Abstract
There are numerous good books on interwar Romania. Many reflect on whether the creation of a larger Romanian state after 1918 was the outcome of domestic struggle or international intervention. Others evaluate the success and failure of this state in different areas, from education and the arts to economic life and the condition of the numerous minority groups. More recently, gender and religious issues have received attention. Doina Anca Cretu's work breaks new ground by considering the role of foreign aid in the Romanian state-building project.
Taking a roughly chronological approach, Cretu surveys the changing forms of foreign aid coming into Romania from 1919 to 1939, while noting early initiatives flowing from the US entry into the war in 1917. This is situated in the introduction against a backdrop of agrarian crisis, wartime destruction and also the changing balance of global power emerging from the peace settlement. Cretu quotes Julia Irwin's phrase ‘humanitarian awakening’ to characterize the policies and discourses of the new state (10), and also emphasizes the symbiotic relationship of local state and non-state actors in engaging in this particular dimension of nation-building.
Chapter 1 describes the setting up of aid supply and implementation structures in the late phases of the war and its immediate aftermath, foregrounding the role of the American Relief Association and the American Red Cross (which established a ‘Balkan Commission’ in November 1918). Chapter 2 focuses particularly on aid directed at children. This came principally through the activities of the European Children's Fund (ECF), an outgrowth of the American Relief Administration spearheaded by Herbert Hoover. While the quantity of aid directed at Romania was not as large as that sent to Austria and Poland, the ECF's work was wide-ranging, from direct aid offered to war orphans to broader educational initiatives. It involved not just top-down distribution but collaboration with local actors, from the Royal Family to the Sanitary Directorates of the Interior Ministry, from the Society for the Protection of War Orphans to the National Orthodox Society of Romanian Women. Chapter 3 looks particularly at aid destined for Romania's Jews, orchestrated mainly by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, against the background of the international agreements reached at the end of the war and the new Romanian constitution of 1923. Their mission was supported by the US Embassy but also received support from local organizations such as the Union of Native Jews as well as smaller associations such as masonic lodges or associations of schoolteachers and university graduates. Chapter 4 jumps to the early 1930s, when, Cretu argues, a new form of ‘constructive aid’ was taking shape, involving both new understandings of science in shaping the state, and new donors such as the Rockefeller Foundation. The chapter covers a range of topics including health infrastructure, attention to village and peasant life, and the role of science in the academic disciplines of statistics and anthropology (‘the science of the nation’). This is backed up by accounts of Romanian scholars’ study visits to the US, including Iuliu Moldovan, Sabin Manuilă, and Dimitrie Gusti.
Cretu's work is based on an exceptionally rich documentation, especially from the US archives of the relevant American organizations, but also from the Red Cross archives in Geneva and from a wide range of fonds in Romania, including not only the National Archives in Bucharest and Cluj but also provincial ones like those of Bacău. Many US and Romanian newspaper collections are also used, and the work is excellently illustrated with telling photographs. Many of the findings shed light on how post-1918 state and society was significantly structured by these initiatives, ranging from basic questions of food resources to wider areas such as education and intellectual life.
In the light of this achievement, Cretu's six-page ‘Epilogue’ is somewhat brief and partly dedicated to drawing parallels with the post-1989 moment: more could have been said in conclusion. Important points are made, however, regarding Romania's place in the broader historiography and periodization of aid and development, engaging particularly with the work of Frederick Cooper. US involvement in Romania is not read as unilaterally providential; it is emphasized that American aid organizations ‘fundamentally reinforced nationalist, and at times illiberal projects of state building’ (205).
The title is slightly misleading given that the work is dedicated almost exclusively to US aid, not foreign aid generally. Even if the US is said to have had a ‘monopoly of diffusion’ (204), it would have been nice to have some comparison with the involvement of other countries such as France and Germany; in respect to the latter, the work of Stephen Gross on German soft power in south-eastern Europe springs to mind. And further connections could have been made regarding the relation between philanthropy and capital penetration. Overall, however, I learnt a huge amount from this highly impressive work of documentation and analysis. Cretu's findings are important not just for understanding the period and country studied, but for general reflection on the transnational nature of state-building.