The Unyielding Boundaries of Citizenship: The Emancipation of 'Non-Citizens' in Romania, 1866–1918

To Have and to Hold: Gender Regimes and Property Rights in the Romanian Principalities before World War I

“…In a relatively recent work examining the limits of liberalism in Romania, Constantin Iordachi draws attention to the exclusion of women from political rights in the young Romanian Kingdom, but as a matter of secondary importance by comparison with the ethno-nationalism that blocked the participation of Jewish men and male inhabitants of Dobrogea from assuming full citizenship. I do not disagree that those are important elements which point towards the limits of liberalism in Romania, 96 but the exclusion of all women, regardless of their ethnicity, not only from political rights, but more importantly from basic legal rights and protections that would enable them to make a living and make autonomous choices about marriage and their livelihood on an everyday basis seems egregious enough to demand closer examination. A theory of modernization of Romanian politics that does not account for this thorough, systematic discrimination, which actually exacerbates the misogynistic position of the Romanian political elites, both liberals and conservatives, is incomplete at best.…”

Historicising the Normative Boundaries of Diversity: The Minority Treaties of 1919 in a Longue Durée Perspective

“…The status of the Jews in Romania after 1878, as subjects but not citizens, with none of the benefits and many of the obligations associated with citizenship, complete with an individual naturalisation law that opened a door to 'deserving' or 'useful' Jews, finds an interesting parallel further afield, beyond the borders of the 'Eastern Question', in the similar status of the indigenous subjects in the French West African Federation, where such a law was proposed in 1907 and passed in 1912 by the Dakar administration. 59 Not only are such similarities in two otherwise patently different situations indicative of the general tension between the universalising claims of liberalism and its attendant hierarchies, but the two individual paths to naturalisation bore striking resemblances in their emphasis, in addition to 'moral rectitude', on property and 'good financial standing', as well as in their exclusion of women from their remit. 60 Moreover, by situating the Jewish minorities in Eastern Europe within or at the periphery of land empires in a common framework with overseas colonial subjects, it becomes apparent that these hierarchies, often read exclusively as racial, could be at once more and less than just that, drawing as they did on historical patterns of exclusion on grounds of religion, gender, or class.…”

From Elite Pamphleteers to Social Movement Protagonists: Antisemitic Activism in 1920s Romania

“…11 Jews petitioned the revolutionary councils in Bucharest, Iaşi, and Blaj for equal rights during the unrest of 1848, but the liberal nationalist revolutionaries were at first unable and -several decades later -unwilling to fulfil their initial promises to emancipate Jews. 12 A Jewish doctor named Iuliu Barasch published a pamphlet in 1861 entitled L'émancipation des Israélites en Roumanie (The Emancipation of Jews in Romania) asking Romania's new leader, Alexandru Ion Cuza, to extend civil rights to Jews.…”