Great Britain, British Jews, and the international protection of Romanian Jews, 1900-1914: a study of Jewish diplomacy and minority rights

 
 
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immediately. This raised enormous anxiety within the British Jewish 
community and in Britain as a whole. It was also true that more than 100,000 
Russian and Polish Jews had settled in Britain, and there was thus good reason 
to suspect that the Romanian Jews would not continue their journey to America 
either, especially if they were ‘encouraged’ to stay in Britain. The number of 
Romanian Jews who actually settled in Britain before the First World War was 
in the region of 5,000. 
 
In Britain, there were no separate measures taken or special policies 
adopted because of the Jewish immigrants from Romania: the Romanian 
migrant inflows were treated as a part of the bigger picture. It is doubtful 
whether the non-Jewish individuals and organisations were capable of 
distinguishing between Romanian, Russian, and other Eastern European Jewish 
immigrants, or if they were able to analyse the typical features of immigration 
from different Eastern European countries. As for the Foreign Office, it could 
not meddle in the immigration problems. Migration was mentioned a few times 
in diplomatic correspondence, in the context of foreign intervention, but the 
topics were not linked in a particularly articulated manner. In these cases, the 
threat of immigration to Britain was given as one of the possible reasons for 
exerting diplomatic pressure; these hints were made either by the British 
representatives in Romania or by the British Jewry in their correspondence with 
the Foreign Office. 
 
The Anglo-Jewry’s reactions to immigration were ambiguous and 
interesting. The basic belief of the Anglo-Jewish elite was that immigration 
should be discouraged because England could not absorb large masses of 
immigrants. The major Jewish organisations in London practised a firm policy 
designed to curb Romanian Jewish settlement in England. They sent destitute 
migrants back to the continent and gave financial aid only in selected and 
closely inspected cases. Everyone, including the Zionists and other dissenters 
from mainstream elite opinion, agreed that emigration from Romania should be 
arranged properly and that it should not be directed to Britain. Dissenting 
opinions referred only to the allegedly heartless and penny-pinching attitudes 
of the Jewish community leaders towards the migrants. It was never seriously 
suggested that all Jews from Romania who wanted to land in Britain should be 
welcomed to do so. 
 
British reactions to the American note of 1902 were either welcoming (in 
the Foreign Office and among the general public) or overjoyed and grateful 
(within the Jewish community). The British government was at this point so 
favourably disposed towards the note as to write a ‘supplement’ to it, inquiring 
whether the other European Powers would be willing to interfere in the 
Romanian matter. The answer was negative, and this restrained British efforts 
in the following years. Hay’s note did not have any real consequences except 
for a somewhat more relaxed policy towards the Jews in Romania, although this 
might be contributed to international opinion in general and not to the note 
alone.  
 

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The international political situation as a factor 
 
After several rather uneventful and quiet years around the Romanian Jewish 
question, the Romanian Peasant Revolt of 1907 led to much speculation on the 
role of the Jews in the revolt.  It was soon blighted, however, by wider aspects 
of the Romanian Jewish question as well as by the inflammable political 
situation in the Balkan area. From 1908 to 1913, there were two occasions, both 
arising from the international political issues, in which the Jewish question was 
discussed or was about to be discussed in the official international forum. The 
first occasion was the proposed conference on Balkan matters in 1908 – neither 
the Jews of Romania nor even Romania itself were involved in the Balkan 
turmoil, but the British Jews pushed for the inclusion of the Jewish question at 
the conference. Although its attempt was not very realistic, the Conjoint waged 
a particularly intense campaign at this stage to help the Romanian Jews. 
 
However, the British government was not inclined to pressure Romania 
with the Jewish issue when Romania was already in trouble. After 1907, this 
may have been a consequence of the general political situation and alliances; the 
British did not want to irritate Romania so that it would anchor itself more 
firmly in the Triple Alliance camp. This attitude was not visible in the first years 
of the century, which was understandable as Britain had not concluded any 
arrangements with Russia and France at that stage and was therefore less 
worried about developments in the German and Austrian bloc.  
 
Even if the Romanian Jewish problem was not in any way connected to 
the proposed - but not materialised - conference of 1908, the situation was quite 
different in 1913, during the Balkan Wars. At that time, the change of the 
Romano-Bulgarian border directly involved Jewish interests, since a smallish 
number of Bulgarian Jews in Southern Dodrudja - well under one thousand - 
were about to become Romanian subjects. This led to a full-blown campaign of 
Jewish diplomacy. The question seemed to be more about principles than 
practicalities: the key argument was that the territory of ‘religious oppression’ 
should not be allowed to expand.  
 
The Dobrudja dispute also offered a convenient opportunity to raise the 
whole Romanian Jewish question anew in the international arena. The 
opportunity was fully exploited by the Conjoint Committee leaders. The 
Conjoint Committee made repeated references to the Berlin Treaty, arguing that 
the new arrangements in the Balkans required a reaffirmation of the principles 
of the Berlin Treaty.  
 
In late 1913 and in summer 1914, the Conjoint Committee considered the 
replies they had received from the Foreign Office to be very encouraging. When 
the First World War broke out, however, nothing concrete had resulted from 
the allegedly promising sentiments.  
 
Objectives and results 
 
The main objective of the Conjoint Committee was to work for the 
emancipation of Romanian Jews. This goal was related to the Treaty of Berlin: 

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