Tangier as International Zone: A Multicultural Free Port at Africa’s Doorway

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Cinema, Inter-ethnic relations, Popular Culture, Regional History

Tangier is a coastal city in northern Morocco that looks out across the Strait of Gibraltar to Tarifa, Spain, a distance of just 20 miles, hence its sobriquet, “the Door to Africa”. Strategically located at the cusp of Africa and Europe, Tangier has a long history of interactions with foreign cultures and civilisations – having been occupied at different periods by Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans❈, Vandals, Arabs, Moors and Berbers (Islamic and pre-Islamic), Byzantine Greeks, Spanish, Portuguese and English.

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Tangier in the scramble for Africa
By the beginning of the 20th century, during the “Scramble for Africa”, the territory of Morocco (which Tangier falls within) was divided up between Spain and France (and held as “protectorates”). The clandestine deal between the two prompted objections from Germany demanding a “slice of the (African) cake”. A provocative response by impetuous and volatile emperor Wilhelm II in Tangier precipitated an international crisis in 1905. Tensions were dampened down by the ensuing Act of Algeciras: Germany was appeased with a portion of the French Congo, but at the same time Britain and France consolidated their alliance.

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Tangier’s special status
Under an agreement (the Tangier Convention) signed by France, Spain and the UK in 1923, Tangier became an International Zone (TIZ), effective from 1924. The tripartite administration of TIZ was later extended to include the US, Belgium, Portugal, Netherland, Sweden and Italy. Forms of everyday official life in the enclave reflected its new internationalised nature, although limited to a very select band of foreign countries. As CG Fenwick described it at the time, TIZ was ”a condominium of select states, a limited board of trustees acknowledging no political responsibility to the nations of the world at large“ (Fenwick, C. G. “The International Status of Tangier.” The American Journal of International Law, vol. 23, no. 1, 1929, pp. 140–143. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2190247. Accessed 14 Apr. 2020).

The judiciary adopted a mixed court comprising two English judges and one each from France and Spain, and the type of law adhered to, analogous to French law (Brown, R. Weir “International Procedure under the Tangier Convention.” Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law, vol. 7, no. 1, 1925, pp. 86–90. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/753030. Accessed 14 Apr. 2020).
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🔺 Tangier, 1924
(Photo: www.pinterest.com)

TIZ was neutral and demilitarised, retaining for zonal security a small force comprising 250 native Moroccan gendarmes under the command of a Spanish major assisted by other subordinate officers from the vested-interest countries. If needed, there was a provision to call on the sultan of Morocco to bolster security strength (Delore, Gabriel. “The Violation by Spain of the Statute of Tangier and Its Consequences as They Affect the United States.” The American Journal of International Law, vol. 35, no. 1, 1941, pp. 140–145. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2192608. Accessed 14 Apr. 2020).

The various international diplomatic corps in Morocco were consolidated in the city of Tangier (apparently the sultan preferred that they be accommodated there rather than Fez, Morocco’s principal city),  together with other municipal services, further reflecting the special character of TIZ (Brown).

Political authority in TIZ
The Zone’s political structure (from 1928) had as its basic unit of governance a Legislative Assembly (membership: 4 from France, 3 each from Spain, GB and Italy, 1 each from the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal and the US). Real power however lay with the Committee of Control – with consuls representing Belgium, France, GB, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. The Committee had the power to veto the Legislative Council and to dissolve it. At a grass-roots level there was an administrator in charge. Under the TIZ Statute the authority of the sultan, acting through a mandūb (proxy), was recognised (though the sultan’s sovereignty over TIZ was nominal) (Graham H Stuart, (1945). The Future of Tangier. Foreign Affairs, 23(4), 675-679, www.foreignaffairs.com)◘.

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Tangier International Zone
Area: 373 km. Pop Est.(ca 1936) approx 50,000 (Muslims 30,000, Jews 12,000, Europeans 8,000-something).
Currency: £ pounds sterling

Casablanca or Tangier?
By this time Tangier had acquired a reputation for cosmopolitanism and diversity,  being a destination for international businessmen, black marketeers, smugglers, diplomats, military men, refugees, writers and spies. It is widely thought that the classic war espionage film Casablanca (1942) was “inspired by the international ambience of Tangier” (Rachid Tafersiti, L’image de la Ville entire Cinema et Urbanisme, quoted in “The bar at Cinema Vox in Tangier”, Cinema Vox, www.cinemavox.ma)◍. More transparently, Tangier was the subject (or the mood-creating backdrop) for a spate of American mystery/thriller B-movies in the Forties and Fifties with titles like Tangier (reviewed by Variety, 1946: as “spy melodrama with plenty of hokum”) and The Woman from Tangier.

