29
Buzatu, A History of Romanian Oil; Emily Rosenberg hints to the general economic and cultural
expansion in Spreading the American Dream (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982)
30
Ion I.C. Bratianu to M. Pherekyde, Letter, 27 April 1919, Fund 71/1914, E2 Petrol, Vol 223, Arhivele
Ministerului Afacerilor Externe, Bucharest, Romania.
27
11
3. Reconstruction
The 1920s marked a crisis of reconstruction in political, social and economic
spheres. The dilemmas of Romanian political elites were related largely to issues of
assimilation or simple integration of social, political and economic forces that stemmed
from the break-up of the different empires. The political solution that the Liberals in
power envisioned for Romanian modernization and consolidation was through a
nationalist ideology and related policies as they continued to use the philosophical
doctrine “by ourselves” in the first half of the 1920s. After the compromising leverage of
natural resources and the subsequent takeover by foreign capital, the Constitution ratified
in 1923 included the aspect of nationalized subsoil natural resources, confirming the
worst fears of Americans. In fact Ray Hall, the Near East expert for the State
Department’s Office of the Foreign Trade Advisers, reported to his superiors in 1921 that
“Romania is another China,” in that its great natural resources would remain “locked up
for generations through the corruption and incompetence of the Romanian people and the
Romanian Government.” 31 On the other hand, I.G. Duca specified in 1923 that the
National Liberal Party did not intend to build “Chinese walls” and the cooperation with
foreign countries had become necessary.32 The year 1923 was, coincidentally, the year
when the Rockefeller Foundation started its activities in Romania after a significant delay
when compared to the other neighboring countries. Was this new philanthropic presence
an instance of collaboration between foreign and domestic forces in Romania? This
subsection of the paper follows the pre-entry complexities and paradoxes of the
relationship between the philanthropic organization’s interest, its agenda and the
domestic nationalist politics. The main argument is that from the perspective of the RF,
Romania’s liberal interwar nationalism represented a problem for its entry and
subsequent activities. At the same time the needs of assistance kept the intended
31
Ray Hall to Fletcher, 31 March 1921, Decimal Files, 871.77/57, State Department Archives. Taken
from Justin Classen, “A Secret Power: American Multinationals and the Construction of Greater Romania,
1919- 1926” (master’s thesis, Indiana University Bloomington, July 2010), 38.
32
Duca, Doctrina Liberala, 105.
12
nationalist offensive in check, whereas internal pressures and crises of reforming a
unified state led to an eventual local-international collaboration.
Besides the immediate concerns regarding food, refugees and infrastructure, the
WWI left deep scars on Romanian institutions of health and education. Hundreds of
scientists and physicians had lost their lives; laboratories and other major research
facilities had been destroyed or looted by the Germans.33 Romania’s scientific
community was weak in specialized scientists who could devote themselves exclusively
to research and no private foundations existed to fund basic research. As such, in order to
meet the needs of society as it underwent the period of transition, the infrastructure and
process of academic instruction and practice needed to be strengthened. Undoubtedly,
Romania went through significant progress when it comes to scientific research and
academic development between the two world wars. Romanian historiography attributed
this progress to the work of the first Romanian scientific elite who had been educated
before 1920 in traditional European institutions. However, a closer scrutiny of
developments reveals that the whole enterprise was considerably influenced by American
philanthropic organizations, the RF in particular.
By the end of WWI, the RF had established itself among the world’s largest
privately endowed philanthropic organizations. Its International Health Board
coordinated programs to encourage, develop and improve scientific and medical
facilities, education, treatment and research. Although it did on occasion supply
personnel, the RF’s strategy was based on the idea of “helping others to help
themselves.34 The foundation granted support following a strategic model in medicine
conceived by Frederick T. Gates. According to the model, there were three categories of
countries: (1) the developed countries, comprising the United States and the Great
Britain;35 (2) the Western European countries, where the American model could be
transferred and implemented; and (3) the “undeveloped” or “backward” countries, among
33
Petrina, “The Impact of the Rockefeller Foundation on Romanian Scientific Development, 1920-1939,”
6.
34
Linda Killen, “The Rockefeller Foundation in the First Yugoslavia,” East European Quarterly, Vol. 24,
No.3 (Sept. 1990): 349-372.
35 Only the USA satisfying the requirements Gates had in mind in terms of scientific manpower, academic
institutions, and a society aware of the importance of public health. In Petrina, “The Impact of the
Rockefeller Foundation on Romanian Scientific Development, 1920-1939,” 23.
