15
right
to certain traditions, and property rights.
15
A large number of treaties
containing minority provisions were concerned with the relations between
European Christians and the Ottoman Empire, although some concerned the
protection of Protestants in Catholic countries and vice versa.
16
The 1774 Treaty
of Koutchouk-Kainardji between Russia and Turkey gave Russia the right to act
as the protector of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire.
17
In 1830, Britain, France, and Russia guaranteed the independence of
Greece, at the same time stipulating that all subjects in Greece were to be
treated equally irrespective of religion. In this instance,
it was the non-Christian
and non-Orthodox Christian minorities that were thus protected.
18
The
Congress of Vienna in 1814-1815 is another significant example dating from the
early nineteenth century. This time the minority protection clauses did not
relate to Ottoman or Balkan affairs; Russia, Austria, and Prussia promised to
permit national institutions for their Polish subjects, thus enabling the Poles to
gain some degree of self-government, although not similar within each empire.
The situation of the Poles and the observance of the minority protection
obligations were monitored by the other Great Powers.
19
Although expressing a concern for religious and national minorities, the
terms of minority clauses tended to be vague. It can
be argued that minorities
were tolerated but not encouraged. Even so, there was a tradition of minority
protection in international law. A major shortcoming of the minority clauses
was the implementation of treaty provisions. Intervention rights as defined in
the treaties, referring to the right to make representations, were usually limited.
Special recognition clauses, on the other hand, strengthened intervention
rights.
20
These considerations also became important in the Romanian situation.
Research on the history of minority rights has tended to concentrate on the
minority problems of the late twentieth century.
In addition, it has largely been
conducted by social scientists and legal scholars. Some researchers have,
however, attempted to trace the longer historical roots of minority protection.
Two studies that cover a long time period and a wide variety of issues can be
mentioned and recommended here. Patrick Thornberry’s
International Law and
the Rights of Minorities (1991) is essential reading on minority rights in the light
of international law. Jennifer Jackson Preece’s
National Minorities and the
European Nation-States System (1998) is somewhat more detailed on the pre-First
World War period. Both Thornberry and Jackson
Preece do mention the
minority rights of Romanian Jews, but neither discusses the matter in detail.
15
Thornberry 1991, 25-26.
16
Capotorti 1979, 1-2.
17
Dadrian 1995, 8, 13,19.
18
Capotorti 1979, 2.
19
Capotorti 1979, 2; Jackson Preece 1998, 60-61. The Congress of Vienna is often
emphasised as the first occasion in which ‘national’ minorities as opposed to
religious minorities were protected.
20
Claude 1955, 8-9; Thornberry 1991, 32-35.
16
Some attempts have been made to study Jewish minority rights in
Romania from a Zionist or Jewish nationalist standpoint. However, this
approach is not very productive. Oscar Janowsky, in his 1933 study on Jewish
nationalism and national minority rights, accurately remarked that there really
was no important Zionist movement in Romania
or in other Balkan states
before the First World War. The Romanian Jews were focused on the struggle
for civil and political rights within the context of the Romanian state.
21
The most rewarding perspective for this present study is the one applied
by Carole Fink in her book
Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the
Jews, and International Minority Protection. Fink has studied international
minority protection, and especially the minority question in Eastern Europe,
from 1878 to 1938. She is therefore one of few historians to have related the
Romanian Jewish question to the wider framework of minority protection —
although she has not discussed the Romanian situation exclusively.
Fink has
argued that ‘the quest for international minority protection in Eastern Europe
involved the fusing of two powerful opposites: the attainment and maintenance
of full national independence versus the expansion of outside control’. The
Congress of Berlin in the 1870s and, subsequently, the League of Nations
between the world wars, created cautiously worded compromise agreements
on minority rights as well as limited measures to enforce the minority clauses.
22
In a somewhat similar vein, Jennifer Jackson Preece has emphasised the
relationship between national minority questions and the nation-states system:
the nation-states system makes national minorities a subject of international
politics.
According to Jackson Preece, issues concerning the status of minorities
came to the fore at those moments when a ‘new international order’ was
established, such as in 1878 when the Treaty of Berlin was signed. It was
precisely at the Congress of Berlin that the independence of the Romanian state
and the rights of Romanian Jews were deliberated. On occasions in which a new
order has been set in place, minorities have been granted certain rights in order
to maintain stability. Jackson Preece believes, therefore, that minority rights
protection can be understood as an attempt
to secure peace and order by
minimising the possibility of ethnic conflicts.
23
According to Carole Fink, the history of minority protection in 1878-1938
involves five interacting factions:
1. The Great Powers, which dictated minority obligations to Eastern
European states.
2. The revisionist states, which used minority protection for irredentist
purposes.
3. The successor states, which had to submit to dictated terms. They tried
to contest the international tutelage of their internal affairs.
4. The Jews, who were the main nongovernmental proponents of
international minority protection.
21
Janowsky 1933, 155.
22
Fink 2004, 359-360.
23
Jackson Preece 1998, 4, 11.