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Franco’s takeover 
In 1940, with France totally blindsided by the immediate, existential threat to Paris from the German Wehrmacht, General Franco, using the pretext that  he was protecting Tangier from a possible Italian invasion launched a surprise invasion of Tangier (‘Spanish protectorate in Morocco’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org). With Spain in military occupancy of the city, its soldiers tried to turn TIZ into a garrison town, imposing themselves, stopping citizens, checking their IDs, etc. The invasion and aftermath brought protests from UK and US and the Francoist state had to give assurances that the city would not be fortified and that the international institutions would be restored  (‘U.S. Protests Step of Spain in Tangier’, New York Times, 16-Nov-1940, www.nytimes.com). At the end of the war the Allies forced the Spanish to withdraw…the TIZ continued until 1956 when the independent Kingdom of Morocco was created with Tangier subsumed within the new Maghreb nation.

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PostScript: About a decade after its international status was terminated, Tangier became a sought-out destination for a whole new category of outsiders, the ”beat generation”, Western writers and artists like William S Burroughs. Within a few years other counterculture devotees were flocking to Tangier as it became part of the Moroccan hippie trail (although soon upstaged  by Marrakech as the preferred ‘Mecca’ for Western non-conformists in Morocco).

⇿———-———⇿⇿———-———⇿⇿———-———⇿

❈ Tangier first acquired the status of a free city in 38 BC under imperial Rome
◍ gambling was not permitted in Moroccan cities, whereas the activity flourished in nightclubs in the International Zone, so the fact that it is featured in Casablanca gives further credence to the idea that Tangier was the template for the movie (Cinema Vox)
◘ the Statute was criticised for several shortcomings – including a lack of democracy, Tangierinos were disenfranchised; and TIZ’s economic interests were neglected (Stuart)

Inter-war Shànghâi: A Cocktail of Espionage, Rapid Wealth Creation, Opulent Grandeur and Glamour—in a “United Nations“ of Competing Interests

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Economic history, Economics and society,, Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Regional History

Shànghâi by the late 1920s, and 1930s, was an exemplar of cosmopolitanism. The city’s pluralism, including a significant interracial element, made it stand out not just from the rest of a largely homogenous China, but from just about anywhere else on the globe. A key ingredient in Shànghâi‘s cosmopolitan character at this time was the trifurcation of the city. As a consequence of the city’s vicissitudes in the 19th century, Shànghâi, notwithstanding China’s retention of sovereignty over the city, was formally divided into three sections, two of which were foreign controlled.

French Concession

The smallest section was the French Concession (Fàguó zūjiè), in the puxi (west) part of the old city (roughly corresponding to the districts of Luwan and Xuhui in contemporary Shànghâi)—best known today as a prized residential location and the stylish centre of retail fashion in the city. The French, following suit from the British, extracted a concession from the territorial governors in 1849 and engaged in extra-territorial expansion over the ensuing decades. The French Concession had a consul-general appointed from Paris and maintained its own force of gendarmes. 

(The SMC flag, with a motto which preached ‘togetherness’)

Shànghâi International Settlement

Originally both the British and the American Wàiguó rén (foreigners)—the Shanghailanders as they styled themselves—had their own separate concessions, but the two enclaves merged in 1863 to form the International Settlements. The international communities, in the main dominated by the British and to a lesser degree the Americans (but also comprising smaller communities of other nationalities, mainly Germans, Italians, Dutch and Danish) who had their own police and fire services. The British and American expats, when they felt that their highly lucrative interests were threatened (as was the case in the 1927 political crisis), did not hesitate to call in the British Army and the US Marines. Both the British/International and French jurisdictions relied heavily on local Chinese for the bulk of their forces [‘The Shanghai Settlements’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Chinese Greater Shànghâi

The third and largest section was the area given over to the Chinese themselves and run by the Chinese Municipality of Greater Shànghâi. Basically, this area surrounded most of the foreign concession territory (especially to it’s south and west) and comprised the parts of Shànghâi that the British et al and the French were not interested in, having already had their pick of the prime locations for themselves, close to and along the Bund [‘The Shanghai International Settlements’, Wiki].

(Cartography: Bert Brouwenstijn, VU University, Amsterdam)

 A fourth concession, the “Japanese concession”

In effect, the large and increasing numbers of Japanese living in Shànghâi by this time (including armed garrisons), had resulted in the creation of an unofficial ”Japanese Concession”. This de facto concession was located in the Hongkew (now Hóngkôu) district of Shànghâi (just north of the Whangpoo’s (Huangpu’s) confluence with the Soochew (now Suzhou) Creek). Ultimately, after the Pearl Harbour attack, the Japanese extended its hold over the rest of Shànghâi except the French Concession which Nazi Germany allowed it’s Vichy French ‘puppet’ allies to retain (until 1943 when the Vichy were forced to hand it over to Imperial Japan).

