Mihail Manoilescu (; December 9, 1891 – December 30, 1950) was a Romanian journalist, engineer, economist, politician and memoirist, who served as Foreign Minister of Romania during the summer of 1940. An active promoter of and contributor to fascist ideology and antisemitic sentiment, he was a financial backer of the Iron Guard in the late 1930s. His corporatist ideas influenced economic policy in several countries during the 1930s, particularly in Brazil.
Biography
Early life Born to a political family in Tecuci, he was the nephew of Alexandru Bădărău, twice a minister in Conservative cabinets during the early 1900s, and a descendant of the Moldavian boyar known as ; his grandfather was strong unionist, a supporter of the Union of Moldova with Wallachia, while his father was a member of the Socialist Party.Valeriu Dinu, "Prefață. Schiță de portret: Mihail Manoilescu", în Mihail Manoilescu, Memorii, 2 volume, ediție îngrijită, prefață, note și indice Valeriu Dinu, cuvânt înainte Mugur Isărescu (București: Editura Enciclopedică, 1993), p. 7. The Manoilescus moved to Iași when Mihail was a child. Having been the recipient of the Gazeta Matematică prize in 1910, he went on to study at the "Școala de Poduri și Șosele" (the School of Bridges and Roads) in Bucharest, completing his training as a valedictorian in 1915.Dinu, "Prefață", p. 7. Manoilescu was subsequently assigned to the Ministry of Public Works, and later moved to an artillery regiment in Roman.Mihăiță.
Upon Romania's entry into World War I, he was assigned to the Directorate of Ammunitions (led by Tancred Constantinescu), and designed an original type of 210 mm howitzer, which, after southern Romania was invaded by the Central Powers (see Romanian Campaign), was produced in .Mihăiță After the conflict, in 1919, he had a minor role in the National Liberal Party (PNL) governments, assisting General Constantinescu as Head of the Industrial Recovery Directorate and later as General Director of Industry.
With Averescu Soon, Manoilescu joined the People's Party, a populist force led by General Alexandru Averescu, becoming undersecretary of state in the latter's first cabinet.Hîncu, p.69; Ornea, p.265 He was responsible for measures such as organizing the Industrial Exhibition, carrying out industrial statistics, and unifying legislation related to the industry. In 1921, he resigned his ministerial position, justifying it as an attempt to further his expertise and investigative range.
During the period when the PNL returned to government, Manoilescu focused on his research, and contributed 18 individual works. He also became influential as an orator, and was a frequent presence in conferences hosted by the sociologist Dimitrie Gusti. Manoilescu returned to high office with the second Averescu executive, and drafted innovative legislation concerning tariffs and salary amortization.
In 1926, while on a mission to Italy, where he was to negotiate a loan and pave the way for the friendship treaty signed between the two countries,Hîncu, p.69; Mihăiță he met the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and became his admirer (calling the Fascist regime "a truly constructive political revolution, one that can only compare itself with the great French revolution in scale and novelty").Manoilescu, 1926, in Hîncu, p.69 Subsequently, he was active in collaboration with the Comitati d'azione per l'universalità di Roma and other Italian-led projects of international cooperation.Ornea, p.266; Veiga, p.253
1927 trial He was then an advocate of the crowning of Carol Caraiman as King of Romania (in the place of his underage son Mihai).Ciachir; Mihăiță; Ornea, p.265 In the autumn of 1927, while distributing Carol's appeals to the leaders of various political parties and carrying his letter to Queen Marie, he was arrested (martial law was proclaimed by the Ion I. C. Brătianu government in the incident's wake)."More Carol-ings"; "Manoilescu Trial" Manoilescu, who benefited from Averescu's vocal support, was acquitted when tried by a court subordinated to the Council of War in late November.Ciachir; "Manoilescu Acquitted"
His own testimony was indicated by Time as arguing that Carol was alarmed by an alleged growth in republicanism and only wished to be part of the Regency."Manoilescu Trial" He also stated: "The Prince is too loyal and decent to think of dethroning his own son."Manoilescu, in "Manoilescu Trial"
While accusing the executive of having previously attempted to purchase his silence, Manoilescu stressed his belief that King Ferdinand had, just before his death, asked Brătianu for Carol to be allowed to return. He also speculated that Ferdinand had endorsed a regency only for as long as Carol continued to behave irresponsibly, and had not wanted to exclude his son from the throne. Averescu, who unsuccessfully called on both Carol and Brătianu to take the stand, backed this version by mentioning his own experience as a mediator between Ferdinand and Carol, during which the latter had allegedly agreed to comply, while the former had eventually become more open to Carol's return."Manoilescu Acquitted"
The acquittal came as a shock, given rumors that Premier Brătianu had instructed the court to find Manoilescu guilty.Ciachir In an unusual incident during the first day of trial, news correspondents from abroad were told that international phone connections had been severed—they resorted to crossing the Danube into Bulgaria at Giurgiu, using phones there to contact their employers, and repeated the trip several times over the following days.
