Roumania and the Roumanians
DR. SETON-WATSON says in the Preface that this book may " fairly claim to be the first attempt by any British writer to give a complete survey of Roumanian history from its obscure origins down to the achievement of national unity in our own day." The result shows the attempt to have been successful to a degree possible only to a writer equipped with wide his- torical knowledge and with a true scientific temper. And this for very good reasons. The plains inhabited by the Rou- manian nation have at various times been used as a corridor through which invading peoples have poured into Europe, both along the northern and southern shores of the Pontus Euxinus destroying as they passed the written and sculptured records which form the usual material of historical evidence. As a consequence Roumanian history remains perhaps the most obscure section of all Western history. Dr. Seton-Watson points out that " we are reduced to the merest speculation and conjecture with regard to the contemporaries of Henry III of England and St. Louis of France." That paucity of solid fact in its turn has given excessive scope to patriotic pseudo-historians who, in arguing their partisan case, have often made still darker what was already shadowy. The Roumanian from obvious pride of race is . anxious to prove his untarnished Roman descent " ; the Magyar claims to have arrived in Transylvania at least three .centuries earlier than the Roumanians,. and to strengthen this thesis he argues that " even in Wallachia they are merely
thirteenth-century newcomers "-from the south, which leads him to exaggerate the role of the Roumanian element in the Asenid (or Bulgaro-Vlach)- empire ; here he is countered by the Slav who wants to minimize that role and who is therefore anxious to prove Roumanian continuity on the north bank of the Danube. Finally, there is the German who " would feel happier if he could establish a priority on the part of the Saxon settlers in Transylvania "-or at least a contemporaneous arrival with the Magyars.
None of these political litigants could claim Dr. Seton- Watson as upon his side on the strength of this book. All the more will it be welcome to English readers as a reliabb and also, in spite of its bulk and learning, as a readable guide. The whole makes a fascinating story, of more than local interest. The geographical status of the Roumanian lands has caused their history to reflect many of the events which went into the making of European history, as a sheet of water reflects the things that pass along its edge, and this both from the earlier period of migration and invasion and from the more recent times which saw the rise and tragic denouement of the Eastern Question. Dr. Seton-Watson's narrative brings out well the extent to which the fate of the Roumanian nation, like that of the other peoples of south-eastern. Europe, was shaped by the ambitions and actions of the European Powers, who cramped rather than quickened their emancipation. The book should, therefore, help to correct the curiously perverse and persistent version of history which represents the Balkan problem as a danger for the peace of Europe, whereas the truth is that the European problem has been and remains a danger for the peace of the Balkans.
Another point of general interest which this study brings into relief concerns the fate of Austria-Hungary. It shows how much it was in the power of the Hapsburgs to stop the rot which finally brought their proud empire to fall. Throughout the decades of senseless Magyar oppression the minorities in Transylvania faithfully looked to Vienna for relief, and perhaps the most striking aspect of that fact was that the Roumanians especially, though the worst treated of the minorities and though living closely to the rising Rou- manian State, should have kept their faith almost to the end. The line of federal reforin which apparently found favour with the heir to the throne was that put forward by Aurel Popovici in his United States of Great Austria (1906) ; and as late as 1913 one of the Transylvanian leaders, M. Vaida-Voevod, scouted the idea of that Greater Roumania which later he was to govern as Prime Minister. Well might the Archduke remark privately to some of the leaders of the minori- ties : " I am surprised, after what has happened, that your people should have any loyalty left."
Transylvania having played an interesting part in the final unity, both literary and political, of all Roumanians, Dr. Seton-Watson has done well to give us from his exceptional knowledge the history of that province, but he has allowed it space out of proportion to its secondary role in the formation of Roumanian social and political institutions, while he has neglected some currents and events of much interest in that respect. Apart from this, a few details are erroneous or doubt- "fill. One cannot speak of dorobanli and .edltirafi in connexion with the early: political structure of the Roumanian people ; the first term, derived from the German Trabanten, came into use in the seventeenth century, while the second is not found before the sixteenth. The author of the book mentioned in " the second note on p. 210 is Radu Rosetti, father of the General, and the book which should be consulted on the rising of 1907 is his Why the Peasants Revolted and not the one suggested in the note on p. 889. General Rosetti himself, who in recent years had published a series, of studies on Roumanian military history, invaluable also for the student of social history, has given in a paper read before the Rod- martian Academy the real composition of the group which forced Cuza's abdication in 1865 and which differs from that given by Dr. Seton-Watson on p. 312. Finally, it would seem that Dr. Seton-Watson has been misled with regard to the sup- posed Roumanian undertaking to attack Bulgaria in conjunction with General Sarrail's attack from the South ; the Convention of which he speaks on p. 496 is unknown to the Roumanian military authorities. These are a few of the points of detail which might be corrected in a future edition of this valuable
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