Shànghâi, the fabled metropolis

By the early 1930s Shànghâi had established itself as one of the most exceptional and distinctively dazzling societies on earth. It’s population had hit three million (making it the fifth largest city in the world[𝕒]), of which somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000 were foreigners. The Thirties also witnesses two huge influxes of refugees into the city—European, mainly German, Jews fleeing the murderous repression of the Third Reich and reactionary White Russians fleeing Bolshevik retribution in Stalin’s Soviet Union and republics. Both of these ’stateless’ exo-groups were the fortunate beneficiaries of Shànghâi’s status as an open door city…neither passports or visas were required to enter the city [‘Shanghai in the 1930s’, World History, http://world history.us].

🔺 Sassoon’s ‘Cathay’ , a Bund icon but a slightly(sic) over-the-top self-comparison (Source: P Hibberd, The Bund Shanghai: China Faces West (2007))

Economics and architecture: A modern city

The early ‘30s, the Great Depression may have been ravaging the world but Shanghai was prospering…Shànghâi’s flourishing affluence meant rapidly made fortunes and a privileged lifestyle – for some at least within Shànghâi society…most notably and obviously for the advantaged foreigners. Businessmen such as Victor Sassoon (financier and hotelier) and the Renwick brothers (Jardine Matheson), profited from cheap local labour, laying the foundation for their fabulous stores of wealth[𝕓]. Brits like Tony Renwick and Anglophile American Stirling Fessenden also controlled the Shànghâi Municipal Council ensuring that local public policy in the Internationals’ concession would be favourable to Anglo business interests [‘Shanghai Municipal Council’, (International Settlement 1863-1941), www.links4seo.com/].

A further, external factor which allowed Shànghâi to prosper was that, unlike the rest of China which was divided up between different regional warlords, the city was monopolised by the foreign merchant class (World History). The warlords (and Republic of China leader Chang Kai-shek) were not able to penetrate this localised power base.

The Bund‘s modernity

And the wealth realised was certainly of the conspicuous kind, one glance down the Bund (Wàitān), the riverfront promenade, confirmed that. It was replete with grand financial and trading houses, hotels and nightclubs, many in elegant Art Deco or Neo-Classical style [𝕔]. The Bund symbolised the city’s new wealth and modernity – and contained Shànghâi’s version of ”Wall Street”. Shànghâi, even at this time, had more skyscrapers than anywhere outside of the US (World History). In nearby Nanking Road (now Nanjing Rd), was the commercial heart of Shànghâi, housing the leading retail merchants of the city such as the Sincere Company Ltd and Wing On. Fashion in Shànghâi echoed the city architecture’s modernity, the latest in-vogue styles were all the rage for the Shanghainese [‘Shanghai History’, Lonely Planet, www.lonelyplanet.com].

Nightlife and recreational pursuits

Shànghâi’s business nouveau rich, when they weren’t celebrating or listening to jazz music at one of the Bund’s many nightclubs, Ciro’s, Casanova’s, the Paramount Dance Hall or at the Canidrome Ballroom in the French Concession (originally a greyhound racing track!), could often be found at the Shànghâi Jockey Club racecourse betting along with thousands of others, Chinese and foreigners, on “the strange little Mongolian ponies” especially imported for racing (World History).

Espionage in Shànghâi: something of a free-for-all

With so many different nationalities in Shànghâi at the same time, all with competing and vested interests, it is hardly surprising that the city was a hotbed of espionage especially as the Thirties drew on inexorably towards world war. Spies and counter-spies abounded…most of the main players were actively working on the ground (or under it) in Shànghâi at this juncture – the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), as well intelligence units from Russia, Japan, France, Germany and the US [Bernard Wassermann, Secret War in Shanghai: Treachery, Subversion and Collaboration in the Second World War (2017, 2nd Ed.)].

In the next blog piece I will turn my attention to the other, seamier side of the Shànghâi story of the interwar period – the city’s association, you might say preoccupation, with sin and crime, another face of Shànghâi’s decadence in the Twenties and the Thirties.

Footnote: Shànghâi, location, location …
Foreign trading powers like the British had initially preferred the port of Canton[𝕕] to Shànghâi, but by the late 19th century the latter had become the big trading nations’ principal “treaty port” in the Far East. Shànghâi‘s geographical position was fundamental to its eventual prominence: it had become by this time “the central clearinghouse of waterborne trade between the entire Yangtse River system and the rest of the world”, accounting for 50% of China’s foreign trade. It’s port comprising 35 miles of wharves could accommodate >170 ships and 500 sea-going junks at a time (Wassermann).

