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Information Technology and Law Series IT&LAW 30
Open Data Exposed
Bastiaan van Loenen

Glenn Vancauwenberghe
Joep Crompvoets Editors
Information Technology and Law Series
Volume 30
Editor-in-chief
Simone van der Hof, eLaw (Center for Law and Digital Technologies),
Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
Series editors
Bibi van den Berg, Institute for Security and Global Affairs (ISGA),
Leiden University, The Hague, The Netherlands
Gloria González Fuster, Law, Science, Technology & Society Studies (LSTS),
Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Brussels, Belgium
Eleni Kosta, Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society (TILT),
Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands
Eva Lievens, Faculty of Law, Law & Technology, Ghent University,
Ghent, Belgium
Bendert Zevenbergen, Center for Information Technology Policy,
Princeton University, Princeton, USA
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8857
Bastiaan van Loenen Glenn Vancauwenberghe
•
Joep Crompvoets
Editors
Open Data Exposed
123
Editors
Bastiaan van Loenen Joep Crompvoets
Faculty of Architecture Public Governance Institute
and the Built Environment KU Leuven
Delft University of Technology Leuven, Belgium
Delft, The Netherlands
Faculty of Architecture
and the Built Environment
Delft University of Technology
Delft, The Netherlands
ISSN 1570-2782 ISSN 2215-1966 (electronic)

Information Technology and Law Series
ISBN 978-94-6265-260-6 ISBN 978-94-6265-261-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-261-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018949338
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Foreword
Open Data is a one-way street. You can’t go back.

Jeff Stovall, CIO, Charlotte, North Carolina
Open data initiatives came on the scene just a decade ago. In December 2007, in
Sebastopol, California, 30 open government advocates agreed on the—now—
famous eight Open Government Data Principles. Soon after, the US and UK
governments decided to include the topic in their political agendas. In January
2009, on his first day in office, President Barack Obama signed legislation pro-
moting open government, while the first US and UK open data portals were
launched to make public sector information (PSI) available in the form of “open
data”. At the same time, the European Commission started the review process of the
2003 PSI Re-use Directive and published a revised version in 2013.
However, the open data movement did not appear out of the blue just 10 years
ago. Three areas provide a rich context. Freedom of information (FOI) is an area in
which governments all over the world have been active for decades, some for cen-
turies. The Swedish Freedom of the Press Act of 1766 guaranteed public access to
government documents. Secondly, digital technologies gave a completely different
dynamics to the generation, storage and at the same time access and dissemination of
PSI. Lastly, the “openness” movement was quite influential in the early twenty-first
century, promoting “open” in several areas including open source software, open
standards, open knowledge/content and open science. The “open data” addition to
this palette appeared rather natural, framing the FOI discussion for the digital era.
The expectations were high from the beginning. The early open data rhetoric
could be summarised as “publish all your data in whatever way and, here it
comes… transparency, growth, efficiencies and innovation”. Using Gartner’s hype
cycle, the 2008–2014 period could be seen as the period of inflated expectations.
Open data advocates believed that just by making government data available, we
will automatically achieve open government. For this reason, pressure was put on
public organisations to publish data. However, this happened in a supply-driven
way, ignoring to a large extent real users, requirements and demand for open data.
vii
viii Foreword
Annoyingly, demand did not follow the supply. By the mid-2010s, we realised that
although we had several hundreds of thousands of open data sets available via
hundreds of portals maintained by public authorities at all administrative levels, i.e.
on local, regional, national and European level, the demand, actual use and
exploitation of open data were very low. Public agencies were doing—some better
than others—their homework, but the promised benefits were not there. What was
wrong?
Several hidden issues surfaced when the open data rhetoric hits reality:
• Governance. Open data should become part of the corporate information and
data management plan. Although data is a valuable resource and as such it needs
to be appropriately managed, we still lack policies for managing information
inside public organisations. We need much more managing of open data as part
of an overall corporate information management portfolio.
• Funding and costs. The initial enthusiasm underestimated the cost of publishing
open data. There are direct costs related to the publication process and other
important costs related to changing existing business models that are based on
revenues for public agencies. On many occasions, upfront investments and
long-term commitments of resources were not realistically estimated.
• Licensing and privacy. Licensing open data has proved to be complicated, while
ambiguity in this area prevents reuse. Moreover, privacy issues seem to dete-
riorate with the advancement of de-anonymisation techniques.