13
which Romania was placed as one of the Balkan countries. On paper, countries from the
third category, like Romania, were eligible to receive support for developing a public
health system similar to that developed in the United States. In Romania, between 19231940 RF funding reached $455,121.21 for projects related to building physical and
scientific infrastructure in Romanian institutions. The most important of these funds went
to public health projects helmed by Iuliu Moldovan, followed by projects for nursing,
social sciences and demography. 113 fellows were offered travel grants during the
interwar interval. Each spent an extended period of time examining the research and
academic debates over public health at Johns Hopkins University and in other places,
such as Charles Davenport’s laboratory in Long Island. Despite these actions, it is
surprising that until late 1923, the response of the Foundation to a country devastated by
contagious diseases, weak infrastructure and with the geopolitical strategic position on
the fringes of Russia and Western Europe was two subscriptions to medical journals for
the year of 1922.36 Despite apparently impressive achievements of the organization for
Romanian standards, the RF presence in the country was delayed when compared to
neighboring countries and, I argue, in many ways, but not uniquely, due to the liberal
nationalist-oriented political context and the relatively subtle frictions between the
political leaders of the time and their American counterparts.
First, the liberal government and its leaders, especially Bratianu, had become
persona non grata in the eyes of the Americans largely due to the tenuous businessoriented relationship. American historian Charles Clark went as far to suggest that one of
United States’ political interests was to eliminate the Bratianu, and to replace him with
someone who could “listen to” and “understand” the American interests.37 The preference
of the RF to intensify their work after 1928, when the National Peasant Party (NPP) came
to power, leads to interpretation that the RF interest in Romania was often correlated with
the evolution of domestic politics. In fact, Iuliu Moldovan, an important figure in the
NPP and the RF’s main point of connection in Romania, viewed Ion I.C. Bratianu’s
National Liberal Party as dishonest, opportunistic, and disinterested in the general
welfare of the nation and especially in the vital regional problems.
36
The Rockefeller Foundation, Annual Report 1922. Accessed at
http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/uploads/files/0ae0ca6f-52ce-46f4-8ef4-928493ca5b20-1922.pdf.
37
Charles Clark, Greater Romania (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1922), 282.
14
A second explanation complements the idea of diplomatic frictions and points to a
series of interests shaped by the liberal nationalist agenda of the Romanian government.
As suggested by the diplomat Aureliu Ion Popescu in what seemed like a manifesto
published in the Arhiva Pentru Reforma si Stiinta Sociala, it is very possible that the
Foundation simply waited for an official request from the Romanian government that
came in 1922.38 Then, the RF was invited to enter Romania by the Ministry of Public
Health, based on a conversation that Romanian scientist Dr. Cantacuzino had with
Selskar M. Gunn at the foundation’s office in Paris.39 When that came, however, the
difference in agendas was evident. At the time, Romania did not have a self-proclaimed
apolitical middle-man like Yugoslavia’s notorious public health technocrat Andrija
Stampar in relation with the Rockefeller Foundation. A look at the initial liberal policies
of education and public health do suggest a cultural and nationalist offensive in the case
of education40 and a lack of interest in establishing a technocratic public health system as
opposed to a largely state-owned, “political” system.41 In this context, the Romanian
government requested assistance from the Foundation simply for building university
structures. Thus, it could be argued that this fundamentally contradicted the Foundation’s
main focus on fellowships and actual transfer of scientific knowledge in the 1920s.
Therefore, without a common platform of activity the RF found very few avenues to
establish the public health system in the “American way,” through an American method
as it had arguably tried in the neighboring countries, such as Yugoslavia.42
On the side of Romanians, the choice to finally request infrastructure support can
be interpreted in a double context of reconstruction: 1) a post-war crisis that was yet
addressed properly; 2) a crisis of unification and reform. First, in the aftermath of the
war, scientists, as noted above, needed better physical conditions for teaching and
performing laboratory research. Intellectual elites such as sociologist Dimitrie Gusti, an
38
Popescu suggests that this delay was strongly rooted in political ideology (correlated with “mentality”).
Aureliu Ion Popescu, “Fundatiile Rockefeller si Carnegie din Statele Unite ale Americii,” Arhiva pentru
Stiinta si Reforma Sociala, Vol. VI, No.2 (1926): 374-375.
39
Letter from the Romanian Ministry of Public Health to the Rockefeller Foundation’s Board, 31 October,
1922, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Tarrytown, New York, USA. Taken from Ecaterina Petrina, “The
Impact of the Rockefeller Foundation on Romanian Scientific Development, 1920-1939,” 134.
40
Argument presented by Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics.
