‘Civilized States’ and Situational Sovereignty: The Dilemmas of Romanian Neutrality,1914–1916

At five in the evening on 3 August 1914, an infirm King Carol of Romania convened a Crown Council to decide whether his country would enter the Great War on the side of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and (presumably) Italy, the states to which Romania had been allied since 1883. Carol spoke of ‘honour’ and his personal connection to the alliance partners. Former Conservative prime minister, Petre Carp was more succinct. He admonished the Council that, if Romania wanted to remain among the ‘civilized states’ (statele civilizate) it had to follow Germany and Austria-Hungary into war immediately. None of the other members of the Crown Council agreed and Romania, at least for the moment, remained out of the Great War. That decision launched a two-year period of neutrality which lasted until Romania signed an alliance with the Entente in August 1916. ¹

The idea of ‘civilized states’ that dominated the remainder of the Crown Council was not merely an intersubjective social construction (although it was that as well). It was a legal term of art (i.e., a phrase that has specific meaning in a profession or specialization) in fin de siècle international law that had a real-world application. ² It was the legally-civilized states that enjoyed the full panoply of rights, privileges, and protections under international law. Those that were not recognized as legally-civilized could suffer legal detriment, including the abrogation of treaties and, most disturbingly, a selective application of their rights as sovereign states. It was a legitimation narrative that underpinned the ‘legality’ of European colonialism in Africa and Asia, United States interventions in Latin America, and the unequal treaties that defined the Great Power relationships with China, Korea, and the Ottoman Empire.

The Romanian political and diplomatic elite in the Great War era had ample reason to doubt its international legal status. As war erupted around the Kingdom of Romania (Regat), it was a matter of national security to ensure Romania was on the legally-civilized side of an imagined divide or, if it were not, to achieve recognition of legally-civilized status. The consequences of failing to do so could include the Regat’s erasure from the map of Europe. Achieving that recognition was the Ion I. C. Brătianu government’s most pressing international issue during the Period of Neutrality (3 August 1914–17 August 1916).

This is a study of how Romania’s policy-making elite, and Ion I. C. Brătianu’s government, in particular, understood the Regat’s place in international society. Specifically, it examines how Romanian policy makers confronted the challenges of ‘situational sovereignty’ in a hierarchical system measured by levels of legal-civilization. Placing Brătianu’s diplomacy into its international legal context does more than provide a nuanced understanding of Romanian diplomacy during the Period of Neutrality. It questions the widely held thesis that Romania’s ultimate intervention was a foregone conclusion and that it was only a matter of time before the Regat would join the Entente. ³ It also helps the historian overcome the enormous gaps created by lost and destroyed Romanian records and to reconstruct the narrative of Romania’s experience during the Great War era. ⁴

More generally, it also throws into sharp relief the challenges that smaller states (i.e., those outside the legally-civilized ‘Family of Nations’) faced at the beginning of the twentieth century. This was because their rights and protections under international law were ‘situational’; i.e., wholly dependent on another state’s desire to abide by them in a particular context. Otherwise stable rules and norms could be suspended, derogated, or abrogated with potentially few ramifications, legal or otherwise. Unable to rely on others’ respect for cornerstone concepts of international law like pacta sunt servanda (‘agreements must be kept’) and the basic tenets of sovereignty (e.g., respect of national frontiers and non-interference in domestic affairs), these states functioned in a Hobbesian universe where their political existence could be nasty, brutish, and potentially short. For states that possessed the legal and administrative structures required for membership in the Family of Nations but lacked the necessary diplomatic recognition, the challenge was greater: their international legal status was more unclear and perhaps less stable. Brătianu, confronted with the possibility that Romania’s sovereignty was ‘situational’, attempted to use the Great War as the moment to secure such recognition, ideally without bringing Romania into the conflict. In fact, this suggests the issue was at least as important as expanding the Regat territorially.

In this sense, this study represents a modest contribution to the historiography dedicated to the re-imagination of international relations during the Great War era. Like Frederick Dickinson’s and Xu Guoqi’s studies of Japan and China (respectively), this investigation of Romania’s foreign policy focuses on how non-material considerations and objectives – the importance of ‘status’ – either drove the material elements of policy making or worked in symbiosis with them. ⁵ At their cores, these studies and others (e.g., Peter Jackson, A. Dirk Moses) problematize notions of ‘security’ in international affairs and foreign policy. ⁶ While Dickinson focuses on how foreign policy and, specifically, international status could impact domestic political legitimacy, and Xu asserts that Chinese participation in the conflict was motivated by a desire to assert its freedom of action and demonstrate its independent ‘membership’ in the international community, the actions of Brătianu and Bucharest’s policy-making elites reflect a concern with international legal status, generally, and the status of legal civilization, specifically. ⁷

It is worth noting that the issue of legally-civilized status could (and did) often intersect with other constructions of ‘civilization’, ‘modernity’, ‘European’ (or ‘Western’) and other intersubjective identities. This was true not just in Romania or the states of Southeast Europe but for other states as well. In the Romanian context, for example, the discourse of cultural civilization was intertwined closely with notions of ‘Latin-ness’ (latinitatea) and often contrasted against a Slavic Other that was the antithesis of ‘civilization’, if not fundamentally opposed to it. These constructions are frequently important for understanding how Romania’s political elite anticipated the way a foreign state might ‘behave’ vis-à-vis international rules and norms. They are also fundamental to reconstructing Bucharest’s worldview generally and, specifically, to understanding the assumptions that underpinned its strategic planning. This study shall engage these ‘cultural’ labels – e.g., civilized/uncivilized, Western/Eastern, modern/backward, Latinism/Slavism – only in so far as they relate to discussions of international rules and norms, generally, and the Regat’s situational sovereignty dilemma, specifically. A thorough analysis of latinitatea as a Romanian legitimation narrative merits its own treatment.

After presenting a pair of preparatory matters, this study will begin with a brief discussion of international law in the decades before the outbreak of the Great War with an emphasis on the concepts of sovereignty and the legal standard of civilization. The two concepts were not synonymous, but they often supported each other. Where sovereignty was a universalist concept of equality, legal-civilization was sovereignty’s more malleable cognate. It both structured a hierarchal, multi-tiered international society and provided the legal and discursive means of enforcing that hierarchy. It shall become apparent that, for ‘smaller states’ (i.e., those that were not one of the Great Powers) and states located outside of Western Europe, being second- or third-tier states in international society was challenging at the best of times and fundamentally dangerous at others. For states like Romania that were not part of international society’s top-tier, it made foreign policy making especially challenging.

The later part of this article addresses those challenges by attempting to understand Romanian efforts to come to grips with its situational sovereignty as a practical issue. Prime Minister Brătianu’s method of managing the risk associated with situational sovereignty was to attempt to secure recognition of Romania as a legally-civilized equal. His goal was not to make Romania a voice for the elimination of the hierarchal system of states formalized by the legal standard of civilization. It was to secure Romania’s membership in the uppermost ‘class’. He first attempted to accomplish this by concluding an accord with Italy that established parity between the Regat and that recognized legally-civilized state (the so-called ‘least of the Great Powers’). ⁸ By the end of the Period of Neutrality he sought to have Romania’s recognition as a legal equal enshrined in the political convention with the Entente. During these two years, however, Brătianu had to grapple with regular evidence that the Great Powers saw Romania as nothing other than a lower-order state. He found himself wanting to secure Romania’s recognition through international agreement, while simultaneously facing the reality that Romania’s lack of recognition as a legally-civilized equal meant those very conventions could be unenforceable.

Before launching into the main body of this study it is important to highlight a pair of items from Romania’s domestic political context that, while relevant to this discussion, are outside the scope of the present investigation and shall not be addressed in depth. First, this study accepts the common thesis among historians of Romania that Prime Minister Brătianu had near complete control over the direction of Romania’s foreign policy for much of the Period of Neutrality. ⁹ Besides also being minister of war, he usurped the responsibilities of his foreign minister, Emanoil Porumbaru, who authored surprisingly little policy during the Period of Neutrality. (Brătianu dispensed with the charade when he dismissed Porumbaru in December 1916 and took the portfolio of foreign minister.) ¹⁰ Not only is there little surviving evidence to imply otherwise, but there are two contextual reasons that explain his near total control over foreign policy through at least the beginning of 1916.

