Rumania

Meanwhile the Liberal opposition was being reorganized. On the death of I. C. Bratianu, in 1891, and of his brother Dimitrie in June 1892, the veteran statesman Dimitrie Sturdza was rec ognized as the head of the Liberals, and in 1894 started a very violent agitation in favour of the Rumanians in Hungary. An other popular Opposition cry was "Rumania for the Rumanians," directed against the right granted to foreigners under the new mining law to lease lands for long periods for the working of petroleum. In 1895, although the government carried the mining bill, the Liberal Party was able by a policy of abstention to bring about the fall of the government. A new liberal government was formed by D. Sturdza.

The very excess of their victory, however, proved a source of weakness to the Liberals, whose party broke up into factions named after their respective leaders, Sturdzists, Aurelianists and Flavists. Sturdza himself was obliged to retire, as public opinion was incensed by his harsh treatment of the head of the Orthodox Church, the metropolitan Gennadius, who, after a quarrel over the management of some wealthy charity funds, had been found guilty by the Holy Synod of certain canonical offences, and deposed. Aurelian, in co-operation with the conservative leaders, calmed public opinion by a successful compromise, but then refused to retire from the office which he had taken over on Dec. 3, 1896. After a sharp struggle, Sturdza regained office and held it from April 1897 to April 1899, when he was forced to retire by a popular outcry against his excessive subservience to the Hungarian Government.

The Conservatives, under G. G. Cantacuzino, returned to power, but were at once faced by a very severe financial crisis, due to past overborrowing and extravagant expenditure, as a result of which the treasury found itself without resources to meet a pay ment of bonds for £2,500,000, which had fallen due in Berlin. The Government managed to extricate itself from its immediate difficulties in the autumn of 1899, by raising a loan in Berlin, on very stringent terms. The Conservatives were united in wishing to meet the financial crisis by a moderate reduction of expenditure and a large increase of taxation, while the Liberal Opposition ad vocated the permanent reduction of the annual expenditure of 1800,000, which would necessitate the raising of £200,000 only by fresh taxation. The Conservative programme was naturally unpopular ; Carp and the Junimists were unwilling to co-operate with the government, and, on Feb. 26, 1901, Sturdza again be came premier. His administration lasted until Dec. 31, 1904, and averted the impending bankruptcy of Rumania by a policy of strict retrenchment. On Jan. 4, 1905 the Conservatives returned to power, and in May succeeded in floating a conversion loan.

Agrarian Rising, 1907.

The chief cause of the agrarian insurrection of March 1907 was the unsatisfactory distribution of the land of ter the emancipation of the peasants in 1864. Although framed to benefit them the 1864 law did not allow them really to free themselves from the large proprietors and forced them to borrow from Jewish moneylenders. An additional cause was the harsh treatment of the peasants on the state and communal lands leased to Jewish middlemen. At first an attack on the Jews alone, the rising soon became a jacquerie directed against all the large landowners. Numerous towns and villages were sacked and partly burned, and 140,000 soldiers were employed to suppress the revolt.

On March 24 the Cantacuzino Ministry resigned and was suc ceeded by a Liberal government under Sturdza, who completed the restoration of order by strong military measures and after wards initiated remedial legislation. General elections in June confirmed the Liberal majority, and Sturdza and his successor in the leadership, Bratianu, remained in office till the end of 1911, when they gave way to a Conservative Cabinet under J. J. Carp.

Violently attacked by the Liberals and new party of Conservative Democrats, under Take Jonescu, the Carp government was re constructed in April 1912 with Maiorescu as Premier and Take Jonescu as the most important figure in the Ministry.

Foreign Affairs, 1878-1912.

Meanwhile the foreign political situation had, since the accession of Prince Charles, been com paratively uneventful. Of Rumania's three neighbours, she was bound to Bulgaria by a traditional friendship, but of this the cession of the Dobruja boded the end. It was not, however, easy for Rumania to adopt a cordial attitude towards either Russia or Austria-Hungary, for different reasons. Against Russia, Rumania was bitterly incensed in 1878. Friction continued over the de limitation of the Dobruja frontier until 1884, and after that date the loss of Bessarabia was still regretted. While the population, trained in traditional respect for Russia—a respect due largely to the influence of the Orthodox Church—was less enduring in its resentment, Ion Bratianu, who smarted under the personal humiliation which he had received at the Congress of Berlin, was the more ready to fall in with Prince Charles' pronounced and natural preference for the Central Powers. This received its official seal when Charles secretly adhered to the Triple Alliance in 1883 (see EUROPE). The people at large had many reasons to dislike Austria-Hungary. Ill-feeling began with the conclusion of the Commercial Treaty of 1875, in which Rumania believed herself unfairly treated, and was intensified on the question of the Danube Commission, on which Austria-Hungary insisted on her right to place a delegate, although the sphere of activity of the Commission, which extended from Galatz to Orsova, did not touch Austrian soil (see DANUBE). Another constantly recurring dispute (which also caused a diplomatic rupture with Greece, lasting from 1905 to 1911) was that concerning the status of the Vlach (q.v.) communities in Macedonia, over which Rumania claimed the rights of a protector. Relations with the Dual Monarchy really became difficult after Bratianu's death, when the Liberals under Sturdza opened up a campaign in favour of the Rumanians of Transylvania (q.v.), whose awakening national consciousness was bringing them into increasing conflict with the policy of Magyarization pursued by the Hungarian government. The national cause was adopted by the Francophile Liberal Party, while the Conservatives still held to the policy of friendship with Germany; but though during the annexation crisis of 1908 Rumania still held to an attitude consistent with her secret treaty obligations, the increasing tension between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, with the resultant attempts by Austria to entice Bulgaria into her orbit, made this attitude ever more difficult. Should complications arise in the Balkans, forcing Austria to define her attitude towards Bulgaria, it seemed likely that the thread be tween Austria and Rumania might snap for ever.