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

 
51
the existence then of a strong fascist movement, the Iron Guard. The pre-First 
World War situation is usually presented only as a brief background in these 
studies, in order to prove the long traditions of anti-Jewish attitudes in 
Romania.
 94
  
 
Anti-Jewish sentiment gained ground in late nineteenth century Europe. It 
was not that anti-Jewish ideas had not existed before — on the contrary — but 
now the somewhat hazy concepts of anti-Jewish thinking were articulated in a 
more cohesive manner. The term ‘anti-Semitism’ in a political sense was first 
introduced by a German, Wilhelm Marr, in 1879.
95
 The anti-Semitic movement 
and dialogue was especially strong in Germany, but other Western and Central 
European countries also had their share of anti-Semitic activity. In France, for 
example, anti-Semitism was connected to the ideological battle between the 
clerical and the republican political circles. In Great Britain, however, there was 
no anti-Semitic movement that could be compared to those on the continent, 
and, although prejudice against Jews existed, anti-Semitism never gained 
intellectual respectability.
96
  
 
In Western Europe, Jews had achieved civil and political rights. 
Nevertheless, their emancipation still had many opponents. Anti-Semites were 
not a uniform group. Their goals and their main arguments varied. Some of 
them wanted to turn the clock back to the pre-emancipation situation, while 
others wished to restrict Jewish activities in some sectors of economic and 
public life. Yet others favoured more extreme measures, aiming at the 
elimination of the Jews by any means.
97
 Anti-Semitism appealed to many social 
classes. The middle classes, especially small entrepreneurs, such as the artisans 
and shopkeepers of the lower middle class, resented Jewish competition. The 
aristocracy and some church circles were suspicious of the modern democratic, 
urban, commercial, and secular society, and also feared the loss of their 
privileged position. They soon discovered that anti-Semitism offered a handy 
political tool in the battle against the liberals.
98
 
 
Despite the anti-Semitic currents in Western Europe, the states themselves 
were not anti-Semitic. This was the key difference in comparison to certain East 
European countries, above all Romania and Russia. Jewish rights in Russia 
were tightly restricted, and, in the second half of the nineteenth century, anti-
Semitism and Russian nationalism were formidable forces in Russian society 
and relations between Jews and gentiles were worsening.
99
  
                                                           
94
  
See, for example, Livezeanu 1995, Nagy-Talavera 1970 and Volovici 1991. 
95
  
Katz 1982, 4, 260-261; Lindemann 1997, 126-131. See also Kuparinen 1999, 149-150. 
96
  
Lewis 1986, 96-97. 
97
  
Katz 1982, 3, 246. 
98
  
Parkes 1963, 22-23. 
99
  
A short description of Russian anti-Semitism and the Jewish situation in the country 
in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century can be found, for example, 
from Lindemann 1997, 279-306. Lindemann groups Romania and Russia together as 
‘failures’ in the sense that, in those two countries, the Jewish situation was worse and 
anti-Semitism stronger and more visible than in the countries of ‘ambiguous failures’ 
(Germany and Austria) and ‘ambiguous successes’ (Britain and the United States).  

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52 
 
In Romania, anti-Semitism was, in the Russian manner, preached by the 
leading intellectuals and politicians, and it occupied a central place in 
Romanian thought. In William O. Oldson’s words, there was an ‘intellectual 
landscape permeated by anti-Jewish feeling’.
100
 However, there were a number 
of different aspects of anti-Semitism in Romania, and the ideology and 
government policies could not be attributed to any single factor — nor could 
they be described as purely ‘Romanian’. These elements can be divided into 
four main categories: religious aspects, economic factors, political aspects, and 
nationalism / racism.
101
 The introduction presented below largely discusses the 
particular Romanian characteristics of anti-Semitism and the situation that 
prevailed in Romania, but the international framework has been included 
where appropriate.  
 
The Christian religion had traditionally taken a negative view of the Jews. 
Jews were despised for theological reasons: because of their rejection of the 
Christian message and because of their — true or alleged — role in the death of 
Christ. Socio-economic factors, deriving from the Jewish occupational role in 
the medieval world, had sometimes been added to religious anti-Jewish beliefs. 
In the late nineteenth century, the influence of the church on every day life had 
somewhat weakened, at least in Western Europe, but Christian arguments 
against the Jews were still alive. They were also being used by the anti-Semites 
of the time. For example, ideas of Jewish moral inferiority and claims that Jews 
were attempting to rule the world were originally based on Christianity.
102
  
 
Religious discrimination was official in Romania, as can be seen from the 
distinction between Christians and others that was often made in legislation. 
There were a small number of administrative measures against Judaism, such 
as prevention of the rebuilding of synagogues, local taxes on kosher meat, and, 
in a more general context, the continuing use of the special ritual oath, More 
Judaico. The Constitution of 1866, in stipulating that only Christians could 
become Romanian citizens, was a basis for religious discrimination.
103
 The 
Romanians frequently pointed out that Jews were free to profess their religion 
                                                           
100
   Oldson 1991, 10, 100-101. 
101
   The categories are based on Brustein 2003; see especially 45-46. See also Iancu 1978 
for a similar classification.  
 
 
 
Brustein has evaluated Romanian, German, British, Italian, and French anti-
Semitism in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. He has compared 
the occurrences of anti-Semitic ‘acts’ (from verbal accusations to murderous riots), 
based on the summaries of main events concerning Jews in the volumes of the 
American Jewish Year Book. In addition, he has examined the daily newspapers with 
the largest national circulation in each country by random sampling that includes 
editions for the 15
th
 of each month from 1899 to 1939, in order to investigate the level of 
coverage of Jewish issues. Unfortunately, the findings appear to be somewhat 
misleading, probably as a result of the random sampling method. Brustein did not, for 
example, find high levels of reportage of Jewish affairs in 1900 (Jewish immigration) or 
1907 (the peasant revolt), when Jewish issues definitely attracted attention in Romanian 
newspapers. See Brustein 2003, 8-9, 14-19, 23.    
102
   Brustein  2003, 67; Katz 1982, 319-320; Lewis 1986, 81-82. 
103
   Iancu 1978, 120-121.  

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