{"id":803430,"date":"2025-07-11T08:00:41","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T05:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=803430"},"modified":"2025-07-11T08:00:41","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T05:00:41","slug":"a-d-xenopol-historian-of-romania-philosopher-of-europe-incorect-politic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=803430","title":{"rendered":"A.D. Xenopol: Historian of Romania, Philosopher of Europe – Incorect Politic"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A.D. Xenopol: Historian of Romania, Philosopher of Europe<\/span><\/h1>\n
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Amory Stern
Incorect Politic<\/strong>
\nIulie 11, 2025<\/p>\n

\"A.D.<\/a><\/p>\n

A.D. Xenopol: Historian of Romania, Philosopher of Europe<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol<\/u><\/a>\u00a0was born on March 24, 1847, in P\u0103curari, a settlement in Ia\u0219i, the capital of the Romanian principality of Moldavia. \u00a0At that time, Moldavia was still officially an Ottoman vassal, but in practice the Ottoman\u00a0suzerainty had largely been usurped by Russian influence since the time of Catherine the Great. \u00a0Xenopol would witness the process of unification of Moldavia with the fellow Romanian principality of Wallachia to the west, the capital of which was Bucharest. \u00a0As Xenopol came of age, the principalities would be formally unified in 1859. \u00a0Later, when Xenopol had already started to become somewhat known as a historian, Romania would officially win independence from the Ottoman Empire as Russia\u2019s most important ally in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. \u00a0The improvement of Romania\u2019s status in Europe would be the cause to which Xenopol would dedicate his life and his considerable intellectual talents. \u00a0In addition to his Romanian nationalism, Xenopol also had patriotic feelings for Ia\u0219i as a city, Moldavia as a region and former principality, and Europe as an ethnic and civilizational family.<\/p>\n

Xenopol was the son of Dimitrie Xenopol, a mysterious immigrant to Moldavia (and convert to that principality\u2019s native Orthodoxy) of Anglo-Saxon and German extraction, of whom more will be remarked later, and a Romanian mother from a family of Greek origin. \u00a0Dimitrie, who knew German, Russian, French, and other languages as well as Romanian, was a clerk at the Prussian Consulate in Ia\u0219i when Alexandru was born. \u00a0Dimitrie later held a job working in the garden of a Ia\u0219i prison-keeper. \u00a0Although Dimitrie never made much money, he went to great lengths to ensure that Alexandru would be well-educated. \u00a0Young Xenopol decided on history as his favorite subject after reading Fran\u00e7ois Guizot\u2019s works on European and French history after school in the Ia\u0219i\u2019s prison-keeper\u2019s garden.<\/p>\n

Growing up in Ia\u0219i, Xenopol learned Greek and mastered Latin as well as learning French and German. \u00a0One of his teachers in Ia\u0219i, Titu Maiorescu, would become an important patron of his before bitterly falling out with Xenopol. \u00a0Maiorescu was the leader of a Ia\u0219i-based literary circle called Junimea, which was dedicated to founding a new school of Romanian literary and cultural criticism. \u00a0For years, Xenopol developed a close relationship with the group\u2019s secretary, Iacob Negruzzi, who would likewise later become his sworn enemy.<\/p>\n

Under Junimea\u2019s financial patronage, Xenopol studied in Berlin from the late 1860s to 1871. \u00a0His instructors included the great historians Theodor Mommsen and Leopold von Ranke. \u00a0Xenopol completed courses in philosophy and law by 1871, and biographer Paul A. Hiemstra argues that Xenopol tended to approach the field of history with the sensibilities of a lawyer making legal cases.<\/p>\n

In 1872, having returned to Ia\u0219i the previous year, Xenopol attended a ceremony at a monastery in the commune of Putna founded by the distinguished 15th<\/sup>\u00a0century Moldavian prince Stephen the Great, the most beloved ruler of Moldavia and a prolific patron of monasteries, noted for handing Mehmed II \u201cthe Conqueror\u201d the greatest defeat the Ottomans had seen thus far in 1575. \u00a0On the 400th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary of the monastery\u2019s construction, a competition was held for speeches about Stephen the Great in relation to the Romanian people. \u00a0Xenopol\u2019s speech<\/u><\/a>, which connected the legacy of Stephen the Great to Romanian nationalism, won the competition.<\/p>\n