41
Maria Bucur, Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Period (Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University
Press, 2002), 199.
42
Killen, “The Rockefeller Foundation in the First Yugoslavia,” 356.
15
eventual collaborator of the Foundation, often highlighted the relation between science
and national modernization and consolidation through the idea of sociology as the
“science of the nation.”43 Second, the unification of the territories brought about a
dramatic increase in numbers of students and need for larger spaces for schools and
universities. Lastly, the bulk of the scientific community was established in Cluj, the
main city of the Transylvanian territories. In the aftermath of the Unification the former
Hungarian faculty did not recognize the Romanian government, left the institution in
1919 with many establishing themselves in Hungary.44 Intellectual and scientific support,
albeit merely infrastructure-based, could have been perceived as a way to consolidate
Transylvania as part of Romania through intellectual and scientific tools, and thus, avoid
ethnic conflict between the intellectual elites.
The delayed request for Rockefeller support that was already so prevalent among
neighboring countries was in sync with the liberal nationalist ideology, “by ourselves.”
At the same time, I argue that the Romanian government was further forced in a position
to compromise the nationalist stance in relation to the American philanthropic support.
Even with a “mere” infrastructural assistance, this essentially improved the scientific
progress often at the basis of the reconstruction process of the 1920s, as well as
confirmed the pragmatic approach to national aspirations of consolidation.
4. The Jews: A factor of contention?
The important aspect of the plight of Jews in Romania is crucial in establishing the
tenuous relationship between American humanitarian practices and nationalist aspirations
of the incumbent liberals in Greater Romania. While further research needs to be
undertaken in the archives of the ARA and the RF,45 the organizations this paper has
43
Dimitrie Gusti, “Problema natiunii,” Arhiva pentru Stiinta si Reforma Sociala, Vol. I, No.2 (1919), 577;
Dimitrie Gusti, “Stiinta Natiunii,” Sociologie Romaneasca, Vol. II, No.2 (1937): 45-59.
44
Gabor Pallo, “Make a Peak on the Plain: The Rockefeller Foundation’s Szeged Project,” in William H.
Schneider ed., Rockefeller Philanthropy & Modern Biomedicine: International Initiatives from World War
I to the Cold War (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2002), 90.
45
The Joint Distribution Committee and American Red Cross are the other key organizations very active in
wartime and post-war Romania. The JDC was specifically catered towards helping Jewish populations
abroad, whereas the ARC was a Christian organization. From the perspective of institutional history it is
very possible that these organizations collaborated among each other as seen in the case of Poland. See
Fink, Defending the Rights of Others, 176-177.
16
focused on, this subsection aims to explore a hypothesis mainly based on secondary
sources. Thus far, research suggests that the status of Jews in newly formed Greater
Romania played a role in the bilateral relations between Romania and the US. Further
investigation would establish however whether this translated to the eventual motivations
and practices of American humanitarians, as well as in the perception and response of the
Romanian government in the sphere of humanitarian politics.
Romania, the US, and other Western Powers had been at odds regarding the treatment
and emancipation of Jews in Romania since the mid-nineteenth century. After Romanian
autonomy was guaranteed by the Great Powers under the 1858 Convention of Paris, the
status of Jews became ambiguous. For example, Article 46 recognized the existence of
Jewish Romanians by guaranteeing all Moldavians and Wallachians equality “before the
law in taxation, and…access to public office in each principality,” but explicitly restricted
political rights to the adherents of “all Christian confessions.”46 However, Romanians
increasingly maintained Jews were aliens and denied them civil and political rights. 47 By
1870s, Romania became “a test for Jewish power” in the international arena.48
The United States, previously uninvolved in other European treaties or in trade with
Romania showed interest in the events regarding Jewry in the 1870s. Following a direct
appeal by Jewish leaders, President Ulysses S. Grant dispatched a Jewish consul,
Benjamin Peixotto, financed by the American Jewish community, to do “missionary
work for the benefit of the people he represents.”49 Despite failing to change policies
towards Jews, this episode arguably marked a first step in the crystallization and growing
acceptance in the international arena for the principle of humanitarian intervention in the
affairs of another state. More importantly, I hypothesize that it provided an important
precedent for the post-WWI American humanitarian motivations and interests in
nationalist Greater Romania.
In response to appeals from Jewish communities across Eastern Europe and the
Middle East, by late summer 1914 American Jews had sent millions of dollars abroad to
46
Carol Iancu, Jews in Romania, 1866-1919: From Exclusion to Emancipation (Boulder, CO and New
York: East European Monographs, 1996), 33.