The first was the Romanian political system itself. Ministers answered to the monarch and not to Romania’s bicameral parliament. The monarch appointed the full government (premier and ministers) who were then charged with organizing (read: engineering) the elections to produce their parliamentary majority. ¹¹ When dissatisfied with a sitting government, or when he simply desired a new political course, the monarch dismissed it and the process repeated. ¹² Although the Romanian Constitution of 1866 was based on the liberal Belgian Constitution of 1831, ‘the real world [of Romanian political practice] did not always accord with the written text, and high principle was often compromised to maintain the structures (and fictions) of constitutionalism’. ¹³ This meant that the Romanian Parliament could churn, boil, and complain about Brătianu’s foreign policy. Without the monarch dismissing the government and calling new elections, parliamentary influence on policy making (foreign or domestic) was only as great as the monarch would allow.

The second factor contributing to Brătianu’s control of Romanian foreign policy was political. Since 1866, when the provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia unified through the person of then-Prince Carol, two political factions dominated Romanian politics. One was the National Liberal Party (Partidul Naţional Liberal, PNL), which was dominated by the Brătianu and Sturdza families until the end of the First World War. The other was the Conservative Party (Partidul Conservator), which emerged from the Junimea (lit. ‘youth’) literary circle formed in 1863 in Iaşi. Three of its founders, Titu Maiorescu, Petre Carp, and Theodor Rosetti, continued to hold strong influence on the party through 1916. Its leader during the Period of Neutrality was Alexandru Marghiloman. He pressed Brătianu to form a National Government with the Conservatives in the early weeks of Romania’s neutrality. Brătianu declined. The Conservatives, bitterly divided, were ultimately unable to convince the Crown that they would be a better, functional government than Brătianu’s Liberals. ¹⁴ In fact, when Brătianu asked the Romanian Senate in December 1914 not to discuss the international situation because it ‘would not be made in the public interest’ (a policy ultimately called Necessary Silence) Marghiloman agreed. ‘As legitimate as it would be for us to inquire of the Government’s activities’, he told the Senate, ‘our desire to give unity to our country’s actions is more important’. His words, which solidified the Conservative’s virtual political irrelevance, were greeted with applause. ¹⁵

Although this study accepts the thesis that Romania’s foreign policy during the Period of Neutrality was uniquely Brătianu’s, it does not accept the thesis held by some historians that Carol’s death on 14 October 1914 and the advent of Ferdinand to the throne (r. 1914–1927) was a necessary precondition to Brătianu moving the Regat closer to the Entente. ¹⁶ This does not appear to be the case. As a practical matter, Carol was unable to impose his will on the Crown Council a few months earlier. His death, and the accession of Ferdinand to the throne, did not palpably impact the direction of Romanian foreign policy, nor did it alter Brătianu’s approach to the war or to international rules and norms. The evidence suggests the contrary was true: Bucharest’s approach to international legal issues (not to mention the discourses about civilization in various guises) changed little as the result of Carol’s passing and the direction of Brătianu’s foreign policy seemed equally unmoved. Even before Carol died, Brătianu was focused on obtaining recognition of Romania as a legally-civilized state.

The legal standard of civilization emerged as a concept in European international law after the Congress of Vienna (1815) as European states projected economic and military power worldwide. Through a combination of coercion and consent, the rules that already regulated the conduct of states within Europe displaced other regional normative systems worldwide. European norms became ‘international law’ and the European Great Powers were frequently able both to impose their interpretations on non-European outsiders and to create new rules to provide situational advantage. ¹⁷

Importantly, the period of the geographic expansion of European international law coincided with the heyday of European liberalism. Although European international law had a history of dividing societies and states into ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups – for example, the Augustinian imperative to defend (Roman) civilization ‘against the onslaught of barbarian marauders’ and the distinction of the ‘law of Christian peoples’ between ‘heathen and godly cultures’ – it layered a formal structure of sovereign equality over the semi-formal constructions of cultural hierarchy. ¹⁸ It reflected liberalism’s ‘two faces’: one of universal equality under law and tolerance of difference; the other a structured, ‘anti-plural’ hierarchy that was intolerant of ‘non-liberal regimes’. ¹⁹ In fin de siècle international law, the universalist concept of sovereignty embodied the former. The anti-pluralist ideas of legal civilization represented the latter. The story of legal civilization is a narrative that supplied both the discourse and the legal authority for the ‘[legally-]civilized’ members of the Family of Nations to violate the sovereignty of other states. Practically speaking, hierarchy could (and often did) legally trump equality.

Central to understanding these and other international legal concepts are the publicists, the international legal scholars whose writings carried legal authority, especially where they ‘consider questions as to which no international controversy has arisen’. ²⁰ For publicist Lassa Oppenheim, the publicists’ greatest value lay in their ability to provide a general view of international law as drawn from their readings of treaties, municipal law (i.e., national laws of states), and court and arbitral decisions (both international and municipal). Publicists also played (and play) a great role in deducing and understanding law derived from international legal custom, i.e., consistent, general state practice implemented out of a sense of legal obligation (opinio juris). ²¹ It is for this reason that publicists’ writings are profoundly important for understanding both sovereignty and the significance of ‘civilization’ and ‘civilized’ as terms of art in international law circa 1914. Because there was no treaty or tribunal decision on point, publicists of the period provide the most thorough examination of legal civilization available.

Ideas of legal civilization existed alongside – and, at times, in opposition to — those of sovereign equality. Sovereign equality embodied the notion that ‘[t]he weakest republic has the same rights and is subject to the same obligations as the most powerful empire’. ²² Over the course of the nineteenth century, however, Europeans (and, by 1900, Americans), grew uncomfortable with idea that the culturally different and (seemingly) materially inferior societies they encountered could truly be their equals. Even as they preserved the universalist concept of sovereign equality, the publicists created the parallel norm of legal civilization that could displace sovereign equality in certain contexts. ²³

The distinction between sovereign and (legally) civilized is represented in Oppenheim’s ‘Family of Nations’, an exclusive club within a broader international society composed of all sovereign states. Sovereign states enjoy equality as ‘International Persons’ regardless of ‘their size, population, power, degree of civilization, wealth, and other quality’. ²⁴ The Family of Nations, however, was a community of ‘common interests’, the ‘common consent’ of which forms ‘the basis of international law’. ²⁵ If all sovereign states were equal, the states in the Family of Nations were simply ‘more equal’ than those who were not members of the ‘Family’. ²⁶

Significantly, there were no fixed qualifications for membership in the Family of Nations. ‘The members of the Family of Nations are […] not born into that community and they do not grow into it’. ²⁷ Membership was the result of ‘express or tacit recognition’. ²⁸ The basis of this recognition was a sense of common interests and values, including a flourishing economy (agricultural and industrial), an extensive trade and communications network, and regular diplomatic contact with each other. Members also had deep social and cultural connections including religion (‘the civilized States are, with only a few exceptions, Christian States’) and their subjects’ participated in international commerce, scientific exchange, and the arts. ²⁹ It was a community whose members regularly interacted with each other on multiple levels – governmental, economic/financial, cultural, and social – so that they had ‘innumerable’ common interests. ³⁰

