Anti-Semitism at the Intersection of Corruption and Colonialism: Continuities of Political Rhetoric in Romania from the Nineteenth Century to the Interwar Period

The topoi of “corruption” and “colonialism” that emerged in nineteenth-century Romania in connection to infrastructure projects and the anxieties related to the prominence of foreign capital therein converged into an anti-Semitism that acted as a proxy to displace both. Around 1900, an emerging far-right further radicalized this rhetoric, with Alexandru C. Cuza (1857–1947), nicknamed “the patriarch of Romanian anti-Semitism,” representing a conveyor belt between the state-driven institutional anti-Semitism of nineteenth-century Romania and the grassroots version that would become characteristic of interwar Romanian fascism. Drawing on parliamentary debates, press articles, and the numerous pamphlets and scientific publications of the prolific Cuza, this article focuses on his re-fashioning of the nineteenth-century vision of infrastructure projects relying heavily on foreign capital into a nexus for thinking about corruption, colonialism, and anti-Semitism. It argues that Cuza helped to turn economic matters explicitly political, adding to them—in synchronicity with similar developments across Europe—a populist component that ushered in the development of a native fascist movement, for which he acted as a godfather. The interwar legionary movement adapted and radicalized the nineteenth-century nexus that identified Jews as simultaneously responsible for corruption and as agents of colonial powers or colonizers in their own right.