47
Abigail Green, “Intervening in the Jewish Question, 1840-1878,” in Humanitarian Intervention: A
History, eds. Brendan Simms and D.J.B. Trim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 154.
48
Fink, Defending the Rights of Others, 15.
49
Taken from Green, “Intervening in the Jewish question,” 157.
17
relieve Jews affected by the First World War. This aid was delivered before and after the
United States entered the war. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC)
for instance created an entire tour de force in establishing complex, dynamic international
networks in order to find information about suffering Jews and to channel funds for their
relief during and after the war. The involvement of US State Department, foreign
governments or other Jewish organizations operation portrays a powerful image of
America’s progressive involvement in relieving Jewish populations.50 How much did this
high level involvement, however, matter in the response of recipient nations?
At the diplomatic level, in early 1918, Czechoslovakia’s Thomas Masaryk issued
what was considered a “fine” public statement on granting minority rights in the future of
the country. However, by 1919 Romanian and Polish politicians joined together to
oppose the minority treaties, as they denied any danger to their minorities and rejected
the Jews’ proposal for special rights and protection. When the time of discussion around
minority treaties came, Prime Minister Bratianu led an attack on their political
component. He singled out the imposed obligations for the small states, while the Great
Powers had avoided a minority-protection clause in the League of Nations covenant.
Even more so, he complained of an assault on Romania’s honor and sovereignty, warning
that the threat of foreign interference would not establish peace in the region, and, most
certainly would not ensure national consolidation. According to Bratianu,
…if minorities are conscious of the fact that the liberties, which they enjoy are guaranteed to them
not by the solicitude for their welfare of the State to which they belong but by the protection of a
foreign State…the basis of that State will be undermined…the seed…sown of unrest.51
At this stage of this largely incomplete research, it is unclear whether the “Jewish
Question” in the Romanian context, as well as previous involvement of US and other
Western Powers, played a crucial role in shaping of the motivations, practices and
responses to American assistance in Romania. Despite very limited research, it would not
be implausible to consider the negative reputation Romania had gained around the
complicated issue of minorities. In the early part of the 1920s, Romania most certainly
did not exhibit the characteristics of a country that deserved support. The Jewish
50
Jaclyn Granick, “Waging Relief: the politics and logistics of American Jewish war relief in Europe and
the Near East (1914-1918),” First World War Studies: Humanitarianism in the Era of the First World War,
Vol.5, No. 1 (2014), 55.
51
Fink, 232-233.
18
population had a particular status within Romanian society, granted by the government,
leading to the labeling of Romania as an inherently anti-Semitic country. Reversely, as
seen in the politics surrounding the entries of the ARA and the RF, Romanian nationalists
led by Bratianu were reluctant to open a leeway to foreign forces, albeit humanitarian by
definition. An initial hypothesis is that beyond economic motivations these were
perceived as a danger to the “minority management” and related national consolidation
and modernization aspirations along liberal nationalist lines. Therefore, the rallying
behind helping Jewish populations in Europe in the aftermath of the war among
American Jews could also suggest that America’s “communitarian” humanitarianism was
at odds with Liberal nationalists’ vision on the role of minorities in the newly formed
Greater Romania. The impact and the limitations of this “conflict” of interests, however,
are left for further research avenues.
CONCLUSION
This working paper attempted to follow a few preliminary perspectives on the
Romanian response to American humanitarian involvement in the immediate post-WWI
period. Despite incumbent Liberals’ aspirations of national and state consolidation, as
well as modernization from the within, the realities on the ground called for a pragmatic
solution of compromise in relation to American organizations with agendas of relief and
reconstruction. Thus, this paper suggests that Romania’s nationalist politics were in fact
shaped by American humanitarian involvement in the immediate between 1919 and 1923.
At the same time, preliminary research shows that American response to Romania’s
nationalist policies was lukewarm at best, leading to a tenuous relationship between the
donor and recipient nation, essentially questioning the limits of “humanitarianism” as
defined in this paper. Looking beyond this time frame, a few questions emerge regarding
the local/global narrative that the larger project proposes: how did the political and social
transformation (e.g. policies towards Jews, transfer of political power etc.) of interwar
Romania impact the presence of American organizations, their motivations and their
eventual involvement? To what extent does subordination of nationalist practices remain
intact beyond the year 1923 within the narrative of reconstruction? In what way were the
19
actual projects and practices proposed by Rockefeller Foundation, Carnegie Foundation,
Joint Distribution Committee or the American Red Cross transferable or directly
transferred to the Romanian domestic reform of modernization?
20