Unlike sovereignty’s universalist notions of legal equality, the legal standard of civilization divided international society into three ‘classes’ of members nominally based on culture: ‘civilized’, ‘barbaric’, and ‘savage’ states. ³¹ If the idea of a ‘capacity to act’ represented a physical or kinetic ability to enforce rules and to defend frontiers in the context of sovereign equality, in the context of the legal standard of civilization it meant legal capacity – the ability to comprehend and abide by rules and norms to an extent sufficient to be held accountable to them. States that were not legally-civilized, therefore, suffered from a diminished legal capacity – an alleged moral, cultural, or political handicap – that (supposedly) prevented them from understanding – and therefore, participating in – the international legal order to the same extent as legally-civilized states. ³² As one descended the hierarchy from legally-civilized, to legally-barbaric, to legally-savage, fewer of the rights, responsibilities, and protections of international law applied. ³³

If the ‘civilized states’ formed the social and legal pinnacle of international society, it was the legally-savage peoples that formed their correlative opposites. ³⁴ ‘Savages’, in Carlos Calvo’s words, lived ‘the state of nature’ in ‘small societies’, ‘nearly without law, agriculture, and barely subsisting on hunting’. ³⁵ These peoples

had been the legitimate possessors of the territory on which they roamed and came to be considered as independent sovereigns; however, from the moment they allowed their territory to be invaded by civilization, their right of possession becomes merely a right of occupation, which, in most cases, had been extinguished either by the voluntary alienation of their property, the tribe’s removal to a more distant territory, or by its submission to a civilized nation […]. ³⁶

According to the publicists, savage peoples did not understand (European) international law and, consequently, could not be responsible for acting in conformity with its principles. ³⁷ It was a question of legal capacity: a party could not be held to a contract it is incapable of understanding, even a social contract like international law ³⁸ More significantly, none of international law’s privileges, protections, and rights applied to savage peoples, nor would civilized states suffer legal sanction (to the extent that any existed) should their action be illegal but for the fact it was directed at ‘savages’. It was this logic that provided the legal justification for the ‘new imperialism’ of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. ³⁹ If a state undermined the government of a legally-civilized state or made an overt land grab this would be illegal and an act of war; doing the same to a savage people, however, was within the framework of the law.

Complicating matters further was that the legal standard of civilization was a ternary system. Between ‘civilized’ (which enjoyed the full protections, rights, and privileges of international law) and ‘savage’ (which enjoyed none) lay ‘barbarian’ states, which enjoyed at least some of the protections of international law at least some of the time. ⁴⁰ Publicists were unable to define the terms with much, if any, precision. It was a contrived middling class on the spectrum of legal civilization, a liminal space in the structure of international law, created to ‘domesticate [the] liminality’ of those states that may have some – if not all – of the material and legal structures of ‘civilization’, but lacked social recognition as an equal by the Family of Nations. ⁴¹ Put another way, members of the Family of Nations could not assert that these states lacked statehood, but they also could not conceive of them as equals.

Frustratingly for their governments, the legally-barbarous states had little definitive sense of how to be recognized as legally-civilized. ‘No attempt has ever been made to define the exact amount of affinity in modes of life and standards of thought which must be regarded as essential’, the publicist T. J. Lawrence noted.

Each case is settled on its merits. The area within which the law of nations operates is supposed to coincide with the area of civilization. To be received within it is to obtain a kind of international testimonial of good conduct and respectability; and when a state hitherto accounted barbarous desires admission, the powers immediately concerned apply their own tests. [Emphasis added] ⁴²

Because whether a barbarous state would enjoy the benefits of international law – including the basic principles of territorial sovereignty and pacta sunt servanda – depended on a broader, uncontrollable context, where even sovereignty, itself, was situational. If sufficient ‘powerful and unpredictable expediencies’ existed for another state, presumably a civilized state, to violate that sovereignty, it could do so consistent with international law. The legal standard of civilization provided both the discourse and the normative endorsements to resort to opportunistic Machtpolitik.

Romanian political elites and jurists took a different tack to the idea of legal civilization, focusing not on social acceptance by the Family of Nations but on the ‘nationality principle’, i.e., the organization of the international community into nation states. ⁴³ They saw the nation state not simply as one type of political and diplomatic form. It was the highest form of political modernity-as-civilization and represented an ability to project and to defend a people’s collective voice in an international society. It was the ‘most legal’ state structure that provided a means to being a legally-sovereign state. Admission to the Family of Nations was determined by social recognition based on subjective factors. The nationality principle provided a (relatively) objective avenue where few seemed to exist.

Indeed, Valerian Ursianu asserted that it was the nationality principle that formed ‘the basis of international law’. ⁴⁴ Ursianu noted that the key components of a nation were ‘unity of territory, origin or race, language, and aspirations’ rather than the nation being regarded as synonymous with state or people (‘as several publicists do promiscuously’). ⁴⁵ Gheorghe Meitani echoed this definition, but continued by asserting that a state not formed on the principle of nationality (i.e., not organized as a nation state) is ‘an abnormal state [… a] fiction without a real existence’. In contrast, multi-ethnic empires – such as Austria-Hungary and Russia – were constructed as archaic, decidedly anti-modern, and ‘Eastern’ or ‘corrupted’ by forces from ‘the East’. ⁴⁶ ‘States not based on the nationality principle’, wrote Jean-G. Mano, are ‘an arbitrary, unnatural form’. ⁴⁷ Meitani noted that, just because a state like Austria-Hungary continues to exist, ‘it does not mean that the germ of its destruction will not come or will not remain’. ⁴⁸ ‘The nationality principle’, he concluded, ‘is the principle of the future’. ⁴⁹

Perhaps, somewhat contradictorily Meitani did not envision an egalitarian society of nation states – where France, Italy, Germany, and Romania were legally equal. He noted that the Great Powers (whom he identifies as Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Italy) have ‘honorary privileges’ that give them ‘a special voice in international society’. ⁵⁰ Additionally, Meitani asserted that only the European states were equal under international law. Non-European states were of a decidedly lower order. ⁵¹ Although Meitaini’s construction of the international social order included greater opportunity for smaller European states to be of the highest ‘class’, it remained decidedly hierarchical. It was, however, a hierarchy that provided Romania with a means to claim membership in the uppermost order.

While Meitani’s discussion about the state of international law, including the legal standard of civilization, generally reflects accepted principles circa 1914, his (and others’) discussions of the nationality principle were arguably more aspirational than established. The reason for this is rooted in a genuine uncertainty about whether Romania occupied the highest legal order in 1914. Indeed, Meitani strongly implied that the Regat’s relatively recent past indicates that it did not. By asserting the nationality principle as an additional legal element to the definition of legal civilization, Meitani attempted to create an avenue that advanced Romania’s claim to the uppermost class of the legal hierarchy while, simultaneously, not attacking the legitimacy of the hierarchical international legal order.

Meitani had reason to focus on the many occasions in which Russia – ‘the colossus of the northeast’ – had breached an agreement with Romania (or its political predecessors), violated Romanian territory, or threatened to do so. ⁵² Indeed, Teodor Văcărescu noted that, since the 1730s, Romania had endured ‘eight major wars and twenty-two armed invasions from the Turkish, Russian, and Austrian armies’. ⁵³ During the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), the United Principalities granted Russia transit rights. In return, Russia promised to recognize Romanian independence at the eventual peace conference and ‘to respect the political rights of the Romanian state, as they are established by domestic laws and the existing treaties, as well as to maintain and defend the present integrity of Romania’. ⁵⁴ At the Congress of Berlin (1878), however, Russia went back on its promise and demanded Southern Bessarabia as a further price for recognizing Romanian independence, offering the Danube Delta and Dobrogea as compensation. ⁵⁵ Russia again threatened to march south through a now independent Romania in 1883 in order to strike against Alexander von Battenberg’s Bulgaria. Romania’s fear about Russia’s intervention outstripped Bucharest’s anger at the Dual Monarchy over Magyarization. Romania signed the treaty that associated it with the Triple Alliance (October 1883) and that treaty formed the cornerstone of Romanian foreign policy for the next thirty years. ⁵⁶

Interestingly, it was not Russia’s duplicity at the Congress of Berlin that drew Meitani’s attention. The publicist bitterly resented the Great Powers’ decision to make recognition of the Regat’s independence conditional on a repeal or review of Article 7 of the Romanian Constitution, which prohibited Jews from being citizens. For Meitani (who was apparently unbothered by the fact that, at the Congress of Berlin, ‘Romania’ was not yet a recognized state, but a pair of autonomous provinces in the Ottoman Empire) this was an unlawful ‘servitude’ to the Great Powers. ⁵⁷ He disputed that a legally-civilized state had a legal right to intervene in the internal affairs of another (presumably legally-barbaric) state, a practice he called ‘social intervention’. Recognition of state sovereignty implied acceptance of that state’s ‘culture’ and, therefore, ‘no one has the right to intervene’. ⁵⁸ ‘Manners’ (Calvo) and ‘modes of life’ (Lawrence’) could not be used to relegate a recognized (European) state to a lower order. Although Meitani claimed that the Great Powers had a special role to play in the international system, he detested it when Romania was the object of their action.

