CHRONIC FAMINE IN ROMANIA
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| Ștefan Luchian, La împărțitul porumbului (Maize Distribution), 1905 |
King Carol I correspondence:
January 1905:
‘I look back with pain to the past year, which has inflicted so many wounds on us. For my country it has been the worst year of my long reign. We now suffer greatly the consequences of the bad harvest; two-thirds of the population must be fed by the state, otherwise people would be starving. Huge shippings of maize from South America are being distributed to the peasants.’
February 1905:
‘We’re looking forward to springtime because the cattle are out of fodder and sheep are dying by the hundreds. The state has to buy in large quantities of maize for the peasants and for sowing.’
April 1905:
'the government has spent 35 million [Franks] to buy in maize from America and fodder to at least in part cover the great needs [of the peasants]. If we get a good crop, we will be able to cover half of these huge expenses.’
D.A. Sturdza, leader of the Liberal Party, during a Romanian Academy session:
‘if you look at financial reports regarding the public budget or at the registers of state or county debt, you will see that every two or three years the state or individual counties buy in maize to distribute to famine-stricken peasants. And I’m talking here only of the maize necessary for bare subsistence, clothing is an entirely different matter.’
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The dramatic decrease in maize consumption in Romania in the last quarter of the 19th century
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Literary Insights into 1870s Romania and the Agrarian Question
Excerpt from Duiliu Zamfirescu's realist novel Life in the Countryside (Viața la țară)
[Sașa Comăneșteanu gives administrative advice to Matei Damian, a young landowner who recently inherited his mother’s estate]
The most sensible thing to do is to call the people to your
house one Sunday and tell them you have decided to take care of your own
affairs; that, according to the wish of your late mother, you are writing off
all debts, tearing up all contracts and cancelling all deals; that you are
going to make new contracts (and, mind you, make them well as things can’t be
done today as they used to); that anyone who wants to ask for something or talk
to you can always find you ready to talk to them. Then give them something to
drink and, if you want, invite fiddlers to play for them…
[…]
After all this, do not get your hopes too high. The peasant
is going to drink your wine, dance the hora,
fail to pay his debts and, when you call him to work, he is not going to come.
Why? Because this is the state of affairs in our country.
The causes are many. Firstly, the way in which the peasant has been treated so
far: everybody from all sides have exploited and cheated him as much as they
could. The leaseholder (arendaș), be they Greek, Bulgarian or
Romanian, is the same everywhere: he only seeks to get rich; take Scatiu, for
instance, and many more like him. So the boyar
is looked upon by the peasant as his natural enemy. Add to this the natural
clash of interests: when our wheat is ripe, his is ripe too and, although he
received money to come to harvest on the first call, he goes and harvests his
own wheat. Finally, there is the disproportion between land and population: we
only have 40 people per square kilometer, while the natural proportion is 70…
[…]
Agriculture
is becoming more and more extensive and the population is not growing, so the same
number of work hands have to produce twice as much.
[…]
In order to
avoid losses and also robbing the peasant, the landowner can only do this:
firstly, treat the peasant well; secondly, invest in machinery so he can work
with it, when necessary.
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