At the time he won this competition, Xenopol was considered a representative of the Junimea circle. \u00a0Even when he was still associated with Junimea, however, Xenopol\u2019s ideas were never identical with Maiorescu\u2019s and strayed from the latter\u2019s influence. \u00a0Xenopol further drifted from the group\u2019s influence in the 1870s until officially breaking with Junimea in 1878, prompting the group\u2019s leaders to attack and often smear him.<\/p>\n

Xenopol\u2019s account of his father as of Anglo-Saxon and German origin conflicts with the story of his bitter former friend Iacob Negruzzi that his father was a Jewish immigrant. \u00a0Negruzzi, it should be noted, also dubiously alleged that Xenopol had gone mad from a syphilis infection. One of the reasons Xenopol had fallen out with his onetime associates at Junimea being that he found them insufficiently critical of Jewish immigration to Romania, an allegation that his father was a Jewish immigrant would have been an excellent way to embarrass him. \u00a0(On the issue of Jewish immigration to Romania, as well as that of alcoholism in Romania, Xenopol worked closely with A.C. Cuza<\/u><\/a>\u2014although their worldviews were never synonymous.) \u00a0That Xenopol\u2019s own origin story is\u2014at the very least\u2014closer to the truth is immediately affirmed by a viewing of photographs of him, with his markedly English appearance.<\/p>\n

Xenopol\u2019s animosities with Junimea, rival Romanian historians, and anti-Romanian foreign historians did not hamper his productivity. \u00a0In 1880 he published a two-volume work on the rivalry between the Ottoman Empire and Russia for influence over the Romanian principalities; Xenopol\u2019s account is unsympathetic to either power. \u00a0In 1884 he published a scathing but well-argued response to certain Austrian claims about the origin of the Romanian people. \u00a0But it was from 1888 to 1893, publishing a volume each year, that Xenopol produced his pioneering six-volume work Istoria rom\u00e2nilor din Dacia-Traian\u0103<\/u><\/em><\/a>. <\/em>The work covers the history of Romania from pre-Roman times to the nineteenth century; it was groundbreaking for its time and, although obviously dated, is still rightly regarded as a classic in Romania. \u00a0Xenopol also wrote a two-volume abridgement of this work in French, which was successful when it was published in 1896.<\/p>\n

Having studied in Berlin under the economic theorist Eugen K. D\u00fchring, Xenopol also showed a keen interest in economics. \u00a0(This author, Amory Stern<\/u><\/a>, has commented on Eugen D\u00fchring and his influence as Eminescu\u2019s teacher in Berlin in the introduction to the 2023 English edition of Oswald Spengler\u2019s Prussianism and Socialism<\/u><\/em><\/a>.) \u00a0Dismayed by Romania\u2019s antiquated and subservient agricultural economy, Xenopol advocated industrial modernization.<\/p>\n

Xenopol argued that Romania\u2019s lack of industry left the nation vulnerable to exploitation by wealthier countries and susceptible to corruption as well as a shrinking population. \u00a0Reflecting his education in Bismarck\u2019s Prussia under D\u00fchring, Xenopol also argued against free trade and economic liberalism, instead favoring economic nationalist programs of industrialization. \u00a0On the other hand, he recommended that his country proceed with caution when implementing such an agenda, as Romania was in no position to start a war.<\/p>\n

Having accomplished much in the fields of history and economics, by the end of the 19th<\/sup>\u00a0century Xenopol added to these achievements his contribution to philosophy, specifically the philosophy of history. \u00a0In 1899, he published his philosophical tract in French, Les Principes Fondamentaux de l\u2019Histoire<\/em>. \u00a0This work was revised in a 1908 second edition as La Theorie de l\u2019Histoire<\/u><\/em><\/a>. \u00a0It has also been translated into Romanian as Teoria istoriei<\/u><\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>and Principiile fundamentale ale istoriei<\/u><\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Xenopol\u2019s book dealt with a popular question among philosophers at the time, that of whether or not the field of history can be considered a science, and if so, what kind of science it is. \u00a0In the book, Xenopol draws a division between the sciences of unchanging laws and the sciences of changing phenomena. \u00a0History, he proposes, belongs to the latter kind of science.<\/p>\n

