My American Lectures/Is Roumania a Balkan State?
IS ROUMANIA A BALKAN STATE?
In recent times the qualification « Balkan State » has too often been applied to Roumania. In a recent book, a notable French journalist, Monsieur Maurice Pernot, has connected, in an expose on the present situation in South-Eastern Europe, Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Roumania. For the Italians, too, « Balcania » is the new name given to all provinces appertaining to the old Byzantine Empire whether on the right or left bank of the Danube, but it seems to me that the definition is erroneous whether geographically or historically intended.
In my endeavour to rectify this false impression, I have no thought of pouring unjust scorn upon the rich and beautiful regions of the Balkan peninsula, whose inhabitants, now masters of independent and progressive states, have earned the highest praise for their long endurance under the Turkish yoke, for their valiant defence of the Christian faith, and for their infinite love for the ill-starred cradle of their race. But between them all, Hellenic or Slavonic foundations and the Roumanian State, great differences are recognisable.
The Balkans were a possession of the Byzantine Emperors. Later, Slavonic rulers, Bulgarian and Serbian were merely their imitators. The system of government, not centralised, but composed of isolated units in constant touch with a central power, preserved the ancient imperial character. In the Carpathians, the Empire was absent; no barbarian system of government was at hand to exercise the same power. Great cities had disappeared, the rural group was the sole surviving reality. The peasants lives in separate villages, each of them a patriarchal autonomy; the idea of the emperor gave a certain cohesion to these scattered units of social life. That was all. In time of war a group of villages would organise itself under the leadership of the dukes. After a time one of them became a domn (dominus), exercising power and having almost imperial sway over his subjects. His country was « the Roumanian lands » in the strictest national sense, not a state of the Balkans, not an ambitious copy of the Roman Empire of the East.
No political difference can be more strongly marked than this. In the Balkans the Christian regime was substituted by the last form of Rome, the Mussulman Rome of the Turks. The old system was preserved under the new masters: nothing essential was changed. Upon the left bank of the Danube the complete autonomy of the Princes of Moldavia and Wallachia was not diminished by the acceptance of Turkish suzerainty. They were the same rulers with the imperial might of the old emperors and, further, the Crown of the Byzantine Caesars seemed to be surrendered to them, the natural protectors of the Eastern Church. The four patriarchs lived under the control and by the grace of these crowned leaders of the Orthodox community. The Turks merely occupied the fortresses of the Danube, alone considered the conquest of the Sultans. In the interior there was no community with the Turk. The political masters held no rights other than that of granting investiture to princes « by the Grace of God » — never the grace of an earthly monarch, — and to receive annual tribute. Pashas commanded in Buda, but never in the Roumanian capitals, where the cross remained unviolated and soaring above the pinnacle of the political structure.
But many writers of history — not to confound these with historians — continue to speak of the Christians of the Balkans, Roumanians and others who, at almost the same time, broke their fetters and became free, as if Roumanian freedom had been interrupted for a single hour during the five hundred years of vassalage under the Rome of the Sultans.
From the geographical point of view, Bulgaria is today the only Balkan state, Yugoslavia extending to the borders of Italy, Greece being Mediterranean and European Turkey the almost negligible extension of an Asiatic State.
From an ethnographical point of view, the differences are not so clearly visible. Strong similarities between the races are at first apparent. The same Thracian ancestors are present on both Danubian shores; the Illyrians only appertaining to the Adriatic side of the Peninsula. The same Greek influence in the vicinity of the Pontus, the same process of popular romanization, and the same occupation by the Roman Empire. Slavonic invasions too were common to all.
But, to the north of the great river, the Scythians did indeed exercise an unseen and enduring influence, especially in Moldavia, upon the Thracians; the Getae and the Dacians settlements of Western Transylvania, and in the highlands. Notwithstanding the tardy character of the Roman colonization, first of shepherds and agriculturists, then of colonists of Trajan, this new Latin nation was not so much exposed to the domination of the barbarians, who went further afield in their search of richer treasures and securer strongholds, quickly abandoning, for a richer prey, these hills, woods and marshes. In the Balkans the Roman language remained only in the depths of the Pindus, on the shores of the western sea, and in the broader plains of Thessaly. In the Carpathians, Slavonic words were only added to the old stock of clear Latinity. From the Danube to the Besides, from the great river of the west, the Theiss, to its counterpart in the east, the Dniester, all this, to this day, is Roman.
Where then does the peninsula of the Balkans begin? A comparison with the two other peninsulas of Southern Europe may usefully assist in answering the question. Spain springs from the Pyrenees, the more southerly sierras being only the frontiers of the different provinces; Italy commences at the Alps, the Appennines representing the backbone of her body. In the third peninsula the role of the Pyrenees and of the Alps passes not to the Carpathians, a mountain range of Central Europe, connected with Poland and Slovakia and directed by their prolongations towards the west, but to the true peninsular range, termed the Balkans (Turkish: mountain), its junction with the Carpathians at the Iron Gates being interrupted by the Danube. The Rhodope is the only Balkan sierra to the south, while the Pindus can be considered as the Appennines of these countries. Each valley is dependent on the others. Through this system of mountains all provinces of the Pindo-Balkans are interconnected: Roumania, with the Sarmatian plains of Moldavia tending towards the Russian infinity, and the flat cornfields of Wallachia running down to the Danube, is decidedly a separate country.