• Usability. In a rather naïve way, it was thought that open data could be used
directly by everyone, by all citizens and businesses. However, special skills are
required for using and getting value out of open data. This skill set is often quite
advanced as the published data most times suffers from low quality, inconsis-
tencies and need demanding curation, cleansing, integration, etc.
• Ecosystems. Open data alone is not enough. Applications, communities, power
users, standards, platforms play not just a supportive role but are prerequisites
for value creation.
• Just opening data in any form and format is not enough. Specific policies for
promoting publication quality and ensuring interoperability and compliance to
standards are needed to avoid a Tower of Babel of open data. Advanced skills
are also needed inside public organisations to support the entire open data life
cycle from generation to exploitation.
• Global applicability and national specificities. The open data movement was
born in an Anglo-Saxon context. Its application to other countries and conti-
nents revealed specificities and special characteristics based on cultural, insti-
tutional and organisational factors that need to be carefully considered. It is not
always possible to just copy practices from one country to the other.
• Evaluation and assessment. It is very difficult to assess and evaluate in an
objective and quantitative way, using validated and verifiable evidence, the
value and impact of open data, with respect to transparency, efficiencies,
innovation, job creation, etc.
Foreword ix
With this extensive list of challenges, coupled with the (apparently) low use of
open data, in the post-2015 era, agencies started questioning the open data return on
investment. How to persuade budget holders to continue investing in something of
which the benefits cannot be assessed, and usage is low despite considerable
investments already having been made?
It seems that we may be moving towards the “trough of disillusionment”.
However, the first indications of a new level of maturity or the “slope of enlight-
enment” can be seen. Researchers, policy-makers and open data advocates are
realising the limitations and are coming up with plans, proposals and ideas to
overcome these limitations. The publication of this book with the topics it covers is
a manifestation of the maturity of the discussion.
This book aims to expose the hidden issues as well as key aspects that have a
relevance for opening data and to provide illustrative examples of how open data is
implemented worldwide. It includes in-depth information about the historical
background and the key components of open data, presents several interesting case
studies on open data initiatives and infrastructures, and critically discusses the
current and future developments in the open data ecosystem.
Open data alone may not be the Holy Grail for the public sector, but remains a
very powerful tool with which to increase transparency, reduce costs, create new
services and boost reuse/collaboration within the public sector and with the private
sector. We now realise that it cannot come alone, and it needs a broader environ-
ment to thrive, coupled with crucial elements such as policies, planning, manage-
ment, funding, prioritisation, standards, skills, awareness, assessment frameworks
and legal clarity, just to mention a few. If we see open data not as a technology
trend, but as a vital parameter of the Freedom of Information discussion shaped in
the digital era, we can all agree that it is a one-way street. You cannot go back.
Thermi, Greece Asst. Prof. Dr. Vasilios Peristeras

International Hellenic University
Contents
1 Open Data Exposed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Bastiaan van Loenen, Glenn Vancauwenberghe, Joep Crompvoets
and Lorenzo Dalla Corte
2 Towards Open Data Across the Pond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Lorenzo Dalla Corte
3 Towards a User-Oriented Open Data Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Bastiaan van Loenen
4 Funding Open Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Frederika Welle Donker
5 Governance of Open Data Initiatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Glenn Vancauwenberghe and Joep Crompvoets
6 Understanding Open Data Regulation: An Analysis
of the Licensing Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Alexandra Giannopoulou
7 The European Right to Data Protection in Relation
to Open Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Lorenzo Dalla Corte
8 Assessing Open Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
9 Technological Aspects of (Linked) Open Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Stanislav Ronzhin, Erwin Folmer and Rob Lemmens
10 Open Data in the United Kingdom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Glenn Vancauwenberghe and Jamie Fawcett
11 The Development of Open Data in The Netherlands . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Bastiaan van Loenen
xi
xii Contents
12 Open Data in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

Mei Xue
13 One Data Indonesia to Support the Implementation
of Open Data in Indonesia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Agung Indrajit