Meitani’s ideas of status and unwanted ‘social intervention’ seemed to resonate well beyond 1878. They found a new analogue in the Great Powers’ concern about the fate of the Jewish population of Southern Dobrogea, the territory Romania demanded from Bulgaria as ‘compensation’ for its neutrality in the First Balkan War. ⁵⁹ Public pressure mounted in Britain and the United States to prevent Romania from acquiring additional lands because of its continued legal discrimination against Jews. Citing Bucharest’s ‘default’ on its promises to end religious discrimination in accordance with the Treaty of Berlin, the Conjoint Foreign Committee of Deputies of British Jews and the Anglo-Jewish Association (collectively known as the Conjoint Jewish Committee) petitioned Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey in January 1913 to block any Romanian territorial expansion. ⁶⁰ The Conjoint Jewish Committee maintained that, through Bucharest’s ‘malignant ingenuity’, ‘almost the entire Jewish population of Roumania, numbering some 250,000 souls, [was] denied the elementary rights of citizenship’. ⁶¹ Grey (through Assistant Under-Secretary of State Louis Mallet) indicated that, because Romania had not participated in the (First) Balkan War, the possible expansion of the Romanian Regat might not be put before the Great Powers at the recently convened London Conference of Ambassadors. ⁶² The Conjoint Committee continued to lobby the Foreign Office to intervene, suggesting various legal paths that would permit the Great Powers to intervene (including citing a colonial case as precedent). ⁶³

By spring 1913, the issue of Romania’s treatment of its Jewish population and debate over whether Romania was a ‘modern’, civilized state or a barbaric, ‘medieval’ holdover moved beyond private correspondence and into the public sphere. ⁶⁴ The New York Times prominently labelled the conditions for Romanian Jews ‘worse even than in Russia’. ⁶⁵ Georges Clemenceau claimed Romanian’s laws made its Jews ‘the last serfs still existing in Europe’ (a description first used by former Italian Prime Minister Luigi Luzzatti). ⁶⁶ Romania was an ‘intolerant’ state and the prospects for Jews living in any territory Romania acquired were ‘bad’. ⁶⁷ Concerns about Romania’s treatment of its Jewish population, as well as Jews who might inhabit any territory the Regat acquired, reached the floor of the British Parliament by March. The public and parliamentary outcry compelled Romania’s Minister to London, Nicolae Mișu, to send a letter to Grey promising that ‘the Jewish inhabitants of the regions ceded to Romania, and especially the Jews of Silistria, [would not] lose the rights they had enjoyed as Bulgarian subjects’. ⁶⁸ He did not comment on improving the legal condition of Romanian Jews in the existing Regat, however.

Romania did annex Southern Dobrogea as part of its military victory in the Second Balkan War and, perhaps as important for Romanian pride, hosted the peace conference that ended the conflict. The Treaty of Bucharest (August 1913) was a locally created agreement that superseded the Great-Power-arbitrated Treaty of London (May 1913). Romania, relatively unscathed by the conflict, was arguably the pre-eminent military and political power in the Balkans. ‘On the one hand’, Carol told a joint session of the Romanian parliament in November 1913, ‘the Great Powers have been able to appreciate the agreement we have been able to give, which furthers their efforts toward peace; on the other, the Treaty of Bucharest has established friendly and particularly close relationships between Romania and the states on the other side of the Danube’. ⁶⁹ Carol believed Romania could ‘look at the future with the utmost confidence’. ⁷⁰ For much of official Bucharest, Romania stood on the cusp of a new glorious age.

The reality was arguably quite different. Great-Power ‘social intervention’ in Romania’s domestic affairs implied that the Regat occupied a legally-barbarian status. The Great Powers, Britain in particular, maintained on ongoing interest in the legal position of Romania’s Jewish population. While Jews in Southern Dobrogea had at least some international recognition (although, practically speaking, perhaps not actual protection), Jews elsewhere in the Regat did not and remained the subject of considerable British and American concern. ⁷¹ When the Romanian Ministry of War announced that it considered the service of ‘several thousand Jewish volunteers’ illegal and retracted the promised offers of full citizenship in return for military service, Romania, again, received unwanted international attention. ⁷² By the end of 1913, British stations in Romania were reporting on the legal status of Romanian Jews in the Regat. ⁷³

On the eve of the Great War, Romanian policy makers had reason to doubt which side of the legally-civilized/legally-barbaric line their country occupied. While confident in the Regat’s new position as a regional power, this role was achieved at a peace conference where no Great Power recognized its status as a legal equal. Worse, Romanian political elites had reason to believe that the Great Powers believed Romania was not legally-civilized. It is unclear how much official Bucharest knew of the recent foreign objections to the legal status of Jews in Romania. Mișu’s 1913 letter to Grey implies that it knew a fair bit. Still, it is difficult to establish how deep its concern may have been or if it drew any conclusions about the impact this had on Romania’s international legal status.

Placing Romania’s historical experience in the context of international law at the turn of the twentieth century sheds some light on Romanian discussions, including during its Period of Neutrality. This context provides added meaning to the discourse policy makers employed and the actions they took. Romanian policy makers generally did not engage in lengthy conversations about international law. Rather, they employed specific legal terms of art in conversations about foreign or security policy (e.g., Petre Carp’s reference to ‘civilized states’ mentioned above). For them it was part of a decision-making environment that did not always have to be specifically identified as ‘legal’. However, there were occasions where specific reference to the discourse of ‘civilization’ – legal and otherwise – bubbles to the surface. The Crown Council of August 1914, as will be shown below, dripped with it.

This context also underscores the challenges confronting a state of liminal legal status, especially when formulating foreign policy or grand strategy. The only real way such a state could establish its recognized legal status – shy of waiting for an invasion or resisting intervention in domestic affairs – was to make and attempt to enforce a treaty. Treaty making was a litmus test. If a counterparty state in the recognized Family of Nations (e.g., a Great Power) broke the treaty without cause, it was a reliable indication that the state wishing to enforce the treaty lacks sufficient legal status. The act was a de facto recognition of legally-barbarous status.

The minority position of those at the Crown Council was that the Regat clung to legally-civilized status, but could lose it quickly if it did not enter the war on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The majority present at the Council indicated through their comments that, in fact, Romania was recognized as legally-barbarian, something they held as fundamentally unacceptable and which Brătianu was determined to change. As worrisome for the members of the Council was the direction of Russia’s actions during the war that was erupting around them. The state on its north-eastern frontier was seemingly as likely to violate the Regat’s frontiers as to respect them. It was up to the Crown Council to establish Romania’s diplomatic posture at the outset of the war in a way that neither caused both groups of belligerents to question Romania’s level of legal-civilization further nor sparked Russian violation of Romanian territorial sovereignty. In other words, it had to ensure that the opening week of August 1914 did not present an opportunity for Romania’s sovereignty to be ‘suspended’.