 

Canidrome Ballroom🔺(“canine track”)

 

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[𝕒] behind London, New York, Paris and Berlin

[𝕓] the wealth of the Shanghai foreign elite had its genesis in the aftermath of the Opium Wars. The European and North American powers used the springboard of the “unequal treaties” to extend their existing privileges to their countries’ merchant classes. Within the designated enclaves foreigners could carry out their business in accord with their own laws, free from Chinese taxes and with the added bonus that the Chinese courts and bureaucracy couldn’t interfere with or impede their commercial activities (Wassermann).

[𝕔] the line-up on the Bund included the Jardine Matheson Building ( early opium traders), Sassoon House, (Standard) Chartered Bank, H & S Bank (now HSBC), Union Building, APC Club, the Shànghâi Club, the Cathay Hotel, Paramount Dance Hall and the French, US, German and British consulates

 [𝕕] modern day Guangzhou

 

Fred Harvey, Railway Hospitality Pioneer and Tourism Developer, and the Harvey House Network

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Biographical, Commerce & Business, Inter-ethnic relations, Regional History, Travel


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English born Fred Harvey learned the basics of good food service from a lowly station in a New York restaurant and later ran a successful cafe prior to the Civil War before entering the employ of the US railroads. Working first for the Hannibal and St Joseph Railroad and later others, Harvey was required to travel a great deal as a railroad agent. This gave him first-hand experience of how dismal railroad food and service was. 

🔺 Frederick Henry Harvey (Photo: Wall Street Journal)

This was no secret to regular passengers, before Harvey came along, the railroads were serviced by local rough eateries or unscrupulous restaurant owners who would reheat the leftover dishes and serve them again as supposedly new to the next, unsuspecting train-load of hungry passengers. Some travellers wary of the dubious quality offered up, would bring their own ‘shoebox’ lunches of fried chicken and hard-boiled eggs but this didn’t prove a satisfactory alternative – after sitting in the train for a couple of days the food from home would quickly go off [‘Fred Harvey and the Harvey Girls: A Dollar, a Dream and a Dinner’, (John Koster) Historynet, www.historynet.com].

Business-savvy Harvey sensed there was a gap in the market and in 1876 he clinched a deal with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad (AT&SF)ⓐ to open eating houses along the railroad. The start was modest, one small lunchroom in the Topeka (Kansas) depot of the railroad. But from these modest beginnings Harvey created a thriving railway hospitality concern and more. The prototype Harvey lunchroom has been described as “the progenitor of what (Americans) think of today as a diner” [Stephen Fried, quoted in ‘Tracing the Recipes of America’s First Restaurant Empire’, (Sara Bonisteel), Epicurious, 18-Jun-2013, www.epicurious.com].

🔺 Santa Fe railroad & Harvey hotels & dining stations

The beginnings of fast food

The key to Harvey’s success was quality of food and speed of delivery. Once the network of Harvey dining-rooms were established along the Santa Fe route, the operations were streamlined to work like clockwork…and they needed to. As the trains pulled into the stations Fred Harvey staff had 20, at most 30 minutes to feed 60 to 100 passengers. This required coordination between the train conductor and Harvey staff (to give the staff advanced warning of their impending arrival). To meet the short turnaround time, the waiting staff (“Harvey Girls”) utilised a unique signalling system, the waitress taking the order would send a signal to a second waitress, a cup turned upright on the saucer meant coffee, a cup facing down, tea. The second waitress could then immediately do that part of the order without having to wait for her colleague to return with the order [‘Watch the Cup, Please’, (Jann Bommerbach), True West, 04-Nov-2015, www.truewestmagazine.com].

🔻 Harvey’s El Tovar Hotel, Grand Canyon

No “mean cuisine” 

Harvey Houses (as they eventually came to be known) were no “Greasy Joe’s”. From the start Harvey headhunted a star head chef from back east for his first restaurant. The chef prepared top-quality cuisine for AT&SF line passengers…the food was so good that travelling salesmen and other regular travellers chose the AT&SF on that basis over rival western railroads (Koster). They were getting quality food, fresh and affordable to the middle class traveller, served on spotless Blue China with white linen tablecloths [‘Classic Harvey House recipes’, 23-Feb-2019, CBS News, www.cbsnews.com/].

Value as well as quality for money

In 1888 Fred Harvey debuted the first Fred Harvey dining-car on the Chicago to Kansas City train service. The menu for the service illustrates what a bargain it was – for the middle class—for 75¢ passengers got a mains (choice of oysters, lobster, salmon roast beef or other meats) plus dessert—often prepared by world-class chefs (Koster).

🔺 Castãneda Hotel, Las Vegas, (the ‘other’ Las Vegas – in New Mexico): the first trackside Harvey House (Image: www.castanedahotel.com]

The Harvey dining empire 

How extensive was the Harvey House network? At the onset Fred Harvey promises a depot restaurant every 100 miles between Kansas and California. At the Harvey high-point there was 25 Harvey hotels, 40 sit-down dining-rooms and 55 lunchrooms on the route (Koster), and the Harvey House concept was extended to other west-bound railroads. Harvey was a natural marketer coming up with advertising campaigns like “3,000 Miles of Hospitality” to promote tourism in the region [‘Fred Harvey—Branding the Southwest (Quality Fast Food)’, www.lib.nau.edu].