14 2050: The Story of Urbidata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Hendrik Ploeger and Bastiaan van Loenen
Abbreviations
API Application programming interface

APPSI UK Advisory Panel on Public Sector Information
ASEDIE Spanish Multisectorial Information Association
ATM Automatic teller machine
AUD Australian dollar
BAG Dutch key register addresses and buildings
BAPPENAS The Indonesian Ministry of National Development Planning
BCL Beijing City Lab
BEIS UK Department for Business, Environment and Industrial
Strategy
BIG Geospatial Information Agency, Indonesia
BIM Building information modeling
BPS Statistics Indonesia
BRT Dutch key register of topography
CAD Canadian dollar
CBA Cost–benefit analysis
CC0 Creative Commons Zero licence
CfDI Indonesian Centers for Data and Information
CIO Chief information officer
CODE Canadian Open Data Experience
CSV Comma-separated values
DCLG UK Department for Communities and Local Government
DCMS UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport
DEFRA UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
DJChina Data Journalist China
DUO Dutch Education Service
EA UK Environment Agency
EC European Commission
ECJ European Court of Justice
EU European Union
xiii
xiv Abbreviations
EUR Euro
FLOSS Free/libre open source software
GAV Gross added value
GBP British pound
GDP Gross domestic product
GDS UK Government Digital Service
GIS Geographic information system
GLA Greater London Authority
GML Geography Markup Language
HRM Human resource management
INSPIRE Directive EU Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and
of the Council of 14 March 2007 establishing an
Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European
Community
IRM Independent Reporting Mechanism
JSON JavaScript Object Notation
JSON-LD JSON for Linking Data
KMS Danish mapping agency
LAPOR! A mobile and web application developed to report
inappropriate practices of government in Indonesia
LGA UK Local Government Association
LIDAR LIght Detection And Ranging; an optical remote-sensing
technique producing highly accurate x, y, z measurements
(ESRI 2018)
LOD Linked open data
NapTAN UK National Public Transport Access Nodes
NASG National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and
Geoinformation of China
NLP Natural language processing
NOK Norwegian Krone
NPTG UK National Public Transport Gazetteer
NSDI National Spatial Data Infrastructure
NWB Dutch National Roads Database
NZGOAL New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing
framework
OD4D Open Data for Development Network
ODbL Open Database Licence
ODI One Data Indonesia
ODRA Open Data Readiness Assessment
ODSC Open Data Strategy Council (Korea)
ODUG Open Data User Group (UK)
Abbreviations xv
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

OF Open format
OGC Open Geospatial Consortium
OGD Open Government Data
OGI Open Government Indonesia initiative
OGIC Regulation of the People’s Republic of China on Open
Government Information
OGL Open Government Licence
OGP Open Government Partnership
OL Open licence
OMB US Office of Management and Budget
OMP One Map Policy, Indonesia
OPSI UK Office of Public Sector Information
OS Ordnance Survey
PAF UK Postcode Address File
PDDL Public Domain Dedication and License
PDOK Publieke Dienstverlening op de Kaart/Public Services on the
Map
PIO Act Indonesian Public Information Openness Act (UU KIP)
PPP Public–private partnership
PRA Public Records Act
PSI Directive EU Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of public
sector information amended by Directive 2013/37/EU
PSI Public sector information
RAR Roshal Archive Compressed file
RDF Resource Description Framework
RE Reusable
RTI Right to Information
SDGs United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
SDRC China’s State Development and Reform Commission
SLA Service-level agreement
SPARQL Simple Protocol and RDF Query Language
SVG Scalable Vector Graphics
TfL Transport for London (London transport authority)
UK United Kingdom
UKGLF UK Government Licensing Framework for public
sector information
URI Uniform Resource Identifier
US United States
USD US dollar
W3C World Wide Web Consortium
WFS Web Feature Service
WIPO World Intellectual Property Organization
xvi Abbreviations
WOO Dutch proposed law on open government: Wet open overheid

XML Extensible Markup Language
XSD XML Schema Definition
Chapter 1
Open Data Exposed
Bastiaan van Loenen, Glenn Vancauwenberghe, Joep Crompvoets

and Lorenzo Dalla Corte
Contents
1.1 Introduction........................................................................................................................ 1
1.2 Definition and Principles of Open Data............................................................................ 3
1.3 Open Data Ecosystem and Open Data Infrastructures ..................................................... 4
1.4 Outline of the Book........................................................................................................... 7
References .................................................................................................................................. 9
Keywords Open data Open data infrastructure Open data ecosystem
1.1 Introduction
This book is about open data, i.e. data that does not have any barriers in the (re)use.