Xenopol begins his thesis with a philosophical realist rejection of Kantian epistemology. \u00a0Hiemstra\u2019s biography complains that Xenopol\u2019s dismissal of Kant\u2019s ideas is undeveloped, but although this would have been quite a defect if he had written an epistemologically themed book, Xenopol\u2019s pithy critique of Kantian idealism is a reasonably adequate argument that the latter is unsuited for the historian\u2019s field. \u00a0It doesn\u2019t require an especially deep analysis to argue that epistemological realism best suits the scholarship of history\u2014at least not in a book themed after the philosophy of history, rather than epistemological questions themselves.<\/p>\n

Xenopol then develops a categorization of \u201ctheoretical sciences\u201d as those that deal with repeating facts and can be measured with abstract formulas. \u00a0\u201cHistorical sciences\u201d by contrast deal with successions of changing, unrepeatable facts and can only be measured empirically. \u00a0These include not only history proper but also paleontology and the study of human descent \u2014 as opposed to the laws of biology, which belong to the \u201ctheoretical sciences,\u201d together with the physical sciences.<\/p>\n

Whereas the theoretical sciences, according to Xenopol\u2019s philosophy, deal with space, the historical sciences are related to time. \u00a0For Xenopol, unlike Kant, both time and space belong to reality, and not just to the human perception. \u00a0Xenopol defines science as the truthful reflection of reality, and accordingly he responds to various philosophical objections arguing that history does not qualify as a science, because it cannot be determined with abstract formulas. \u00a0To Xenopol, the theoretical sciences only represent one category of science, but the historical sciences equally qualify as truthfully reflecting reality. \u00a0The book then deals with the difference between the historical sciences and the moral or political biases of the historian.<\/p>\n

La Theorie de l\u2019Histoire<\/u><\/em><\/a>\u00a0then takes a turn that would be considered more controversial today than it was when the book was written. \u00a0Although Xenopol viewed the facts of history as always changing and never exactly repeating, he also believed in some constant factors throughout history. \u00a0The first of those he lists is race.<\/p>\n

Xenopol argues that populations of human beings differ not just physically, but intellectually and spiritually. \u00a0Some of these differences, according to Xenopol, are the result of natural evolution, but he also believes that differences acquired through major historical processes are hereditary. \u00a0This, he believes, can be counted among the constant elements in history. \u00a0Although this kind of outlook was popular in the fin de si\u00e8cle era, when the book was published, it was by no means universally accepted, as demonstrated by Xenopol\u2019s replies to the argument\u2019s critics. \u00a0(In his views on race, Xenopol was influenced by the sociological arguments of Gustave Le Bon, whose ideas Xenopol often applied to the philosophy of history.)<\/p>\n

Related to race, but distinct from it in Xenopol\u2019s model, is \u201cnational character.\u201d \u00a0This phenomenon, according to Xenopol, is formed from the natural and constant influences of a race placed against the changing backdrop of historical events. \u00a0\u201cDistinguishing between race and nationality in a manner which he had not managed to articulate during his student years,\u201d summarizes Hiemstra, \u201cXenopol described national character as the \u2018translation\u2019 of a peculiar combination of organically based psychological complexions into the \u2018intellectual manifestations\u2019 of a particular national group.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this aspect of Xenopol\u2019s thinking, many would see a contrast with what he argues in the same book about national and other prejudices clouding the potential of the field of history for scientific truth. \u00a0Xenopol \u2014 who, in contrast to the following century\u2019s narratives of Romania\u2019s National Communist period, admired the ancient Romans \u2014 believed Romanians to belong to \u201cthe Latin race,\u201d which he considered an example of a race evolved from acquired but hereditary characteristics. \u00a0This was a different category of race for him than the designation of a naturally formed race, such as \u201cthe white race.\u201d \u00a0Xenopol\u2019s admiration for both the Dacians and the Romans bears comparison with Eminescu\u2019s, but also with French currents of thought admiring both the Romans and the Gauls.<\/p>\n

In contrast to the typical Eastern European cult of autochthonous status, Xenopol emphasized the role of migrations and colonizations in the foundations of both Romania and Europe. \u00a0That he starts Istoria rom\u00e2nilor din Dacia-Traian\u0103<\/u><\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>with the Scythians even before the Dacians can, to some extent, be seen as a dated but reasonably accurate description of the intrusive Indo-European elements from Scythia. \u00a0With the same kind of romantic realism<\/em>, as Xenopol\u2019s style may be termed, he also proudly highlighted historic instances of colonization by the Romanians themselves. \u00a0(Xenopol was an early pioneer in writing about the Vlacho-Bulgarian Empire, but he came of age at a time when Byzantinology was not very widely studied; had he known more about Byzantinology, Xenopol would have probably discussed the later findings of Adolf Armbruster<\/u><\/a>, about how the early Romanians colonized Constantinople.)<\/p>\n

