Between France and Romania, Between Science and Propaganda
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Between France and Romania, between Science and Propaganda. Emmanuel de Martonne in 1919 Gavin Bowd Abstract: In the aftermath of the Great War, the geographer Emmanuel de Martonne, who began his scientific work in Romania and was a vocal advocate of that country’s intervention in the conflict, placed his knowledge and prestige at the service of redrawing the frontiers of what would become Greater Romania. This article looks at the role of de Martonne as traceur de frontières during the Paris Peace Conference, notably his manipulation of ethnic cartography. At the same time, as this partisan use of “science” shows, de Martonne is also a propagandist for the Romanian cause and post-war French influence. Thus, his confidential reports on the “lost provinces” of Transylvania, Banat, Bessarabia and Dobrogea must be seen in parallel with his published interventions and the place he occupies in a wider Franco- Romanian lobbying network. During the summer of 1919, de Martonne’s participation in a French mission universitaire to Romania plays a diplomatic role at a delicate stage of the Paris negotiations. The fate of his scientific interventions is also subject to the vicissitudes of the war’s aftermath and to the weight of lobbies hostile to Romanian territorial claims, notably on Hungary and Russia, two countries plunged into civil war. The geographer Emmanuel de Martonne, who had been a vocal supporter of Romanian intervention on the side of the Triple Entente and of the creation of a Greater Romania, was not in Europe at the time of the armistice: he was on a mission to the United States from September to December 1918. This mission allowed him to regain contact with his American friends and colleagues, notably Douglas Johnson, member of The Inquiry, the commission created in September 1917 by President Woodrow Wilson, and presided by 1 Edward House, with the aim of gathering documentation for the future Peace Conference. During this sojourn, de Martonne and Johnson shared the studies already made by the Comité d’études, a think tank set up in February 1917 under the leadership of Charles Benoist, and The Inquiry. On his return to Paris, de Martonne provided the Quai d’Orsay with an analysis of the American studies. That said, de Martonne deplored the influence of Jewish and Germanophile circles, and especially that exerted by Walter Lipman, whom House had named Secretary of The Inquiry. De Martonne was therefore delighted to see that from autumn 1918 onwards, the position of the American experts, like that of President Wilson, became favourable to the dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.1 From January 1919, the geographical expertise of de Martonne would be put to the test at the Paris Peace Conference, where territorial commissions had to study and propose new frontiers. Sub-commissions were created, bringing together scientific experts such as de Martonne for France or Isaiah Bowman and Douglas Johnson for the American delegation. De Martonne would intervene directly in the debates of the commission for Romanian and Yugoslavian frontiers or submit memoranda to the commission’s president, André Tardieu. On 19 January 1919, de Martonne wrote to George Vâlsan, a former pupil at the Sorbonne and future founder of the Institute of Geography at the new University of Cluj, who, at the time, was recovering from serious injuries sustained in a military train crash. In this letter, de Martonne described his mission to the United States and then the opening of the Peace Conference. He first explained to Vâlsan his success with the Americans: Vous avez été cruellement éprouvé, mais vous devez maintenant jouir d’autant plus du triomphe de votre cause. Il ne peut maintenant subsister aucun doute sur le fait que la Roumanie sortira de cette crise telle que vous l’avez rêvée. Pendant ma récente 1 Archives of the Quai d’Orsay, La Courneuve (QO): A-Paix, vol. 220, Résumé des Etudes américaines du Comité de l’Inquiry du Colonel House par Emmanuel de Martonne, 16 December 1918. 2 mission aux Etats-Unis, qui avait pour but de nouer des relations avec le Comité House pour la préparation de la Paix, j’ai réussi à connaître tout ce qui avait été fait là- bas, et à documenter ces MM très mal informés en particulier des affaires roumaines. C’est à ce moment qu’a paru la note Lansing exprimant pour la première fois la sympathie des Etats Unis pour les revendications roumaines inside and outside! Je suis ici encore en relation avec les experts américains. Ils ont tous les rapports, cartes. De Martonne then explained his own use of cartography to influence French diplomacy in favour of the Romanian cause: Je puis être à même de donner un avis et j’ai déjà fourni à notre Ministre des Affaires Etrangères une série de rapports pour étudier sur les différentes revendications roumaines. J’ai réussi à établir une carte au 1 : 1 000 