Open data aims to optimize access, sharing and using data from a technical, legal,
financial, and intellectual perspective. Data increasingly determines the way people
live their lives today. Nowadays, we cannot imagine a life without real-time traffic
information about our route to work, information of the daily news or information
B. van Loenen (&) G. Vancauwenberghe L. Dalla Corte

Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Knowledge Centre Open Data,
Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands
e-mail: b.vanloenen@tudelft.nl
G. Vancauwenberghe
e-mail: g.vancauwenberghe@tudelft.nl
L. Dalla Corte
e-mail: l.dallacorte@tudelft.nl
J. Crompvoets
Public Governance Institute, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
e-mail: joep.crompvoets@kuleuven.be
L. Dalla Corte
Tilburg University (TILT), Tilburg, The Netherlands
© T.M.C. ASSER PRESS and the authors 2018 1

B. van Loenen et al. (eds.), Open Data Exposed, Information Technology and Law
Series 30, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-261-3_1
2 B. van Loenen et al.
about the local weather. At the same time, citizens themselves now are constantly
generating and sharing data and information via many different devices and social
media systems. Especially for governments, collection, management, exchange, and
use of data and information have always been key tasks, since data is both the primary
input to and output of government activities. Also for businesses, non-profit orga-
nizations, researchers and various other actors, data and information are essential.
It is estimated that 90% of the world’s data was just generated in the past two
years.1 Where in the past the entire data collection of the globe would fit a single
memory stick of 8 Gb, in 2013 it was estimated that the world creates 2.5 quintillion
bytes of data daily,2 totalling a 2.7 Zettabytes3 of data existing in the digital uni-
verse.4 While in the past government data were regarded as being among the largest
creators and collectors of data in many different domains,5 this is anno 2018 not the
case anymore.6 The majority of the Zettabytes that are collected on a daily basis,
often through citizens,7 are in the private domain.8
Since data is so critical for a well-functioning society,9 access to the data should
be optimised. One way of arriving at such an ideal position is to open data. While the
concept of making data freely available for the common good originally stems from
the academic community10—many years before the creation of the internet—in
recent years especially governments have been active in setting up open data ini-
tiatives and making their data available as open data on the web. Although there are
also movements towards open commercial data, open research data and open sci-
ence,11 and open data provided by citizens, this book’s focus is on open government
data, which still makes up the majority of open data. Therefore, open data mainly
translates into open government data in this book, unless otherwise indicated.
The main objective of this book on open data is to expose key aspects that have a
relevance when dealing with open data and to provide appealing examples of how
open data is implemented worldwide. This chapter first provides a definition of
open data and discusses the values associated with open data. The chapter also
introduces the reader to the central concepts of open data infrastructures and the
open data ecosystem, and ends with the outline of the book.
1
IBM 2016; SINTEF 2013.
2
Jacobson 2013.
3
A Zettabyte equals 1 billion Terabytes. A Terabyte equals 1000 Gigabytes.
4
Karr 2012; see also DOMO 2017.
5
Janssen 2011.
6
Mulcahy 2017.
7
See Montargil and Santos 2017.
8
See Kelly 2012.
9
See also Castells and Himanen 2002.
10
See Chignard 2013: The term open data appeared for the first time in 1995, in a document from
an American scientific agency (see National Research Council 1995).
11
See for the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) principles of open science:
Wilkinson et al. 2016.
1 Open Data Exposed 3
1.2 Definition and Principles of Open Data
Open data is data that can be accessed, shared, used and reused without any barrier
for any type of (re)user. According to the Open Definition,12 open data can be
defined as data that be freely used, modified, and shared by anyone for any purpose
subject, at most, to measures that preserve provenance and openness.13 Open data
requires datasets to be either in the public domain, or distributed through an open
license. The data must be provided as a whole, free of charge, and preferably
downloadable via the Internet, including any additional information that might be
necessary to comply with the open license’s terms. Openness requires the data to be
provided in a readily machine-readable form. The format must be open as well,
meaning that it does not place any restriction upon its use, and that the files in that
format can be processed with open-source software tools.
The Open Definition speaks broadly of open ‘works’, rather than of open data.
Focusing on data tout court, one can move from the Open Government Data14
(OGD) principles. According to the OGD principles, which are arguably founda-
tional in understanding the concept of open data, data must be: Complete;15
Primary;16 Timely;17 Accessible;18 Machine-processable;19 Non-discriminatory;20
12
‘Open Definition 2.1’. http://opendefinition.org/. Accessed May 2018.
