Great Britain, British Jews, and the international protection of Romanian Jews, 1900-1914: a study of Jewish diplomacy and minority rights

 
17
 
5. The emerging internationalist, humanitarian, and pacifist movements, 
 
which gave their support to the League of Nations as a forum to 
 
promote   peace and justice in the interwar era.
24
 
 
Of these elements, the revisionist powers and humanitarian movements were 
not applicable to the era before the First World War. These two factions were 
related to minority protection under the League of Nations. Consequently, three 
factions remain that are relevant to the present study. Firstly, the Great Powers, 
who tried to impose minority protection clauses. Secondly, the successor states, 
which had to comply with the minority protection clauses — although, 
preferably, before the First World War they should simply be called  East 
European states, since the term ‘successor state’ carries an interwar connotation. 
Thirdly, there were the Jews. In the present study, the Great Power perspective 
and the Jewish viewpoint have been selected as the research subject. Within 
these categories, the British government, as an example of a Great Power policy 
maker, and the Anglo-Jewry, as a representative of Jewish interests, are 
analysed in relation to the international protection of Romanian Jews.  
 
 
1.4  Jewish diplomacy and British foreign policy 
 
 
The rights of minorities, the role of the Great Powers in minority protection, 
and the efforts of the Jewish activists will be discussed from the perspective of 
‘Jewish diplomacy’.
 
There is no previous research dealing solely with Romanian 
Jews that has approached the issue from this angle. Romania is mentioned in a 
number of studies on Jewish diplomacy along with other countries such as 
Russia, but not as the sole object of discussion. Fink, for instance, discusses 
international Jewish policy relating to Romanian Jews, but she does not address 
the subject explicitly through ‘Jewish diplomacy’ nor does she focus exclusively 
on Romania. There is definitely room, therefore, for a study on Jewish 
diplomacy relating to Romania. 
 
Zosa Szajkowski, in 1960, appears to have been one of the first historians 
to use the expression ‘Jewish diplomacy’.
25
 Jewish diplomacy can be defined as 
‘the activities of emancipated Jewish political and economic élites on behalf of 
Jewish communities in repressive or backward countries’. These activities could 
include direct intervention in acute situations, economic pressure or attempts to 
influence domestic governments.
26
  
 
To defend the persecuted coreligionists world-wide was seen as a noble 
duty of the privileged Jewish notables. It was also a tool in the hands of the 
Jewish leaders to strengthen their position within their own communities at a 
                                                           
24
  
Fink 2004, 360-363. 
25
  
Szajkowski 1960. Szajkowski did not, however, attempt to define the concept in his 
article. For definitions of the term, see also Matikainen 2005, 346-347. 
26
  
Gutwein 1991, 23-24. 

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18 
time when there was an increasing demand for democratisation among the 
Jewish masses. Despite democratic trends in other sectors of community life, 
the Jewish public, as a rule, accepted the leading diplomatic role of the élites 
and believed that their diplomatic power was indispensable in aiding the 
oppressed.
27
 
 
Mark Levene argues that if diplomacy as such is defined as the 
management of international relations through negotiation by diplomats, as 
well as the art of diplomats in managing those relations, a contradiction arises if 
one wants to speak of Jewish diplomacy. The diplomat must have some 
bargaining power in negotiations, be it economic, military or territorial. As a 
result, diplomacy is bound up with the possession of power and, therefore, it is 
usually a prerogative of sovereign states.
28
 Levene calls the Anglo-Jewish efforts 
prior to First World War ‘less diplomacy than a refined form of pressure-group 
politicking’.
29
 However, Levene does use the term ‘Jewish diplomacy’ himself, 
as his focus is more on the policy of the Anglo-Jewish foreign policy expert 
Lucien Wolf during the First World War and its aftermath, than on the period 
before the First World War.  
 
Todd Endelman also employs the term ‘Jewish diplomacy’ in his study on 
the history of British Jewry.
30
 To add to the list, David Vital accepts the use of 
the phrase in his article on the trans-state political action of the European Jewry 
in 1860-1919. According to Vital, Jewish diplomacy of the late 19th and early 
20th centuries dealt with aspects of the ‘Jewish question’. It was political action 
directed by privileged, rich, academic or political individuals and groups in one 
country (or more) toward the authorities of another country — the ‘target 
country’, as Vital calls it. The ability and willingness to use pressure was 
essential. Pressure could take the form of rousing public opinion, exerting 
economic pressure or inducing one government to act against another 
government. There was often a wider aim that went beyond single situations: to 
bring about a lasting change in the status of the Jewish community that was 
being assisted.
31
 It should be noted that Jewish diplomacy was pre-dated by 
mid-nineteenth century endeavours by individual Jewish notables, which Vital 
calls ‘private intercession’.
32
  
                                                           
27
  
Gutwein 1991, 23-24. Szajkowski has argued that, in the United States, ‘Jewish 
diplomacy became a public matter for the large Jewish masses and not only for a 
limited number of Jewish politicians’ in the early twentieth century. Szajkowski 1960, 
150. 
28
  
Levene 1992, 1. 
29
  
Levene 1992, 11. 
30
  
Endelman 2002, 122-123. 
31
  
Vital 1991, 41-43. Jewish diplomacy was one of the forms of trans-state action. Vital, 
however, chooses to emphasise Zionism as a movement which was disposed to 
reform the Jewry ‘on the basis of authentic national institutions and through 
uninhibited, unashamed national (and therefore implicitly trans-state) political 
action’. See Vital 1991, 48.   
32
  
Vital 1991, 41. However, in another work, A People Apart: A Political History of the Jews 
in Europe 1789-1939, when he discusses the foreign policy of Jewish communal 
leaders, he does not use the term ‘Jewish diplomacy’,. For his usage of the word 
‘intercession’, see, for example, Vital 2001, 335-336, 486. 

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