The Harvey girls’ uniform: looking a bit too similar to a WWI nurse’s outfit or something you might see in a nunnery! 🔻(Photo: Grand Canyon Railway and Hotel)

The Harvey Girls: Helping to civilise the “Wild West”

Because the male waiters employed by Harvey had a tendency toward drinking on the job and causing trouble in the houses, the entrepreneur in 1883 had the inspired idea of replacing them with single women (aged 18-30) shipped out from the East. The Harvey Girls (as they became known) were attired in demure, conservative feminine uniforms and required to not marry before they had completed six months of service. The women waitresses on the job set standards for cleanliness and decorum which had “a civilizing effect on the often rough customers in the territories” [‘Fred Harvey, the Harvey Houses, and the Harvey Girls’, https://abqlibrary.org/railroads/HarveyHouses]. Many Harvey Girls stayed in the West after their employment, often marrying their bachelor customers, earning the railroad restaurants the sobriquet of “Cupid on Rails”ⓑ.

Farm-to-table: “Meals by Fred Harvey” 

Fred Harvey Co (FHC) entered into contracts with local purveyors to ensure fresh ingredients for his meals. Fred Harvey Co also went into the farming business itself,running it’s own dairy and cattle farms (‘Fred Harvey—Branding the Southwest (Quality Fast Food).

(Photo: www.railroadmemories.com)

Business diversification: Whisky, chocolates, gifts, etc.

With success and fame came more diversification. FHC eventually manufactured it’s own whisky, sold it’s own brand of chocolates, candy, ice cream, salad dressings, as well as take-home gifts and souvenirs to passengers. Harvey’s knack for marketing put the brand everywhere. FHC gave away cookbooks of Fred Harvey recipes (‘Branding the Southwest’). The Harvey Co, as part of the tourism package it was promoting, also entered the postcard publishing field…through the Detroit Publishing Co it produced the very popular Fred Harvey Arizona ‘Phototint’ series of cards [‘Fred Harvey (entrepreneur), The Full Wiki, www.the full wiki.org/].

🔺 Menu image from the Santa Fe dining-car (Source: www.lib.nau.edu)

Menu art of the Southwest 

The railroad menus of FHC are an interesting sidelight of the company, delightfully quaint in their great diversity. Many celebrated in colourful imagery the beauty of the American Southwest or the pre-United States connexions to the region of colonial Spanish missionaries and Native American tribes (see below ‘Marketing an image of the Southwest’). The menu artwork was often of a high calibre, eg, William Deane Fausett’s humorous images. Menus like the company’s La Posada menu were instructional – including an US warplane ID chart for US servicemen using the AT&SF rail during WWII. There were menus for special occasions like Mother‘s Day and special menus for kids which doubled as clown masks (‘Branding the Southwest’). 

Marketing an image of the Southwest

Fred Harvey invented a new hospitality service for railway passengers, but he also invented (and marketed) a particular image of the country’s Southwest for Americans. Harvey, together with the AT&SF Railroad, changed the perception of Americans, filling the vast unknown void of savage desert with a new, “compelling regional identity for the Great Southwest of northern New Mexico and Arizona”. The Harvey corporation “appropriated and marketed the cultures of Native Americans”ⓒ presenting them as “colourful, tamed native peoples”. Harvey to a lesser extent also did a inventive reconstruction of the cultural impact of Spanish colonial and early Anglo-Celtic settlers. Weigle suggests that FMC’s commercial innovations such as the Indian Detours program (affording railroad passengers the opportunity to visit local native communities, represented a kind of ‘Disneyfication’ of the region [Weigle, Marta. “From Desert to Disney World: The Santa Fe Railway and the Fred Harvey Company Display the Indian Southwest.” Journal of Anthropological Research, vol. 45, no. 1, 1989, pp. 115-137. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3630174. Accessed 12 Feb. 2020].

Endnote: Founder Fred died in 1901 but the business remained in the family until his grandson died in 1965. In 1968 FHC and Harvey Houses were purchased by Amfac, Inc. (an Hawaiian hospitality industry conglomerate).

🔻 Harvey House, Seligman, Ariz.

PostScript: FH Menu dishes

Not surprisingly the FHC menus included a noticeably Latino-Mexican flavour—including Bright Angel Mexican Salisbury Steak, Guacamole Monterey, Empanadas with Vanilla Sauce, Fried Chicken Castãneda and Albondigas Soup (‘Classic Harvey House recipes’).