13
‘Open Definition 2.1’. http://opendefinition.org/. Accessed May 2018. Please note that the
attribution and sharealike requirements are possible limitations in the use, therefore not strictly
adhering to the ‘without any barrier’ requirement of open data (see further Chap. 6 of this book).
14
As pointed out by the principles’ authors, “(t)here are many definitions of “open” and this is but
one. The 2007 working group’s definition sits at the unique intersection of open government and
open data and has United States sensibilities”—Dietrich et al. 2007.
15
Open data must be the default setting for governmental data releases, provided that said data is
of a public nature, meaning that it must not be subject to valid privacy, security or other legitimate
and legally sanctioned limitations. Moreover, while some resources are by now digital by default,
some other artefacts are not: in the latter case, they should be made digitally available to the
maximum extent possible.
16
I.e. collected at its very source, and as granular as possible; entities obtaining the original
dataset, processing it, and publishing it in a modified (e.g. aggregated) form, should have the
obligation to publish the original data set in its default format, thus contributing in preserving it for
posterity.
17
Each piece of information has its own lifecycle, and the accuracy—and therefore the utility—of
a dataset partly depends on the time lapsed from the dataset’s creation. Timeliness, therefore,
means that government data should be released as early as possible, to preserve the data’s value.
18
Data must be accessible to the widest possible number of users for the widest possible array of
purposes. Accessibility is deemed to be lacking if the data is not accessible through automated
means, due to technological, policy, or other kinds of restrictions.
19
As following from the accessibility principle above, data must be machine-readable and pro-
cessable, and thus in a widely used, normalized and sufficiently documented format.
20
I.e. available to anyone, for any purpose, without access control, ‘walled gardens’, or other
gatekeeping activities that might lead to differences in accessing information.
Non-proprietary;21 and License-free.22 Compliance with the OGD principles needs

to be demonstrable, i.e. there need to be accountability measures in place to allow
the review of the adherence to the principles above.
The concepts of Open Work and open data highlight how data needs to be both
legally, technically and financially open,23 so either in the public domain or covered
by an open license, and kept in a machine-readable and non-proprietary format.
Open data aims at making information available to everybody, for any purpose, in a
machine-readable and interoperable format, based on open standards and digestible
by free/libre open source software (FLOSS).24 Also with respect to the financial
accessibility open data is data available free of charge. Marginal costs of dissem-
ination are accepted by some as a reasonable cost for users. However, open data is
data that can be accessed and reused without any barrier for any type of reuse, and
some user groups experience any price to be paid as a barrier.25
1.3 Open Data Ecosystem and Open Data Infrastructures
In this book we consider open data as part of a bigger system that has been referred to
as the open data ecosystem.26 An ecosystem can be defined as “a system of people,
practices, values, and technologies in a particular local environment”.27 Ecosystems
consist of interacting, relatively tightly connected components with substantial inter-
dependencies. However, the specific components vary from ecosystem to ecosystem.
Recently, the concept was also introduced in open data practice and research, and
several scholars started to explore how the concept can be a valuable heuristic for
understanding and approaching open data practices and initiatives.28 It was Rufus
Pollock who coined the concept of the open data ecosystem in 2011.29 Pollock argued
that we should transform our one way open data streets towards an ecosystem where
data is cycled and recycled among producers and users with a prominent role for
info-mediaries.30 Such an ecosystem should thrive on collaboration, componentization
21
No entity should have exclusive control over the data format employed. As several proprietary
formats are widely used, and conversely some open formats have a narrow user base, the decision
of releasing a dataset in both widely used proprietary formats and in less used but open formats is
compliant with the principle in discussion, as long as the only format used is not a proprietary one.
22
I.e. not subject to limitations deriving from IP rights, thus either in the public domain or
disciplined by an open license.
23
See Carrara et al. 2016.
24
See Kulk and Van Loenen 2012; Van Loenen et al. 2016.
25
See Welle Donker 2016.
26
Pollock 2011; Harrison et al. 2012; Zuiderwijk et al. 2014; Jetzek 2017; Styin et al. 2017.
27
Nardi and Day 1999.
28
See e.g. Heimstädt et al. 2014; Zuiderwijk et al. 2014; Styrin et al. 2017.
29
Pollock 2011.
