Codrul Cosminului (Dec 2009)
"La question juive" dans les relations externes de la Roumanie à la fin du XIX-ème siècle
Abstract
The first Romanian modern Constitution of 1866 generated – by its restrictive character towards the political and civil rights of the non-Christian citizens in the country – a problem more and more complicated for the governmental circles from Bucharest and for Romanian diplomacy, too. The development of the so called „Jewish question” from an internal economic and social problem into a external political one was produced at the initiative and with large support of the World Jewish Alliance (founded in Paris in 1860). Together with the American Independent Order „B’nai B’rith”, the two organizations succeded to initiate and develop, by various means, a strong diplomatic pressure against Romania, in order to require her to respect proper obligations assumed by the decisions of the Congress of Berlin in 1878. The beginning of that pressure was marked by the American diplomats, either from Constantinopol, Bucharest or Washington D.C., and increased constantly up to the first decade of the XX-th Century. Otherwise, all the diplomatic and economic relations between the United States of America and Romania, since 1866 up to the end of the First World War, were dependent by the attitude of the decisional political factors from Bucharest on the Jewish question. The situation did not improve with the coming of the new Century, and in fact worsened. To the reasons already existing for the low level of bilateral relations, another aggravating element of economic and social nature was added, but dressed in strident political terms.The Jewish question was again revitalized, fostered by immigration to America, with its maximum intensity situated around the turn of the century, when the American authorities reacted in a manner and used means rejected by the Romanian political class and which were not shared by the majority of European powers. The cause was a diplomatic Appeal launched in 1902 by the American Secretary of State, John Hay, seeking to revitalise a diplomatic pressure against Romania, a gesture proved later to be inopportune and insincere on the part of its initiator. Fortunately, the unfavorable effects of the Romanian-American diplomatic incident of 1902, the motivation for which (real or supposed) underlined the primordial place or role of the Jewish question in the ensemble of relations between the two countries, were overcome by a better understanding in Washington of the political realities in the region and certainly through the efforts of its diplomatic representatives accredited in Romania.