▁______▁______▁▁______▁______▁▁______▁______▁▁______▁______▁

ⓐ the Santa Fe line ended at Needles in eastern California, where it connected with another railroad which completed the journey west to the Pacific

ⓑ it is estimated that of the approximately 100,000-plus Harvey Girls in the company’s history, perhaps as much as ⅕ of them stayed and settled down to married life in the West, ‘The Harvey Girls, a Slice of American History’, (updated 26-Apr-2012),  www.hubpages.com

ⓒ Hopi, Navajo, Pueblo, Apache and other Southwestern tribes

Republica Moldova, a Not Very Well Known European State in Post-Soviet Space: The Disadvantages of Being Geographically Contiguous with a Latent Russian Hot Spot

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Political geography, Regional History

Geo-coordinates: 47°0’N 28°55’E. Area: 33,851 sq km. Pop: between 3.5 & 4 million (2018 est). Languages: Moldovan (Romanian), Russian; (minority languages) Gagauz, Bulgarian, Ukrainian. Capital: Chișinău (Rus: Kishinev)

Moldova is a small, basically flat, landlocked country situated on the Moldavian plateau, which forms a part of the Sub-Carpathian mountain system, bordered on its west by Romania and on its east by Ukraine. Most of Moldova’s territory lies between the area’s two main rivers, the Nistru and the Prut.

Moldova (or as it is formally titled, the Republic of Moldova) is one of Europe’s least known countries, it is just about the antithesis of turismo centro on the continent’s ratings board! Of the 44 sovereign countries in Europe recognised by the UN, it was the least visited country in 2016 (UN World Tourism Organisation). Historically, small and nondescript Moldova has tended to be a pawn shifted around from one competing imperial power to another over the centuries, valued only by the big power players for its geo-strategic importance in the region.

Moldavia, under the Soviet era ⇩

Pre-independence Moldova: a revolving door of designations and destinies
In 1346 Moldova became the Romanian Principality of Moldavia which included the Duchy of Bukovina, eventually the territory was subsumed under the expanding imperial reach of the Ottomans. In 1812 the sultan ceded it to Russia and it became an outer-lying enclave of the tsar’s empire known as the Governorate of Bessarabia. Freed from Russian rule in 1917 as a consequence of the Bolshevik Revolution, it briefly became the Moldavian Democratic Republic before being united with the Kingdom of Romania (as a federated part of Greater Romania). In 1924 the entity’s status and name changed again, becoming the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic❅. In 1940, in the wash-up of the USSR/Nazi Germany’s Molotov/Ribbentrop Pact, Stalin consolidated the territory after a land grab of parts of Romania, forming the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. During the war Nazi Germany together with its Romanian ally captured Moldova and held it until the Red Army launched a successful counter-offensive in 1944. Once again in Russian (Soviet) hands, the USSR implemented a postwar process of Russification in the Moldavian ‘Republic’ (enforced socio-economic reforms, especially urbanisation and migration). The status quo persisted until 1991 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. After this seismic political transformation Moldova along with many other Soviet SSRs gained its independence from the Russian empire [The Times Guide to Eastern Europe, (Ed. by Keith Sword), 1991; ‘Moldova between Russia and the West: A Delicate Balance’, (Eugene Rumer), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 23-May-2017, www.carnegieendowment.org].

Moldavia – the “Land of Aurochs”
Since 1991 Republica Moldova’s path on the road to a viable and independent democracy has been obstructed by a myriad of challenges. From the start, like other former Soviet SSRs in Central Asia and the Caucasus, its long-term viability was hamstrung by the lack of a tradition of self-government and sovereignty. A major challenge has been trying to find political leaders not tainted by association with the Soviet era. The political inexperience also manifested itself in ongoing constitutional problems for the country. Economics is equally significant a hurdle for the still embryonic democracy…Moldova is a poor, agriculturally-based country, reliance on the former masters, the Russians, has come at a cost. The USSR’s legacy for the new country of a concentration of state and collective farms has made transitioning from a controlled to a free market economy a more rocky passage [‘Moldova’, (KA Hitchins, B Buckmaster, E Latham & F Nikolayevich Sukhopara), Encyclopaedic Britannia, www.britannia.com]. What pre-existing industry there was in Moldova, was concentrated in the Transdniestria corridor (see below).

Multiethnic identities and allegiances
Roughly two-thirds of Moldova’s population is of Romanian descent with the remainder a mix of ethnicities…in the tiny eastern region of Transdniestria there is a block of predominantly Russian and Ukrainian speakers. Moldavia’s experience under the Soviets’ republics policy has included episodes of expulsions of native Moldovans, Gaguaz, Bulgarians and Jews, and the parachuting in of ethnic Russians and Ukrainians. One regional specialist has described it as “a product of ethnopolitical-administrative experimentation” (Rumer).