The primary purpose of the August 1914 Crown Council was to council Carol on whether Romania had a specific duty to enter the war under the terms of the 1883 treaty with the Triple Alliance. In pertinent part, the treaty provided that ‘[i]f Austria-Hungary be attacked [without provocation] in a portion of its territory bordering Romania, the casus foederis will immediately arise for the latter’, i.e., Romania would be obligated to come to Austria-Hungary’s aid. ⁷⁴ Ultimately the Council decided that no casus foederis existed and that Romania was not legally bound to enter the conflict. (The Italian government reached the same conclusion the day before.) There were only two members who advocated immediate entry on the side of Austria-Hungary and Germany: King Carol and former Prime Minister Petre Carp, one of the fathers of Romanian Conservatism. For Carol, entering the conflict was as much about personal honour and responsibility as it was about the text of the 1883 alliance. Romania had been bound to the Triple Alliance for more than a generation and ‘it is a question of honour for all countries to respect their given word’. ⁷⁵ Even if he advocated the maintenance of a legal principle, pacta sunt servanda, that was not what motivated the ageing monarch. The ‘expanded influence’ he hoped Romania would experience – including the possibility that the Regat would achieve ‘a place on the same rank as the Great Powers’ – came not from crafting policies in conformity with the precepts of international law, but by acting ‘with honour’. ⁷⁶

For as much as his argument in favour of entering the war alongside Germany and the Dual Monarch dripped with the discourse of personal honour, Carol made a specific point about Romania’s international status: if it wanted to remain a state of the first order it had to join the fighting. ‘[C]ountries that stay neutral in a general conflagration are reduced to a second-rate status [sont réduit à figurer au second plan] and excluded from the decisions made at the conclusion of the peace. Romania’, he continued, ‘does not deserve to be reduced to such humiliation’. ⁷⁷ In essence, Carol admonished those present that the metric for how status is acquired, maintained, or lost is different in a time of war. (It is also worth noting that none of the publicists discussed above raised this issue either.) He was the only person who raised this idea – that the war, itself, imposed upon legally-civilized states a duty to participate in the conflict.

For his part, Carp mixed the discourse of the legal standard of civilization with Carol’s language of honour, citing Romania’s ‘moral’ responsibility to keep its word while asserting the necessity of immediately joining Germany and Austria-Hungary in the conflict ‘if [it wanted] […] to remain among the civilized states [statele civilizate]’. ⁷⁸ Failing to do so would not simply be a stain on the Regat’s honour. Failing to abide by the (alleged) terms of a treaty would result in Romania losing international legal and political status. In making this argument about the potential of swift – if not impending – relegation from the legally-civilized states, Carp confessed an understanding of the Regat’s liminal international status and reflected a belief that its internationally-recognized legal status was already in doubt. Consequently, what Carp asserted as its legally-civilized status could be lost in the blink of an eye.

Significantly, both Carol and Carp were the only two to insist that Romania had to enter the war in order to maintain its status as a civilized state. In other words, Romania was already recognized as such. It could lose this status by failing to enter the conflict on the side of Austria-Hungary and Germany. The other speakers at the Council all operated from the opposite perspective. For them, Romania was not recognized as a legally-civilized state. They based this assertion on an understanding that Austria-Hungary was not faithful to the terms of the 1883 alliance as it related to Romania. Their comments not only reflected their frustration with that specific bilateral relationship, but represented a comment on Romania’s recognized legal status in August 1914.

Conservative chief Alexandru Marghiloman addressed the issue of legal obligation directly and without any direct reference to whether the Regat was recognized as civilized. After Carp asserted that failure to enter the conflict would result in Romania falling from the ranks of the legally-civilized states, Marghiloman asked Carol if he could see the text of the treaty. Carol obliged. Upon reading that Romania acquired a legal obligation ‘[i]f Austria-Hungary be attacked […] in a portion of its territory bordering Romania’, Marghiloman responded with a discreet legal argument. ‘[S]eeing that our allies were not attacked’, he told the Council, ‘on the contrary they attacked first[,] I do not consider this a casus foederis. Your Majesty, it is not binding. Legally, no one has a right to assign blame’. For Marghiloman, the absence of a casus foederis meant that non-belligerence was ‘an honourable solution’ and Carp’s assertions that Romania would suffer reduced legal status were fundamentally flawed. ⁷⁹

Satisfied with Marghiloman’s legal argument the remaining speakers at the Council agreed with the lack of casus foederis and specifically argued against Carol’s and Carp’s notion that Romania had legally-civilized status to lose. ⁸⁰ They did so by focusing on the power dynamics of the alliance itself and argued that Austria-Hungary in particular had not lived up to the terms of the alliance. Take Ionescu (head of the Democratic-Conservative Party) and Brătianu were indignant that Austria-Hungary had not kept Romania informed about the deteriorating relationship with Serbia during the July Crisis and, in particular, did not notify Bucharest before sending the infamous ultimatum to Serbia and subsequent declaration of war. ⁸¹ ‘Even if there had been a casus foederis’, Ionescu asserted, ‘the actions and attitude of the Austro-Hungarian government annulled the treaty’. ⁸² Former minister Ion Lahovari went as far as to assert that the Austro-Hungarians, specifically their foreign minister Count Leopold Berchtold, treated Carol ‘like an Austrian vassal’. ⁸³ Austria-Hungary had an obligation under Article III of the alliance to consult with Romania ‘as to the measures to be taken with a view toward cooperation’ if a party to the treaty ‘found itself threatened by an aggression’. ⁸⁴ The Ballhausplatz did not do that. Instead, it expected the Romanians to join the Dual Monarchy as a matter of course. Besides being insulting, this violation of an essential term of the alliance was a something legally-civilized states could do when the counterparty was identified as legally-barbaric and a powerful argument that Vienna, at least, did not consider the Regat a legal equal. From this perspective, the entire idea that Romania had legally-civilized status to lose was without merit.

It is important to note that the subject of Romania’s international legal status was not the only line of analysis at the Crown Council. One area of unanimity was the danger posed by Russia and ‘Slavs’ both during and after the war. Carol asserted that he was doubtful ‘national sentiment’ would favour siding with Russia, while Marghiloman claimed there would be a ‘moral danger’ in associating with St. Petersburg. Carp was more direct. He framed the conflict as the war between Slavism and Germanism, and Romania and Italy, as Latin states had to stand with the Germans to defend civilization. ⁸⁵ Lahovari was more colourful.

What would be our fate between an autonomous Hungary, persecuting the Romanian population to the north even more vigorously, and a hostile Serbia (o Serbie duşmănoasă) since we helped to bring about its demise, a Bulgaria reinforcing Austria to the south, and a Russia with 150 million resurrected Slavs plotting to take Bessarabia from us, which the Triple Alliance offers us today if we are willing to align ourselves with them? Think what fate would befall this miserable country! ⁸⁶

Even though the Crown Council ended with a declaration of non-belligerence, not a declaration of war against Russia as Carol had earnestly desired, there was deep concern about Russian actions. Brătianu’s immediate tasks were to attempt to gain recognition of Romania’s status as a legal equal through international convention and, equally importantly, to attempt to gain some sort of recognition – and preferably a guarantee of Romania’s existing international frontiers lest Russia or Bulgaria attempted to ‘adjust’ those boundaries.

