Paul A. Hiemstra - Alexandru D. Xenopol and the Development of Romanian Historiography

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: HISTORIOGRAPHY

Volume 33

ALEXANDRU D. XENOPOL AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF ROMANIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY

PAUL A. HIEMSTRA

First published in 1987 by Garland Publishing, Inc.

This edition first published in 2016

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1987 Paul A. Hiemstra

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-138-99958-9 (Set)

ISBN: 978-1-315-63745-7 (Set) (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-64372-7 (Volume 33) (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-62923-0 (Volume 33) (ebk)

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Paul A. Hiemstra

Copyright 1987 Paul A. Hiemstra
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hiemstra, Paul A. (Paul Arnold), 1950

Alexandru D. Xenopol and the development of Romanian historiography / Paul A. Hiemstra.

p. cm.(Modern European history)

Revision of the authors thesis (Ph.DIndiana University)

Bibliography: p.

ISBN 0-8240-8026-2 (alk. paper)

1. Xenopol, A. D. (Alexandru Dimitris), 18471920. 2. RomaniaHistoriography. 3. NationalismRomania. I. Title. II. Series.

DR216.9.X45H54 1987

949.80072dc19 87-25857

All volumes in this series are printed on acid
free, 250-year-life paper.

Printed in the United States of America

ALEXANDRU D. XENOPOL AND THE DEVELOPMENT

OF ROMANIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY

Paul A. Hiemstra

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research for this work was conducted in part with the support of a Fulbright research award which enabled me to conduct research in the libraries of the Universities of Bucharest, Jassy, and Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in addition to the library of the Romanian Academy and the State Archives. The assistance and cooperation of the various agencies which fund and administer the Fulbright Program with Romania are acknowledged with gratitude: the U.S. Information Agency, the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, the U.S. Embassy, Bucharest, and the Romanian Ministry of Education. Additional research was conducted at the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.

Although the Romanian scholars, librarians, and friends who contributed to my research are so numerous that they cannot be mentioned by name, I am deeply appreciative of their loyal interest in my work.

I also acknowledge the editorial contributions of Carol Erickson, AnneMarie Kestner, Susan Lindfors, and Mary Stuart McCamy in preparing this work for publication.

Finally, I wish to acknowledge the advice and patient support of Barbara Jelavich, who chaired my dissertation committee at Indiana University, where an earlier version of this work served as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Ph.D. in the Department of History.

When Romania declared war on Austria-Hungary in August of 1916, enemy troops quickly overran the small Balkan state. Bucharest fell in December; by the end of the year the Central Powers were in control of two-thirds of Romanias territory. The Romanian government withdrew from Bucharest to Jassy, a city which in the previous fifty years had been losing its political and cultural significance. Formerly the capital of the Principality of Moldavia, Jassy had become increasingly provincial after the Great Powers recognition in 1861 of Moldavias unification with Wallachia in a centralized Romanian state.

In December of 1917, the Romanian government signed an armistice with the Central Powers, who during that year had maintained their domination of Romanian territory. During the early months of war Alexandru D. Xenopol, a seventy-year-old invalid, had been moved to his native Jassy in the hope that there he would escape the privations and uncertainties of a capital already being threatened by enemy troops. A historian and philosopher of history of international reputation, the aging Xenopol scribbled on February 11, 1917, a pathetic note to C. I. Istrati, the Minister of Industry and Commerce; complaining of the need for sugar and other staples, Xenopol begged Istrati to do everything possible to give me some sugar, salt, and whatever else you can get.

The author of the first multi-volume synthesis of Romanian history and the writer of a widely discussed treatise on the philosophy of history, Xenopol had used his international reputation in the preceding decades to defend Romanias interests and prestige in scholarly circles throughout Europe. At home, during a half-century crucial to the development of intellectual life in the Romanian state, Xenopol had asserted his positions on literary, political, economic, and historical controversies from the period following national unification until

Although Romanias fortunes recovered, Xenopols did not. Prime Minister Ion I. C. Bratianu resigned in March of 1918 to allow a new, pro-German Romanian government to conclude a separate peace with the Central Powers, strategically enabling Bratianu to preserve his own good standing with the Allies. Later that year, one week after Austria-Hungarys surrender and the day before the signing of the armistice between Germany and the Allies, the Romanian government re-declared war and ordered the troops of the Central Powers out of the country. The collapse of the defeated Dual Monarchy in Budapest and Vienna, together with the establishment of a Soviet government in Petersburg, created a power vacuum from which the Romanian state did not fail to benefit. By the conclusion of the Paris negotiations in 1920, Allied and neighboring states all had recognized the annexation by Romania of southern Bukovina from Austria, Bessarabia from Russia, Dobrogea from Bulgaria, and eastern Banat, Transylvania, and other important districts from Hungary. Romania had expanded to include an area and population that were more than double the size of the pre-war Romanian state.

Many nationalist Romanian intellectuals and politicians in preceding decades had expressed a continuing interest in the affairs of their co-nationals beyond Romanias borders. None of these intellectuals, however, had predicted the World War and the subsequent collapse of three empires Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg in whose aftermath the victorious Allies would allow Romania suddenly to expand and include so many adjacent territories and people in a centralized national state.