⇧ Old Orhei monastery, Moldova (Source: Calin Stan/Adobe Stock)

The challenge of stable government
Since independence Moldova has managed to establish a reasonably acceptable level of political pluralism…awarded by Freedom House a rating of “partially free” (because of government corruption and deficiencies in the rule of law scoring 58 out of 100) [‘Freedom in the World 2019 – Moldova’, Freedom House, www.freedomhouse.org]. Power has tended to alternate between pro-Russian and pro-European leaders, comprising the (pro-Russian) socialist and communist parties, the centre-left Democratic Party and liberal reformists. At one point the country’s governance functioned for three years without an elected president. Regular changes of government and direction in Moldova reflects public disaffection with the inability of both sides of parliament to address the country’s problems (poor living standards, unemployment, high-level corruption especially involving a national banking scandal✪).

Transdniestria – the crux of conflict within the state
(Image: www.joksankolikot.net)
Transdniestria (officially Pridnestrovskaja Moldavskaja Respublika)
Area: 4,163 sq km.
Pop: 469,000 (2018 est)
Languages: Russian, Moldovan, Ukrainian.
Capital: Tiraspol

The highest profile issue undermining Moldova’s efforts to establish a stable, cohesive national entity has been the lingering problem of a separate Transdniestria. This narrow strip of land within the Moldovan state comprising significant percentages of Russians and Ukrainians□ broke away from Moldova soon after independence. A brief civil war ensued, Moldovan forces attempted to quash the Transdniestria revolt but was thwarted by the intervention of the Russian 14th Army. A cease-fire in 1992 brought the conflict to a halt and a security zone was established with a peace-keeping force (including Russian troops) in occupation. The Transdniestria enclave has continued to assert its putative sovereign independence, however neither Moldova or any other sovereign state including Russia has recognised its claims. Recently, there having been no resumption of the armed conflict, political onlookers have characterised the situation as a “frozen conflict”…some analysts in the West view it as “de facto settled”. Although the dispute remains unresolved, there is a perception that the combatants have learned over the intervening years “to peacefully co-exist” with one another (Rumer).

This is not to say that the Russian bear has relinquished its political ambitions or interest in the disputed territory, far from it! Transdniestria—and Moldova as a whole—remain geo-politically important to Russia vis-a-vis the Black Sea (more so after the aggressive Russian incursion into the Ukraine in 2014) and in its proximity to the Balkans. Russia supports a “special status” for Transdniestria (announced by then Russian PM Medvedev from Kiev). Meanwhile patterns of intent can be discerned, Moscow continues to maintain a presence in Transdniestria which it sees as a Russian outpost in that region. And there has been a clear effort to forge a new Soviet-Moldovan identity distinct from the Romanian one, eg, by the promotion of the Cyrillic alphabet in preference to the incumbent Latin script (Rumer).

A secondary separatist movement
Transdniestria is not the only irredentist or ethnic breakaway movement that the government in Chișinău has had to contend with. From the late 1980s the Gagauz halki (people), a Turkic-speaking Christian minority in Russian Moldavia, experienced an upsurge in nationalist feeling. In 1990 the Gagauz, apparently concerned about the preservation of its own cultural identity within the new Moldovan state, unilaterally proclaimed itself an autonomous republic (Gaguazia, capital Comrat), followed one year later by a full declaration of independence. Intriguingly, despite this, the Gagauz are inclined to harbour a nostalgia for the old USSR [‘Moldova country profile’, BBC News, (15-Nov-2019), www.bbc.com]. The Moldovan republic has steadfastly refused to countenance independence for the Gagauz but in 1994 it did grant the region a form of autonomy (as a “national-territorial autonomous unit”) and it’s own governor (bașman) [‘Gaguazia’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Gagauzia ⇧

Russia’s role and influence in Moldova
Heavily overlaying Moldova’s attempts to establish good governance and national viability is the gravitational pull exerted on it by both Russia and Romania. Successive Chișinău administrations have—to varying degrees—striven to free themselves from too much reliance on Russia. The relatively undeveloped nation has nonetheless had to acknowledge the economic realities of it’s situation: making a clean break from Russian dependence is something extremely difficult to accomplish. Clearly, the plan of Moldovan reformers was to move closer to the orbit of the EU and this has progressively happened after the country satisfied the EU of its willingness to make democratic and economic reforms. The outcome? Today, the EU is Moldova’s major trading partner (worth US$3.5 bn in 2016), making great strides in turning the country’s international trade matrix around [‘The World Factbook: Moldova’, (Central Intelligence Agency), www.cia.gov]. Nonetheless, economic dependence on Russia—through a complicated set of existing conditions—remains crucial and seemingly unavoidable for the time being.

