Ardeleanu , Constantin The European Commission of the Danube, 1856–1948: An Experiment in International Administration (review)

Abstract

SEER, 99, 4, OCTOBER 2021 768 Ardeleanu, Constantin. The European Commission of the Danube, 1856–1948: An Experiment in International Administration. Balkan Studies Library, 27. Brill, Leiden and Boston, MA, 2020. xiii + 379 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. €124.00: $149.00. The history of international organizations is not a subject to set pulses racing. Yet the story of the European Commission of the Danube (ECD), set up at the end of the Crimean War to reopen the mouths of one of Europe’s longest rivers for maritime commerce, proves an absorbing one in the hands of Constantin Ardeleanu, professor of modern history at the University of the Lower Danube in Galați, Romania. For only the second time in European and world history, following the creation in 1815 of the Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine, a body consisting of the representatives of seven member-states was established, charged with the immediate task of clearing the silted-up central channel of the Danube at Sulina, and establishing some sort of regulatory framework or ‘security regime’ for future traffic. Originally envisaged as needing only a two-year period to achieve these ambitious goals, the ECD’s life was repeatedly extended until, in 1883, it was decided to make it a permanent body; in the twentieth century it survived both World Wars and was only replaced in 1948, after the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe. Ardeleanu locates this saga within an overarching framework connecting international, institutional and riverine history, and with reference to a growing literature on the ‘security culture’ of post-1815 Europe. In this context the ECD stands out as an early ‘community of experts’, in which states pooled resources not so much monetary as human: on the assumption that no one state or even empire could do so on its own, hydrological engineers, jurists, bureaucrats and others were assembled from across Europe to solve a common problem, the navigability of a ‘European’ river. It is the author’s thesis that the ECD evolved organically into a purpose-specific bureaucracy acting ‘like a state’, furthering international cooperation in the interests of its memberstates . The ECD also became increasingly successful at tooting its own horn as an effective, because cost-efficient, organization which got results. As such it served as a prototype for growing numbers of such international bodies in the twentieth century. The book starts with a lucid summary of the basic problem created by Russia’s domination of the Balkans after 1815, and in which Russian mismanagement of the Danube delta was one of the contributory causes of the Crimean conflict. Simply put, Russia was either incapable or unwilling to keep the mouth of the Danube open. The bar across the central channel at Sulina had long since silted up by the 1850s, creating conditions highly perilous for shipping; and yet in the decades after 1815 the growth of steam navigation, and the increasing market REVIEWS 769 for Danubian grain in western Europe, especially industrial Britain, made the river’s accessibility a matter of international concern. The decades before the Crimean War were the heyday of British Russophobia, personified by the egregious publicist David Urquhart; but the underlying clash of interests at what Ardeleanu calls an ‘inter-imperial boundary and junction’ (p. 36) was real enough. Because of the impossibility of entering the Danube, ships had to anchor in an exposed, storm-swept roadstead, and cargoes had to be loaded onto or unloaded from lighters capable of crossing the bar. Cargoes and lives were routinely lost, while a state of ‘economic banditry’ (p. 42) prevailed at Sulina as well as upstream due to the costs of lighterage and the unreliability of pilots. Russia’s responsibility for letting these conditions continue, and the inability of the Ottoman Empire, the notional suzerain power, to redress the situation, were painfully obvious. Following Russia’s defeat, Articles 16 to 18 of the 1856 Treaty of Paris created the new Commission, charged with removing the physical obstacles to navigation, together with a subsidiary body, the Riverain Commission, responsible for setting regulations for navigation and the mechanisms needed for enforcing those regulations. The seven commissioners of the ECD were each...