Among Xenopol\u2019s beliefs was that the historical and contemporary Hungarian rule of the Carpathians amounted to a colonization lacking the European legitimacy of most other contemporary European colonies, because the Magyar language and nationality are not of Indo-European origin. \u00a0According to Xenopol: \u201cThe Hungarians owe their civilization only to their very considerable mixture with such peoples of Aryan race, capable of civilization as the Slavs and the Romanians.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0On the other hand, he displayed respect and admiration for Germans and Slavs, though in both cases recognizing their historic and contemporary rivalries with Romania. \u00a0Sharing less with the small-space chauvinism associated with Southeastern Europe than with the kind of racial bellicosity his time is known for, Xenopol ranked the white race, and above all the Aryan race of Europe, at the top of an unabashed hierarchy of human races.<\/p>\n

Xenopol represented a country that had never been a colonial power, and which had a long history of having the economic (but not legal) status of a colony; Xenopol the economist and the philosopher of history saw colonialism in Africa as an evolutionary cautionary tale for his own people. \u00a0Xenopol\u2019s theory of evolution as a mystery anticipates that of Lucian Blaga in Triologia culturii<\/u><\/em><\/a>. \u00a0<\/em>Xenopol\u2019s philosophical work should be considered together with Xenopol\u2019s work as an economist, in which he argued that Romania had degenerated into African socioeconomic conditions.<\/p>\n

Xenopol would live into the first two decades of the twentieth century, seeing his work as a historian inspire both followers and critics in Romania. \u00a0By that time the Romanian capital and former Wallachian capital of Bucharest had replaced his native Moldavian capital of Ia\u0219i as the chief Romanian cultural center, and Xenopol was not happy about it. \u00a0Falling gravely ill and partially paralyzed, Xenopol lived out the turbulent years of World War I as an invalid. \u00a0By that time he was not even fully articulate, but after Romania gained the region of Transylvania from the hated Austro-Hungarian Empire and B\u00e9la Kun\u2019s Communist Hungary in the aftermath of the war, the younger Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga visited Xenopol and claimed to discern a smile on Xenopol\u2019s face. \u00a0Xenopol, who had fallen on hard times since the war years, died on February 27, 1920, on the very same day the Romanian Parliament voted to give him a pension.<\/p>\n

For someone from a country with a strong history of anti-modern romanticism on the one hand, and a later history under Stalinist models of Communism on the other, Xenopol comes across as something of a liberal; he was not one by Western standards. \u00a0Xenopol\u2019s work displays a certain hardness not seen in other, more sentimental Romanian historians, such as Nicolae B\u0103lcescu before Xenopol or Nicolae Iorga after him. \u00a0Perhaps nowhere is this better seen than in his philosophy of history.<\/p>\n

In his theme of national degeneration, Xenopol\u2019s thinking somewhat resembles the pessimistic outlook of Eminescu<\/u><\/a>. \u00a0The difference is that Xenopol\u2019s philosophy is based on a realist metaphysics in place of Eminescu\u2019s philosophical idealism. \u00a0But like Eminescu, Xenopol wasn\u2019t just a thinker of degeneration, but also of regeneration.<\/p>\n

A.D. Xenopol<\/u><\/a>\u00a0was more than just the pioneering historian of Romania and historiographer of the Romanian people he is most often remembered for. \u00a0Long before the National Communist period, Xenopol the economist recognized the need to industrialize Romania. \u00a0As a philosopher of history, Xenopol was also a philosopher of Europe\u2014that is, Europe the ethnic family, long before anyone had ever heard of Europe the bureaucracy. \u00a0If there is a central theme to his work as a historian, his work as a sociologist, his work as an economist, and his work as a philosopher together, it is that of degeneration and regeneration.<\/p>\n

\u2013Amory Stern<\/u><\/a>, June 2025<\/p>\n

Montgomery County, Pennsylvania<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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