ABSTRACT
In the First World War Romania initially stood aloof with a stark choice between joining the Central Powers in the hope of regaining Bessarabia from Russia (a territory that was an integral part of Moldavia until it was ceded to Russia by the Ottomans in 1812) or joining the Entente in the hope of winning Transylvania; for despite assimilation (and a particularly aggressive Magyarisation policy in this province) Romanians remained emphatically in the majority. It was the latter strategy that was adopted but only belatedly. After joining the Entente in 1916, Romania shared defeat with Russia in the face of superior forces, leading to the German occupation of Bucharest while the Romanian government retired to Iaşi. Major German requisitioning followed, with pressure to cultivate oil and other industrial plants and to preserve food at factories in Bucharest, Piteşti and Craiova. The oil industry fell under German control and the Cernavodă pipeline was relaid to Giurgiu. But the Entente victory on the western front overturned the settlement with the Central Powers (involving major economic concessions as well as territorial adjustments of strategic importance) and the principle of self-determination produced a ‘Greater Romania’, doubled in size and rounded-off with a continuous strip of lowland along the edge of the Pannonian Plain including a chain of large market towns extending from Timişoara to Arad, Salonta, Oradea, Carei and Satu Mare. But this raised the critical matter of defending the enlarged territory against revisionist states, particularly Hungary: hence the basic foreign policy principles (formulated by one of the country’s leading strategists) of avoiding both the domination of SEE by any single power and the vulnerability of isolation by seeking ‘inclusion’ as a European nation with full responsibilities in return for guarantees of territorial integrity at bilateral, regional and multilateral levels. Therefore good relations were cultivated with the western powers while the ‘Little Entente’ was established as a local alliance with Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia: two other states with massive vested interests in the new political map. Meanwhile domestic policy would need to protect the unitary integrity of the state against autonomy or other steps towards fragmentation (Nelson 2004, p. 464). The chapter proceeds with brief review of the political structure and infrastructure followed by more detailed examination of agriculture and industry including the continued imperative of expanding manufacturing in the interests of both security and the relief of rural poverty. At the same time the sheer weight of the rural population called for policies to safeguard the countryside during an inevitably long transition towards a viable commercial farming structure. Although the run-up
to the Second World War accelerated progress in some respects through the entente with Germany this would eventually prove disastrous.