30
See also Jetzek 2017: Stressing that the open data ecosystem should be circular in nature.
and open data.31 Since Pollock’s approach, other approaches emerged,32 often within
the context of open government data.33 Some scoped the ecosystem purely technical
by addressing the optimisation of the data provision to promote use.34 Others argued
that the ecosystem would comprise “an active network, facilitating interaction and
communication amongst everybody interested and/or involved in open data and the
re-use of information and data, internal, as well as external to the organisation”.35,36 In
Dawes approach, the open data ecosystem fulfils a communication or networking
platform where stakeholders in the system can meet, greet and interact.37 Further, the
mutual interdependency of the different stakeholders in the ecosystem creates a
common responsibility: only together can they make or break the system.38
Although the concept of the open data ecosystem is not fully developed as of
today, and its applicability to open data may be questioned, what is central “to the
ecosystems metaphor is the recognition that users, technology innovators, and
government leaders, data managers, and policy makers are mutually interdependent
in developing this business efficiently, effectively, and in ways calculated to bring
value to all participants”.39 An open data ecosystem can be considered as a cyclical,
sustainable, demand-driven environment oriented around agents that are mutually
interdependent in the creation and delivery of value from open data.40 However,
such an ecosystem cannot function properly without a foundation, the infrastructure
that fulfils the basic requirements of the ecosystem. Whilst the ecosystem especially
allows niche uses (specialised communities of use) to emerge,41 the infrastructure
seeks to support the widest possible range of uses of the data.
In her work on open data infrastructures, Zuiderwijk defined this infrastructure as “a
shared, (quasi-) public, evolving system, consisting of a collection of interconnected
social elements (e.g. user operations) and technical elements (e.g. open data analysis
tools and technologies, open data services) which jointly allow for OGD use”.42 In this
perspective the infrastructure is regarded “as a central place where researchers can find
31
Pollock 2011.
32
Ubaldi (2013) argues that the open data ecosystem consists of three interacting ecosystems: the
data provider ecosystem, the data user ecosystem and the infomediary ecosystem.
33
See, for example, Ubaldi 2013; Dawes et al. 2016; Harrison et al. 2012.
34
Zuiderwijk et al. 2014.
35
Share PSI 2.0 Best Practice: Establish an Open Data Ecosystem, 25 July 2016 [on line] available
at: https://www.w3.org/2013/share-psi/bp/eode/. Accessed May 2018.
36
See also Dawes et al. 2016; Ubaldi 2013; Harrison et al. 2012.
37
Such ecosystem may exist at different levels of scale: within an organisation, a country, region
or the worldwide open data ecosystem, in a specific domain (see Zuiderwijk 2015). Open data
ecosystems may also involve multiple levels, namely a data producer and a data user level, with
between the infomediaries level connecting the two (Ubaldi 2013; Jetzek 2017).
38
Cf. Harrison et al. 2012.
39
Harrison et al. 2012.
40
Boley and Chang 2007; Harrison et al. 2012.
41
Davies 2010; cf. the concepts of infrastructures and business systems in Chan et al. 2001.
42
Zuiderwijk 2015.
and use the data published by OGD providers, where they can use integrated tools, and
where they can interact with OGD providers and policy makers to discuss their findings
from open data use.”43 The function of this concept is rather that of an online platform
than of an information infrastructure. A similar view is provided by Janssen et al. stating
that open data publication requires “an infrastructure which is able to handle the data in
an easy-to-use way to lower the user threshold. [..] Such an infrastructure should have
facilities for the discovery, curation, provenance, analyzation, and visualization of
data”.44 Others defined an information infrastructure as “a technical framework of
computing and communications technologies, information content, services, people, all
of which interact in complex and often unpredictable ways”.45 However, infrastructure
encompasses much more than just the technical bit: it is people, it is laws, it is the
education to be able to use systems, it is the policies, governance mechanisms and the
funding structures.46 In the context of physical infrastructures, Robert Pepper of the US
Federal Communications Commission47 explained that: “If you think about the highway
system, we tend to think about bridges and interstates, but the infrastructure also includes
the highway laws, drivers’ licenses, McDonalds along the roadside, gas stations, the
people who cut the grass along the highways, and all of those support systems”.
In this book, we consider an open data infrastructure as the basic physical and
organisational structure and facilities needed for the functioning of an open data
ecosystem. As such we regard it as a social and technical construct.48 In addition to
the pure technical aspects of providing access through ftp, API, or otherwise to the
datasets and their metadata, it also inhibits non-technical aspects such as the open data
policies, and governance and funding structures. Like any infrastructure, the open
data infrastructure has typical dimensions that are paramount to the success of open
data ecosystems: users, providers, technical aspects (standards,49 access networks),50
legal/ policy framework dimensions,51 the funding dimension and the governance52
of the infrastructure connecting the users, user communities (like developers, uni-
versities, private sector) and providers of the open data.53 The ecosystem builds on
the infrastructure and is “made up of a series of interrelated tools and services that rely
on one or more elements of the infrastructure either directly, or through intermediary
tools and services, for their sustained operation”.54 Davies argues that developing an
43
Zuiderwijk 2015.