Remittances, energy and wine
The abysmally low GDP per capital by European standards of Moldovans (US$5,237, 2017) forces large numbers of them into becoming guest workers overseas. Many of these go to Europe especially Italy, but Russia remains the main source of external employment. Remittances by these workers back to their families in Moldova amount to about US$1.2 bn each year (15% of the country’s GDP), the third highest in the world. By far the largest portion of Moldovan Gastarbeiter, about 500,000 guest workers, rely on Russia each year for their income (Rumer; ‘World Factbook’).

Access to energy for Moldova compounds its fragile interdependence. The country is in debt to Russia’s giant Gasprom corporation to the tune of US$6 bn for it’s supply of natural gas (ironically the greater part of this debt to Moscow was incurred by Transdniestria). This energy situation persists because Romania has been able to meet at this time only a small portion of Moldova’s gas needs (‘World Factbook’).

(Photo credit: AP)

Wine-making, on the surface of it, is Moldova’s one bright light. In 2014 the small southeastern European country was the world’s 20th largest producer of wine (mainly reds). Easily it is—together with remittances—Moldova’s most important export. Again however Russia is at the core of the matter. Up to 90% of Moldovan wine goes to Russia. Good for Moldova’s export earnings sure, but the downside of such over-dependence on Russia is fraught with hazards. This places Russia in the position of being able to inflict damage on the Moldovan economy, were it to harbour a whim to do so. And this is not a purely theoretical consideration: twice this century (most recently in 2013), the Russian Republic banned the import of wine from Moldova with predictable effects on the latter’s economy. Russia offered up a pretext, alleging that the Moldovan wine was contaminated with plastic, but it doesn’t require a lot of imagination to see a thinly-veiled warning of disapproval aimed at it’s small regional neighbour [‘Why Russian wine ban is putting pressure on Moldova’, (Tessa Dunlop), BBC News, 21-Nov-2013, www.bbcnews.com; ‘Moldova country profile’].

Closer ties with Romania?
Linguistic homogeneity does bind Moldova closer to Romania but the Moldovans are in no hurry to formalise the nexus through unification with it’s western neighbour. Romania does provide something of a counter-pull for Moldova against the leverage exerted by Russia and a strong Moldovan-Bulgarian nationalist movement has been fostered (Rumer). However, only between seven and fifteen percent of Moldovans have indicated that they are in favour of union with Romania✜ [‘A union between Moldova and Romania: On the cards?’, (Michael Bird), EU Observer, 05-Mar-2015, www.euobserver.com]. Moldovans, it appears, despite the linguistic cord binding them to Romania, don’t tend to possess the sort of irredentist urges that Transdniestrians do for Russia.

The murmurings of unification advocacy have been confined to some sectors on the Romanian side. Even these mostly have tended to be tentative ones. One proposal calls for Romania to reunify with the former geographical entity of ‘Bessarabia’, which is highly problematic – such a union would include parts of present day Ukraine and would exclude Transdniestria! In 2015 a group of Romanian MPs under the banner “Friends of the Union” called for closer economic and cultural ties between the two homophonic countries. Bucharest has, since 2010, started to provided significant amounts of aid to Moldova (€100 M), including for education. For the most part though, Romania’s greatest value to ordinary Moldovan citizens lies in it being a gateway to the EU…since 1991 around half-a-million Moldovans have obtained Romanian passports which allows them entry to the wider Western Europe through the prevailing Schengen arrangements (Bird; Rumer).

PostScript: Sole remaining remnant of the Soviet Union?
Transdniestria is the only political entity in Europe which still bears the “hammer and sickle” on it’s flag—and the only Eastern European entity which still calls it’s secret service the KGB! Tiraspol’s “House of Soviets” proudly honours the tradition of Lenin and Stalin with busts and pictures and the enclave’s various patriotic hommages to the Soviet past lead many outsiders to not take Transdniestria particularly seriously…”a fossilised piece of the former USSR” (Lonely Planet), “a collective hallucination” shaped like a “small worm squashed between two larger creatures” [‘Hopes Rise in Transnistria of a Russian Annexation’, (Alexander Smoltczyk), Spiegel International, 24-Apr-2014, www.spiegel.de/international/]. But dieheart Transdniestrian irredentists were encouraged by Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and cling to a (slim) hope that Russia will some day follow suit with Transdniestria, or at the very least, make it a non-contiguous exclave on the model of Kaliningrad (Smoltczyk).

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❅ an “autonomous republic” under the jurisdiction of Ukraine – an “artificial political creation” inspired by Moscow’s ideological rhetoric of “world revolution” [‘Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]

✪ the failure of successive administrations to prosecute suspects of a US$1 bn bank embezzlement (‘Moldova country profile’). The scandal is known within the country as the “Great Moldovan Bank Robbery”

□ 34% and 26.7% respectively (2015 census)

✜ Romania presents a perception problem for some Moldovans for who, a less than favourable image of a backward country with a scruffy gypsy culture, persists (Bird)