000 des pays roumains donnant la composition ethnique et la densité de la population, d’après un système nouveau; les données commune par commune en sont la base. En même temps j’ai une carte spéciale du % des Roumains à la même échelle. Tout cela devant paraître dans le volume projeté que je n’ai pu achever. Mais je suis à même maintenant de toucher les hommes directement responsables des solutions. At the same time, this French Romanophile expressed irritation at the excessive irredentist claims made by the Romanians in Paris: “Je voudrais seulement que vos compatriotes établis ici pour faire ‘de la propagande’ montrassent plus de mesure et moins d’ambition. Ils publient des brochures qui leur font plus de tort que de bien, et des cartes dont je suis obligé de dire qu’elles sont fausses.”2 Indeed, success was by no means guaranteed for the Romanian delegation that arrived in Paris at the end of January. On 24 January, the Romanian Parliament had ratified all the meetings, including that of Bessarabia, which had pledged allegiance to a post-war Greater 2 Archives of Academia Română, Bucharest (AR): S6 (2) LXXXII. 3 Romania. However, France had not immediately recognised the legitimacy of such assemblies, leaving the final decision to the Conference. Besides, Georges Clemenceau had a scarcely favourable attitude to the Romanians and let it be known that the Bucharest peace treaty of 7 May 1918 signed with the Central Powers left null and void the Allies’ promises made to Romania in the treaty of 17 August 1916, so that she enter the war on their side. Romania’s apparent support for the French intervention against the Bolsheviks in southern Russia unblocked, to a certain extent, the situation: Romania could be considered an ally, but the claimed provinces’ automatic right to self-determination was still refused. However, Emmanuel de Martonne’s expertise on the possible frontiers of Romania were supported by an important lobby. At the Conference, he felt at home in diplomatic and military circles. Emmanuelle Boulineau writes: Grâce à sa personnalité, sa connaissance de dossiers et son insertion dans des réseaux de pouvoir, Emmanuel de Martonne apparaît comme un homme d’appareil, davantage conseiller qu’expert. Ses conseils ont ainsi été suivis lorsque la délégation française était en mesure d’imposer ses choix face aux Alliés.3 Emmanuel de Martonne’s actions were two-fold. On the one hand, he led a team, which replaced the wartime Comité d’études, whose function was to provide, sometimes at only a few hours’ notice, information requested by the French delegation at the Conference, in particular precise calculations on the populations to be found between such and such a possible frontier. On the other hand, de Martonne was invited to participate directly in the work of the Territorial Commission devoted to Yugoslavian and Romanian affairs, presided by Tardieu. He personally took part in the sessions of 7 March (to establish a demarcation line between the Romanian and Hungarian troops), 18 March (the Romanian frontier of Transylvania), 25 March (on the Jews of Romania and the railway line in Upper Tisza), 29 3 Emmanuelle Boulineau, “Un géographe traceur de frontières: Emmanuel de Martonne et la Roumanie,” L’Espace géographique, vol. 4 (2001): 367-368. 4 March (on frontiers of Romania and the protection of minorities), 3 April (on the frontiers of Romania) and 20 May (on Banat). In his four long studies of the provinces claimed by Romania, explains Boulineau, the region, in line with his late mentor and father-in-law Paul Vidal de la Blache, was at the centre of his approach: Emmanuel de Martonne ne parle pas ici en géomorphologue attaché aux arguments de la géographie physique pour tracer des frontières dites naturelles. Il sous-tend son discours d’une argumentation fondée sur les identités régionales, les solidarités économiques et les intérêts stratégiques. Le géographe déploie une pensée de la région comme individualité spatiale organisée et non une réflexion sur ses limites. Il raisonne ici sur ce qui fait l’unité d’un territoire et non sur la frontière qui le sépare d’autres entités régionales. Sa présentation des quatre provinces roumaines est déjà une première forme de régionalisation qui les extrait de la gangue territoriale des empires.4 To support his arguments, de Martonne used cartography. In his memoirs of the Peace Conference, Isaiah Bowman wrote that each of the Central European nationalities had their own statistical and cartographical box of tricks. If statistics failed, a bright coloured map could save a sinking territorial argument.5 De Martonne joined this struggle, putting cartographical language at the service of the Romanian cause. Taline Ter Minassian emphasizes the effectiveness of this approach: S’il n’est pas sûr que les rapports rédigés par Emmanuel de Martonne aient été lus avec une grande attention par les « décideurs », les cartes jouent en revanche un rôle bien réel lors des négociations de paix.