Brătianu sought to achieve the first goal of Romania’s status as a legal equal through a treaty with Italy signed on 23 September 1914. This agreement cited the two countries’ ‘analogous situations vis-à-vis the present war’ and that the two countries were ‘traditional’ partners. ⁸⁷ Brătianu hoped that this document, with its emphasis on the equal rights and responsibilities – including promises to maintain their respective neutralities, to maintain mutual consultations during such a period, to notify the other if neutrality was to be exited, and to preserve the secrecy of their agreement – would be a de facto recognition of Romania’s legal equality with a Great Power. ⁸⁸ It was easy for Romanian policy makers and Brătianu in particular to view Italy as a potentially friendly partner. Constantin Istrati, head of the Romanian Academy, went as far as to call Italy ‘the emblem of latinitatea’ in a November 1914 speech to the Chamber of Deputies upon his return from an officially-unofficial trip to Italy. ⁸⁹

It also appears that Brătianu may have had reason to hope this agreement would help achieve this goal. In fact, from the outside it seemed like it was the first step in more substantial cooperation. In the conversations between their representatives in Bucharest and Rome, the two governments may have identified Slavism as a common enemy. ⁹⁰ The Italian government wanted to acquire the eastern littoral of the Adriatic and, soon after the Italo-Romanian agreement, Foreign Minister the Marchese di San Giuliano, began expressing concerns about ‘Slavic interests regarding Dalmatia’. ⁹¹ Even the Russian government grew worried that the agreement represented a coalescing of Latin interests in Eastern Europe and that the two Latin states would attempt after the war to preserve Germany as a balancing power in Eastern Europe, one that could keep both Russia and the South Slavs in check. ⁹² Sadly for Brătianu, any hope for cooperation with Italy as legal-equals quickly wilted.

Unfortunately for him, the Italians both understood the Romanian construction of latinitatea (or, for the Italians, latinità) and exploited it. ⁹³ Approximately three hours after sending word that an agreement with Romania had been finalized, the Italian minister to Bucharest, Baron Carlo Fasciotti told San Giuliano that Italy could exploit the Romanian romantic sense of Latinism to its own advantage and gain greater influence in Bucharest now that ‘the two dominant influences, Austrian and Russian, cancel each other out’. ⁹⁴ Although Brătianu was confident at the end of March 1915 that (in Mişu’s words) Romania and Italy would move forward ‘in the spirit of Latin unity’, the Consulta had long abandoned both the words and the spirt of the September 1914 treaty. Italy had been actively negotiating with the Entente since the beginning of the 1915 and almost exclusively with the Entente since the end March. ⁹⁵ While Brătianu knew that something in the way of negotiations was taking place, the Italians left him wholly and embarrassingly in the dark. Brătianu voiced his concerns to Carlo Fasciotti, the Italian Minister to Bucharest, on 14 April 1915. Fasciotti insisted that he was unaware of any such negotiations. ⁹⁶ Brătianu received confirmation of Italy’s negotiations with the Entente five days later. News did not come from Rome, from Fasciotti, or from London. It came from Petrograd. ⁹⁷

Italy was not the trustworthy alliance partner – much less ‘our [i.e., Romania’s] Latin sister’ or a like-minded partner from the same ‘community of origin’ – as Brătianu and others hoped it would be. ⁹⁸ In fact, Italy contravened almost every element of the September 1914 agreement. San Giuliano disregarded the secrecy clause almost immediately and the Consulta made almost no effort to share information with Bucharest. San Giuliano’s successor as foreign minister, Sidney Sonnino, actively conducted negotiations with the Entente without maintaining the level of communication the agreement required. Were it not for the Romanians learning of the negotiations through the diplomatic grapevine in Petrograd, at which point the Italians were unable to deny the rumour, it appears unlikely they would have abided by the requirement of eight days’ notice before leaving neutrality. ⁹⁹ Brătianu’s hopes of achieving at least the beginnings of a general recognition of Romania as a legally-civilized equal were dashed. Worse, Italy was a trusted partner. To the policy makers in Bucharest, the ease with which Rome ignored the treaty clearly communicated that the Consulta, at least, did not recognize Romania as a legally-civilized state. In fact, it appeared the opposite was true: that Italy – like Austria-Hungary and Russia, did not see the Regat as anything other than a legally-barbarous state.

Indeed, Russia was a more complicated problem. Brătianu (if not most of official Bucharest) expected Italy to abide by the terms of any convention the two states concluded. Based on Romania’s not-too-distant past and the concerns expressed at the Crown Council, there was little confidence that the Russians could be trusted. Still, the relatively rapid advance of the Russian armies in parts of Austria-Hungary largely inhabited by Romanians worried Romanian policy makers. Brătianu wanted to conclude an agreement with Petrograd where the Russians recognized Romanian claims to Transylvania and parts of Bukovina. The resulting Russo-Romanian treaty was an exchange of notes between the Romanian minister to Russia, Constantin Diamandy and Russian foreign minister Sergei Sazanov on 1 October 1914. Some have argued that the treaty was an important first step on Romania’s move toward the Entente and ‘the first diplomatic recognition of Romania’s claims by an Allied Power […]’. ¹⁰⁰ While tempting, this argument does not comport with the actual terms of the treaty.

The core purpose of the treaty was to define what was (or would be) Romanian and what was not Russian. In return for Romanian neutrality, Russia made two promises. The first was to recognize Romania’s right to annex Transylvania and the parts of Bukovina that were predominantly Romanian. The second – and more important – promise was to respect the territorial integrity of the existing Regat. ¹⁰¹ This document demonstrates Brătianu’s profound distrust of Russia, with respect to both territories in Austria-Hungary and Petrograd’s intentions to respect Romanian territorial sovereignty. In light of the heightened level of suspicion of Russia and the real potential that Russia could abrogate this treaty (and Romanian sovereignty with it), why would Brătianu be willing to trust the Russians to abide by the agreement? Simply put, he did not. Brătianu told Marghiloman in the last days of negotiations that he was seeking a British guarantee. It is unclear if that guarantee ever materialized and it was soon a moot point. ¹⁰²

By the end of 1914, Russia’s minister to Romania, Stanisław Poklewski-Koziełł, informed Porumbaru that Russia would not respect the agreement concluded two months earlier. Rumours of a separate peace between Russia and Austria-Hungary reached the Romanian missions in Switzerland and Spain in December. They, in turn, notified Porumbaru in Bucharest, who arranged a meeting with Poklewski to inquire about the rumour’s veracity. Poklewski’s response was unequivocal. ‘The best means for Romania to realize this’, he told the Romanian foreign minister, ‘would be to take part in the war’. ¹⁰³ In a sentence, Poklewski vitiated the October treaty and Brătianu’s attempt to use an international legal arrangement to demarcate what was Romanian in Austria-Hungary and not Russian. He also reinforced Romanian doubts about its international legal status. The Russian abrogation was (perhaps) largely expected. The Italian abrogation which, in December 1914 was in progress, was not.

As important, however, was evidence that Carol’s assertions at the Crown Council about the different requirements of legally-civilized states in a time of war, had at least some merit. The elements of legally-civilized status the publicists enumerated before the war – regular participation in diplomatic life, a written code of laws, a monopoly of political and legal control over its territory – were all based upon a pacific environment, not one dominated by a Great-Power conflagration. Poklewski’s response was analogous to Carol’s claim. Romania, in order to merit the promises given to it in an accord – i.e., in order to hold sufficient international-legal status to make the treaty enforceable – had to take part in the war. Coming from the minister of a distrusted country, however, it would have been easy for Brătianu to dismiss his suggestion as being little more than a mean-spirited, conniving effort to force the Regat into taking up arms. Brătianu’s first efforts to obtain recognition of Romania as a legally-civilized equal through international agreement was crumbling by the end of 1914 and in ruins by April 1915.

The importance of achieving that recognition was underscored by an event in the summer of 1915. Disappointed with the collapse of the Italo-Romanian agreement, but impressed by the guarantees the Italian government was able to obtain, Brătianu increased his demands to the Entente for territorial compensation in May 1915. In a move that ‘astonished’ Sir Edward Grey, Brătianu now demanded the entire Banat, territory that had already been promised to Serbia. Brătianu (wrongly) claimed that the territory was ‘populated entirely by Romanians’ and should be united with the Regat. ¹⁰⁴ He was, unsurprisingly, rebuffed. The Entente response changed in June 1915, however.

