|
Romania Romania under Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen
With the tacit support of Napoleon III, Ion Bratianu,
the
leader of Romania's Liberals, nominated Prince Charles of
southern
Germany's Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen family as the new
prince. Over
objections from the other European powers, the Romanians
elected
the twenty-seven-year-old prince, who, disguised as a
salesman,
traveled through Austria by second-class rail and
steamboat to
accept the throne.
Charles (1866-1914) worked to provide Romania with
efficient
administration. In July 1866, the principality gained a
new
constitution that established a bicameral legislature,
gave the
prince power to veto legislation, proclaimed equality
before the
law, and contained guarantees of freedom of religion,
speech, and
assembly. Most of the constitution's civil-rights
provisions,
however, were not enforced, and it extended voting rights
only to
the landed aristocracy and clergy. The document also
limited
naturalization to Christians, a measure aimed at denying
civil
rights to Jews living in or migrating to the principality.
The
Romanian Orthodox Church became the official state
religion.
Charles, a Roman Catholic, pledged to raise his successor
in the
Romanian Orthodox Church.
The Franco-Prussian War in 1870 precipitated a
political crisis
as Francophile Liberal Party members denounced Romania's
German
prince. In August, pro-French activists led an abortive
revolt
against Charles at Ploiesti. Although the government
quickly
suppressed the uprising, a jury acquitted the leaders. A
scandal
erupted when a Prussian-Jewish contractor bungled
construction of
key Romanian rail links and defaulted on interest payments
to
Prussian bondholders; the Liberals denounced Charles for
pledging
to back the bonds. In March 1871 the Bucharest police
looked on as
an angry crowd attacked a hall in which Germans had
gathered to
celebrate Prussian war victories. A day later, Charles
handed his
abdication to the regents who had installed him. They
convinced the
prince to remain on the throne, however, and mustered
conservative
forces to support him.
Charles backed Russia during the Russo-Turkish War of
1877-78.
He allowed Russian troops to transit Romania and
personally led the
Romanian army to aid Russian forces bogged down before
Plevna, in
the north of present-day Bulgaria. Finally, after the
Ottomans'
defeat, Charles proclaimed Romania's independence, ending
five
centuries of vassalage. Despite the Romanian army's
heroism at
Plevna, Russia refused to allow Romania to participate in
peace
negotiations or in the 1878 Congress of Berlin. At Berlin,
Russia
gained southern Bessarabia from Romania and as recompense
offered northern
Dobruja (see Glossary),
a barren land between the
Danube
and the Black Sea south of the river's delta then
inhabited mostly
by Turks, Bulgars, and gypsies
(see
fig. 2). The Congress
agreed to
recognize Romania's declared independence, but only if
Romania
acceded to Russia's annexation of Bessarabia and repealed
laws that
discriminated against Jews. Romania agreed, and, though
its
amendments to the discriminatory laws left many loopholes,
the
European powers in 1880 recognized Romania's independence.
The tsar
later denied Romania the fortress of Silistra, the
strategic key to
Dobruja on the south bank of the Danube, thereby deepening
Romania's distrust of Russia.
In 1881 the parliament proclaimed Romania a kingdom,
and
Charles was crowned in Bucharest's cathedral with a crown
fashioned
from an Ottoman cannon seized at Plevna. Romania enjoyed
relative
peace and prosperity for the next three decades, and the
policies
of successive Conservative and Liberal governments varied
little.
Walachian wells began pumping oil; a bridge was built
across the
Danube at Cernavoda (in Dobruja); and new docks rose at
Constanta.
Foreign trade more than tripled between 1870 and 1898, and
by 1900
the new kingdom had 14,000 kilometers of roadway and 3,100
kilometers of railroad. Charles equipped a respectable
army, and
peasant children filled newly constructed rural
schoolrooms.
Romania borrowed heavily to finance development, however,
and most
of the population continued to live in penury and
ignorance.
Mistreatment of the Jewish minority and inequitable
land
distribution also were persistently troublesome issues.
Jews had
begun immigrating into Romania in numbers after the 1829
Treaty of
Adrianople, crowding into northern Moldavia and making
Iasi a
predominantly Jewish city. In 1859 about 118,000 Jews
lived in
Moldavia and 9,200 in Walachia; by 1899 Moldavia's Jewish
population had grown to 201,000 and Walachia's to 68,000.
Economic
rivalry precipitated riots and attacks on synagogues and
Jews. The
Liberal Party, supported by the increasing numbers of
middle-class
Romanians, strove to eliminate Jewish competition. Many
rural Jews
fled to the cities or abroad, and legal restrictions
prevented all
but a few Jews from gaining Romanian citizenship.
Bloody confrontations over inequitable land
distribution
brought partial agrarian reform. In the late nineteenth
century
about 2,000 landowners controlled over half of Romania's
land;
peasants held only one-third of the acreage. Beside
limited
ownership, peasants also had little representation in
government.
Their discontent exploded in 1888 and prompted an
ineffective land
reform. In 1907 peasants revolted even more violently in
Moldavia,
where they attacked Jewish middlemen, pillaged large
estates,
battled the army, and attempted to march on Bucharest. The
government called out the army to quell the disorder, in
which at
least 10,000 peasants died. After the revolt, the
government
dispersed some 4 million hectares of land to the peasants
in
parcels of 1 to 61 hectares; large landowners retained
about 3
million hectares.
An almost obsessive distrust of Russia prompted Charles
to sign
a secret treaty of alliance with Austria-Hungary, Germany,
and
Italy in 1883. Thus Charles' kingdom became one of the
Central
Powers. Romania openly fortified military defenses along
its
Russian border and left unprotected the Transylvanian
mountain
passes into Hungary. However, Charles withheld knowledge
of the
pact even from successive premiers and foreign ministers
until
1914. For years the king kept Romania's only copy of the
treaty
locked in his personal safe at the royal summer retreat.
Romania's alliance with Austria-Hungary did little to
ease the
strain in relations between the two countries that Hungary
was
creating with its efforts to Magyarize Transylvania's
Romanian
majority. Romanian nationalism smoldered in Transylvania
during the
period of the Dual Monarchy. The National Party advocated
restoration of Transylvania's historic autonomy; Hungary,
however,
opposed both autonomy and any expanded voting rights that
would
give Romanians the region's dominant voice. By the turn of
the
century, Bucharest's calls for unification of Romanians in
Transylvania, Bukovina, and Bessarabia grew stronger.
Data as of July 1989
|
