Authors

Raul Carstocea¹;  ¹ New Europe College, Bucharest, Romania

Discussion

The Aromanian diaspora was of particular significance for Romanian state-building elites ever since the late 19th century. Rather than reflecting geopolitical aspirations, which were never too pronounced with regard to the Balkan peninsula, focusing more on Transylvania, the Aromanians were perceived instead as representing an economic vanguard in the Balkans. This was all the more important in the context of anxieties concerning the absence of a middle class in Romania proper – itself one of the main drivers of antisemitism and xenophobia more broadly, including anti-Greek – whereby the Aromanians came to be seen as a ‘prosthetic bourgeoisie’ (Sorescu 2022). Typically referred to as Macedo-Romanians by the state authorities, the Aromanians / Vlachs were simultaneously seen as being Romanians proper, their (largely imagined) history of continuity in the Balkans traced back to the same Roman conquest that acted as a source of legitimacy for the Romanian state and its alleged ‘European’ character. Importantly, the denomination ‘Macedo-Romanians’ was adopted by the cultural societies they set up in Romania, reflecting also into their publications and continuing into the interwar period. Especially after the acquisition of the Dobrogea following the 1878 Congress of Berlin, Aromanian immigration to Romania was encouraged, responding as it did both to long-standing demographic anxieties about under-population but also to the state efforts to colonise the multi-ethnic province with a loyal population. In short, among Ottoman subjects, Aromanians were consistently preferred by the Romanian state, and counted as ethnic Romanians for demographic purposes, unlike in neighbouring Bulgaria, where they represented a separate category. In practice, however, their naturalisation as Romanian citizens was by no means so straightforward and involved efforts to ascertain the ‘Romanian-ness’ of applicants, a process often fraught with difficulties. This discrepancy would become even more pronounced after the acquisition of Southern Dobrogea (the so-called Cadrilater / Quadrilateral) in 1913, and especially after the First World War, when the Romanian state intensified its efforts to attract Aromanian settler colonists to the province. At this time, however, beneficiaries of the extensive land reform undertaken in 1919-1921, at the expense of primarily Bulgarian and Turkish landlords, the Aromanians were envisioned by the Romanian authorities to be primarily peasant farmers rather than involved in trade. Counted in the 1930 census simply as ‘Romanians’, self-identifying as ‘Macedo-Romanians’ in their own institutions, the settlers were once again asked to prove their Romanian ethnic ‘roots’ when attempting to leave Southern Dobrogea, in line with the Romanian state’s attempts to monitor its population and limit (Aromanian) immigration to the new province. Drawing on official state documents, including censuses and demographic data, publications issued by Macedo-Roman