Poklewski approached Brătianu and asked if Romania would enter the war if the Entente met all of the premier’s conditions. Brătianu replied that it would and, although the country needed a little time to prepare, four weeks seemed to be sufficient. Stunned, Poklewski asked if Brătianu was serious. ‘Yes’, the premier replied, ‘I am being serious’. ¹⁰⁵ The two agreed that Poklewski would seek an official endorsement and offer from Petrograd, which he received a few days later. ¹⁰⁶ The Entente agreed to all of Brătianu’s territorial demands: Transylvania, Maramureş to the Tisza, Bukovina to the River Pruth (including Cernăuţi), and the entire Banat. French Foreign Minister Théophile Delcassé also instructed his minister in Bucharest, Camille Blondel, to ask Brătianu to provide a ‘precise’ list of his military equipment needs. The Entente was ready and willing to make a serious effort to provide Brătianu with what he wanted so it could secure Romania’s entry ‘as soon as possible’. ¹⁰⁷ To the Entente’s surprise and consternation, Brătianu turned down the offer.

Why he turned down what was a generous offer – and one not very different from the final terms of the 1916 alliance – is a crucial matter of discussion, one that reflects the importance of achieving a recognition of international legal status. It is worth noting that Delcassé told Blondel that he wanted to add a series of expectations to the terms that would have made the original offer less compelling, including a request that Romania be prepared to retrocede Southern Dobrogea to Bulgaria. ¹⁰⁸ Brătianu would have surely objected if he received the offer, but there is no evidence that he did. The leaves open the question of why the premier declined the Entente’s June 1915 offer. The chief difference between Poklewski’s offer and the 1916 alliance treaties was that the former lacked a clause recognizing Romania as a legally-civilized equal.

Although it is difficult to compare the June 1915 offer with the conventions Brătianu signed in August 1916 – the former was an opening offer of terms where the latter was a fully-negotiated agreement – it is possible to compare the opening positions. The territorial terms were the same. ¹⁰⁹ There were two key differences about the transaction (or, in the case of July 1915, the attempted transaction). The first was that the opening offer of the 1916 negotiations included the statement that ‘Romania, being an equal of France, Great Britain, Italy, and Russia, would enjoy the same rights in all armistice discussions, and in all overtures, conferences, and protocols of peace and war indemnities’. ¹¹⁰ There is no record of this equality clause being included in the 1915 negotiations, even after they commenced. This term, which was accepted into the final alliance documents in 1916, demanded that Romania not only be recognized as a legally-civilized state, but that it be recognized as a Great Power.

The second significant difference was which party opened the negotiations. In 1915, it was Poklewski that approached Brătianu. Had Brătianu brought Romania into the war on the side of the Entente, and had he not been able to secure an equality clause (like the one above), the terms of the resulting treaty would have been purely material: the Regat would have received military supplies from the Entente and, assuming the Entente was victorious, it would have acquired its territorial desiderata at Austria-Hungary’s expense. Although this may have elevated the Romanian sense of self, it would have done little to guarantee the Regat’s international legal position, i.e., whether or not it was recognized as a legally-civilized state. In contrast, Brătianu initiated the negotiations for the 1916 alliance. He transmitted his first concrete offer to the Entente through Poklewski on 25 June 1916 and, to move negotiations forward, summoned Blondel on 4 July 1916 to inform him that he was ‘ready to sign immediately a military convention, the details of which need to be discussed’. ¹¹¹ He opened negotiations with the equality clause in the first list of terms.

Comparing the two sets of opening terms reveals how differently the Entente’s representatives and Brătianu viewed the negotiations. The Entente attempted to conclude a contract for services, where the compensation was purely material: territory and materiel for the service of Romanian arms. For Romania the results of its participation in the war had to transcend simple material acquisitions. There had to be a profoundly transformative (and positive) outcome to justify the risk of participating in the conflict. This did not mean overturning the multi-tiered international social structure in order to create a level playing field for all states. It meant securing Romania’s place as legally-civilized equal of the Great Powers atop the hierarchy.

But why did Brătianu change his mind when he did? The fact that he did not simply counter with the request for an equality clause in 1915 reflects that he was simply unwilling to bring Romania into the conflict at that time. The answer is especially unclear if Romania had been morally committed to the Entente since August 1914 as many have maintained. ¹¹² Brătianu could have negotiated harder in 1915 – the Entente was certainly willing to bargain (it did, after all, approach him) – but he chose not to. The answer lay in how the domestic and international contexts had changed over the intervening year. Three general developments are especially worthy of note: Bulgaria’s entry into the war on the side of the Central Powers, which renewed the possibility of Russian armies invading the Regat; Take Ionescu’s political offensive in December 1915, which created a viable, pro-Entente alternative to Brătianu; and, perhaps most significantly, the Entente’s ‘pacific blockade’ of Greece, which presented the possibility of an Entente intervention in Romanian domestic politics.

Motivated by the Entente’s failure in the Dardanelles campaign, Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in early September 1915 and mobilized against Serbia by the end of the month. ¹¹³ After Bulgaria entered the conflict, Brătianu expressed grave concerns not about the possibility of Bulgaria attempting to retake Dobrogea, but about the possibility that Russia would intervene against Bulgaria and move its armies through Romania in the process. Both the premier and Minister of Finance, Emil Costinescu, told Fasciotti of reports that Russia was amassing ‘two- or three-hundred troops on the Romanian frontier ready to pass through [the Regat] to attack Bulgaria’. ¹¹⁴ To make matters worse, Poklewski began pressuring Brătianu to grant Russia transit rights across Romania so Russia could assist Serbia, and there were additional reports that Russian troops had already violated Romania’s territorial sovereignty. Germany and Austria-Hungary offered to send 500,000 men to Romania to resist any Russian aggression. Brătianu politely declined, but promised Fasciotti that any additional violation of Romanian territory by Russia ‘would be opposed by force of arms’. ¹¹⁵ Brătianu asserted that Russia was trying to pull Romania into the war. At this prospect, Brătianu gave Fasciotti his solemn word that he would do what ‘his father had refused to do in 1876’: declare war on Russia’. ¹¹⁶ Brătianu was convinced that Romania was little more than a geographic inconvenience for Russia and that the Regat’s very sovereignty was about to be ignored.

The second contextual change that laid the groundwork for Brătianu’s ultimate about-face with the Entente was a shift in the domestic political terrain and, specifically, the emergence of Democratic-Conservative leader, Take Ionescu, as a pro-Entente, pro-intervention alternative to Brătianu. Ionescu’s rise began in early months of the Period of Neutrality, when Brătianu insisted on a policy of Necessary Silence in Parliament on the subject of the war. Parliament agreed, including the opposition Conservatives. The only two parties that did not were the small Romanian Social Democratic Workers Party (PSDMR) and, much more significantly, Ionescu’s Democratic-Conservatives. The combination of their adherence to Necessary Silence and the Democratic-Conservatives willingness to discuss the war accelerated the Conservatives’ rapid descent into irrelevance. For all practical purposes, the Democratic-Conservatives assumed the role of the primary opposition party. ¹¹⁷

When Ionescu took the floor of the Chamber of Deputies on 29 December 1915, he presented the Democratic-Conservatives as a new force in Romanian politics and asserted that, akin to Emile Vandervelde’s Socialists in Belgium and Ramsey MacDonald’s Labour in Britain, the ‘old [political] forms’ in Romania (i.e., the Liberals and Conservatives) were not up to the challenges of shepherding the country through the challenging times in which they lived. He attempted to shatter the Russophobia of the Conservatives and front-bench Liberals and claimed that the true enemy of civilization was Germany, not Russia. It was Germany that ‘had most provoked the war’ and, in so doing, lost its status as a legally-civilized state. As for Austria, it had ‘started the war by attempting to annihilate immortal Serbia through an ultimatum which, if a few words were changed, could have just as well been addressed to us’. ¹¹⁸ The moment had arrived for Romania to adopt a ‘policy of national instinct’ and join the Entente. ¹¹⁹

It is unclear how Ferdinand, the one person whose opinion mattered, responded to Ionescu’s faintly concealed offer to form a government and to align Romania with the Entente. The monarch was reportedly unnerved when hearing that Russian troops crossed into Romanian territory after Bulgaria joined the Central Powers only two months earlier. ¹²⁰ At the ceremonial opening of Parliament 28 November 1915, he called on the assembly to ‘defend Romania’s greater interests’ and to prepare the army for ‘whatever situation Romania should confront’. ¹²¹ Despite the decidedly ambiguous message, it was becoming apparent that Ferdinand was growing increasingly uneasy with Romania’s non-belligerence, especially when the war had surrounded the Regat by December 1915. Ionescu may have seemed like an attractive alternative to Brătianu and his neutralism. Brătianu may have worried about his hold on the premiership.