Camarilla After Carol returned to rule as Carol II in mid-1930, Manoilescu was a very influential person in the king's camarilla, being the Minister of Economy in the National Peasants' Party (PNȚ) cabinets of Iuliu Maniu and Gheorghe Mironescu (while he was a member of that party),Ornea, p.273; Pandrea as well as under Nicolae Iorga (1931-1932).Ornea, p.265; Veiga, p.127, 129, 213-214 He was elected to the Assembly of Deputies for the PNȚ in 1930, representing Caraș County. His political adversaries speculated that he had forged documents and played a hand in bringing Carol's mistress, Magda Lupescu, back into the country.Argetoianu, p.87
In his memoirs, Manoilescu claimed that, at the time, he had played a hand in the release of Mihai Gheorghiu Bujor (imprisoned since 1918, due to his Bolshevik activism and designs for a communist revolution);Cioroianu, p.28 Manoilescu authored a series of articles in his support, and allegedly intervened alongside King Carol (it is generally accepted that the most decisive action in this respect was taken by Maniu, who spoke against imprisonment for political crimes such as Bujor's).
At the time, he became a staunch rival of his fellow PNȚ member Virgil Madgearu. According to Petre Pandrea's hostile account, Manoilescu purchased from the writers Sergiu Dan and Ion Vinea an allegedly stolen text which appeared to be entirely written by Madgearu, but had been heavily forged by the two to include criticism of the king; Manoilescu attempted to use the document against its supposed author, but was exposed by Carol himself (who, according to Pandrea, was amused by the events).Pandrea The incident contributed to PNŢ inner-conflict that caused Manoilescu to leave the grouping.
In 1931, Manoilescu was governor of the National Bank of Romania and began teaching political economy at the Polytechnic Institute. As governor, he refused to salvage the Marmorosch Blank Bank with state funds, and clashed with Carol over the issue, being ultimately removed from office in November of the same year.
He began editing a magazine, Lumea Nouă, which was to become the main platform for his ideas, and, in 1932, created his own party—Liga Național-Corporatistă (National-Corporatist League).Boatcă, p.23; Veiga, p.214 Between 1932 and 1937, he was assigned a seat in the Senate, representing the Romanian Chamber of Commerce.
Political and economic theories In Paris in 1929, he published the first version of his fundamental work, The theory of protectionism and international exchanges at the Giard publishing house (as part of the "Bibliothèque Économique Internationale" collection). His intense advocacy of industrialization formed the main theme of the book The role and destiny of Romania's bourgeoisie (1942), which was one of the main works dealing with the development of a local middle class, alongside those written by Ştefan Zeletin and Eugen Lovinescu (while sharing some perspectives with the essays of Emil Cioran);Ornea, p.48, 138, 266 the topic blended with his support for authoritarianism and the one-party system, as Manoilescu rejected democracy (which, in his view, encouraged the majority-forming peasantry to decide on matters that did not concern it).Ornea, p.46, 268-269; Stahl The role and destiny... criticized the course of Romanian social development: "[...] an oversized bourgeoisie which mimicks the boyars of yesteryear and has an over-bourgeois way of living, oversized in comparison with its means, creates a certain social instability and features a high percentage of individual failures.That is why the Romanian bourgeoisie is not in fact a bourgeoisie in one of its most essential features; whereas the Occident focuses on accumulation, security and the future, our bourgeoisie will focus on spending, satisfaction and the present. Whereas the Western bourgeois work for their children, the Romanian bourgeois will often only work for themselves."Manoilescu, in Scurtu et al. (Manoilescu's italics)
Among others, Manoilescu adopted some of the Poporanist ideas on capital and its international circulation, as present in the works of Constantin StereBoatcă, p.23; Love (in turn influenced by the Marxist Werner Sombart).Boatcă, p.17; Love He argued that a national economy could develop only if it minimized its contacts with the world market and relied instead on cultivating internal demand for a local industry.Chirot, p.250; Gallagher, p.33
At the same time, his magazine supported a nationalist and racist approach, viewing corporatism as "the guarantee of Romanianization",Victor Munteanu, 1936, in Ornea, p.273 and proclaiming that "the racial basis of Romania is the same as that of Aryan Europe".Al. Randa, 1941, in Ornea, p.108 Manoilescu himself welcomed the antisemitic policies of the Alexandru Vaida-Voevod government.Ornea, p.273-274