Finally, the Greek crisis represented a scenario that, if something similar played out in Romania, would be both a national and a personal disaster. On 4 July 1916, Brătianu summoned Blondel to inform him that he was ‘ready to sign immediately a military convention, the details of which need to be discussed’. ¹²² Historians have often cited the Brusilov Offensive as the cause-in-fact for Brătianu’s decision to intervene. ¹²³ This was only part of the story, especially because few in the Romanian foreign policy establishment – including Brătianu – believed that it was a general Russian offensive and few doubted its prospects for success. ¹²⁴ Fasciotti reported to Rome that Brătianu had been at his family estate at Florica ‘[following] the crisis in Greece’, but retuned to Bucharest on 24 June 1916 and met with the Italian minister within hours of his arrival. ¹²⁵ Within 24 hours, he transmitted his first concrete offer to the Entente through Poklewski. ¹²⁶

Greece had been in a simmering crisis since Bulgaria’s entry into the war in October 1915. Its pro-Entente prime minister, Eleftherios Venizélos, lobbied to send Greek troops to aid Serbia. Greece did not have the troops to spare and King Constantine I/XII, who had decidedly German sympathies (the Kaiser was his brother-in-law), preferred to keep Greece neutral. Venizélos decided to take matters into his own hands and invited the British and French to use Salonica as a staging area for an offensive against Bulgaria, hoping this would prevent Serbia’s total collapse. Constantine was decidedly not pleased and dismissed Venizélos before the end of the year. ¹²⁷ Although the king tolerated the Anglo-French force on his territory he did his utmost to make life inside the ‘Salonica pocket’ as uncomfortable as possible. When Constantine allowed the Serbian army (what was left of it) safe passage through Greek territory in order to reform inside the Salonica pocket, he ‘balanced’ this gesture by permitting a joint Bulgarian-German force to occupy Fort Rupel (May 1916), an important strategic position in Greek Macedonia. For the king, it was an appropriate response of a neutral state trying to strike a balance between two warring sides. For the Entente, it was a hostile act. It dispatched warships to establish a ‘pacific blockade’ of Greek ports (6 June 1916) that would only be lifted when Constantine installed a pro-Entente government. Constantine soon gave in. He dismissed Stephanos Skouloudis’s government on 22 June 1916 and formed one more amenable to the Entente. ¹²⁸

Brătianu told Fasciotti at their 24 June meeting that he had ‘no objections to the measures the Entente adopted for Greece since the situation appears unsolvable and thus necessitated a “radical solution”’. ¹²⁹ Still, as ‘the Head of Government of a small state’ he was openly displeased by the Great Powers’ ‘energy’ in promoting their own objectives at the expense of ‘an independent state’s constitutional regime’. It was a situation that troubled Brătianu greatly. He did not ‘want others to believe that Romania could go the same way as Greece’. ¹³⁰ Under this analogy he would be Romania’s Skouloudis. Arguably more troubling for the premier was that it was the British and French who pressured Greece militarily. This type of pressure was something that had largely been identified in Romanian political circles as a Russian tactic. In Bucharest’s worldview, it was the Russians that ignored state sovereignty to satisfy its objectives, not the British and French (the ‘standard-bearer[s] of civilization and laws’). ¹³¹ If London and Paris pursued such a policy they could not be relied upon to restrain Russia from doing the same. Even worse, if the Entente decided to apply political pressure on Romania, pressure backed up by military intervention, it was the Russians who were in a position to apply it. Only their forces could reach Romania in the summer of 1916 to pressure an already disconcerted Ferdinand to install a pro-Entente government, one that would likely be headed by Ionescu. In this context, a diplomatic ‘nudge’ from the Entente – for example, Blondel telling Brătianu that ‘the most favorable moment for Romania to enter the war on [the Entente’s] side has come’ – could easily be interpreted as something more sinister. ¹³²

The Brusilov offensive further complicated Romania’s continued neutrality. The military situation on the Russo-Austrian Front in June 1916 resembled that which prompted Brătianu to seek an understanding with Russia in September and October 1914: General Alexei Brusilov’s forces had (re-)taken Cernăuţi (18 June 1916) and continued rolling deep into Austria-Hungary until the Austrians (with significant German assistance) stabilized the front on 30 June. ¹³³ It is unlikely that Brătianu had become more trusting of the Russians in the intervening 20 months; on the contrary, he was probably more distrustful of Russian intentions than ever. Brătianu’s decision to return to the bargaining table in the summer of 1916 was motivated by his perception that Romania could lose not only its claim to its territorial desiderata in Austria-Hungary, but by a very real sense that the Russians could do in Romania what the British and French had done in Greece. It was the latter – the possibility that Romania’s sovereignty could be ‘suspended’ – that drove the timing of Brătianu’s decision and underscored the need to have the equality clause enshrined in the final political convention with the Entente.

The final alliance included the same territorial terms as the 1915 offer; a guarantee of Romania’s territorial integrity and promise to supply Romania with war matériel (which had been under discussion in 1915 when Brătianu backed out of negotiations); and mutual promises not to conclude a separate peace. It also included a newly-added equality clause. ¹³⁴ The Regat entered the war on 28 August 1916 and the war went very poorly. Bucharest fell by the end of the year (6 December 1916) and the government was relocated to Iaşi. The military situation became untenable by the end of November 1917 and the country signed an armistice at Focşani (9 December 1917). A ‘sacrificial government’ led by Marghiloman formally removed Romania from the war by signing the Treaty of Bucharest (7 May 1918). Although Romania re-entered the war against the Central Powers – somewhat laughably on 10 November 1918 (and after Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire had already signed armistices) – the damage was done.

The Entente’s opening position at the Paris Peace Conference was that Romania deserved none of the promises made in the 1916 alliance because Romania, itself, abrogated the treaty by signing a separate peace. ¹³⁵ After two years of having multiple Great Powers fail to live up to the terms of multiple agreements, the Entente was bent on holding Romania accountable to the precise terms of the written document, despite the fact that the strategic circumstances at the time of their surrender were hopeless. ¹³⁶ Even as the territorial claims were accepted for consideration, the equality clause was effectively a dead letter. ¹³⁷ Brătianu relived the challenges associated with Romania’s international legal status at the Paris Peace conference after spending two years trying to establish the Regat’s legal equality. His struggle highlighted the challenges of the small state situated outside of Western Europe. The collective political and economic power of the Family of Nations furnished the means to impose, negotiate, and enforce an international legal system that served their interests. It was extraordinarily difficult for an outsider to ‘break in’ and, in the context of the Great War, for Romania, the 1918 Treaty of Bucharest provided the basis for its continued exclusion.

The timing of Brătianu’s decision to bring Romania into the war raises the issue of whether the standard of civilization itself changed during the war. Both Carol and Poklewski commented before the end of 1914 that a change in status necessitated participation in a general war. It was not until the summer of 1916 and the possibility of the Entente dragging Romania into the war by any possible means that one can argue that Brătianu believed that the standard had shifted. Ultimately, the problem with the legal standard of civilization was not a ‘standard’ at all. It was a nebulous and shifting set of thresholds that changed as the rule-making Family of Nations deemed appropriate. In the summer of 1916, that meant – for Greece and Romania, anyway – participating in the war on the side of the Entente. To his disillusionment, Brătianu learned that, for a state with liminal socio-legal status, and despite guarantees to the contrary, any promise can become a mere scrap of paper and even the most foundational law can be abrogated.