44
Janssen et al. 2012.
45
Borgman 2000, p. 30.
46
Coleman and McLaughlin 1997.
47
Coleman and McLaughlin 1997.
48
Star and Ruhleder 1996, p. 113.
49
Zuiderwijk et al. 2014.
50
Zuiderwijk et al. 2014; Ubaldi 2013.
51
Ubaldi 2013; Harrison et al. 2012; World Bank 2015.
52
Harrison et al. 2012.
53
See also World Bank 2015; Williamson et al. 2003.
54
Davies 2010.
ecosystem around an open dataset might be taken up entirely by third parties (other
than public organisations).55 The European Commission sticks with different
wording to the same concept: government should provide the infrastructure that
should support business development.56
1.4 Outline of the Book
The book is divided into four main parts. Together with this general introduction, the
second chapter, in which the historical background of open data is discussed, forms a
first introductory part of this book. In the second part of the book, which consists of
Chaps. 3–8, various key components of open data infrastructures are addressed. The
third part of the book, containing Chaps. 10–13, provides several cases studies on
open data initiatives and infrastructures worldwide. The book ends with a final
chapter in which current and future open data developments are critically discussed.
In this first introductory chapter of the book, we provided a definition of open
data, discussed the main principles and values of open data, and introduced the
reader into the central concepts of open data infrastructures and the open data
ecosystem. The second chapter by Lorenzo Dalla Delta complements this first
chapter, by providing a historical overview on open data. The concept of open data
as we know it today is the result of several different initiatives, promoted by a wide
range of actors, both of a legislative and non-legislative nature. Numerous regu-
latory antecedents meant to foster the concept of open data and to embed it in
national and international policy agendas have been undertaken on both sides of the
Atlantic, and also at a super-national level. He concludes that the striving towards
openness can be characterised by different priorities and undertones, like public
sector information reuse and economic growth in the EU, or transparency and
accountability in the US, but its general principles are widely and internationally
shared. Throughout Chaps. 3–9, different key components of open data initiatives
and open data infrastructures are further discussed. In the first two chapters, the
focus is on the main stakeholders involved in the implementation of these infras-
tructures, i.e. the user (Chap. 3) and the data provider (Chap. 4). Chapter 3 puts the
user of open data central and explores the open data users, mentioned by many but
considered by few. In this chapter, Bastiaan van Loenen argues that there no such
thing as a single typical user making it very difficult to develop user oriented open
data policies. Chapter 4 addresses open data developments from the perspective of
the data providers, with a particular focus on the issue of funding open data. In this
chapter the change process from cost recovery towards open data is explained and
discussed by Frederika Welle Donker. She addresses the tension field between lost
55
See also O’Reilly 2010: Arguing that greater government involvement could increase the
vitality of an infrastructure. “But if the lesson is correctly learned, it should do so not by competing
with the private sector to deliver [..] services, but by investing in infrastructure (and “rules of the
road”) that will lead to a more robust private sector ecosystem.”
56
European Commission DG CONNECT A European strategy on the data value chain.
revenue due to open data and maintain adequate data service quality in the context
of a sustainable business model for open government data. Chapter 5 introduces and
discusses the governance of open data initiatives as a key component in the
implementation of open data. Building further on the public administration litera-
ture on coordination and governance in the public sector, Glenn Vancauwenberghe
and Joep Crompvoets develop a framework for analysing the governance of open
data initiatives, and use this framework to present examples of the use of various
governance instruments for governing open data initiatives worldwide.
In the early years of open data, users were often confronted with unique complex
restrictive licences in local languages which were not compatible with other licences.
Although there has been significant work accomplished in the domain of harmon-
ising licences, including open data licences, many countries still develop and use
their own national version of an open licence. Users may wonder why countries and
organisations do not use one single licencing framework across the globe. In Chap. 6,
Alexandra Giannopoulou argues that it is, from a legal perspective, not as simple as it
may look like due to internal and external legal interoperability issues. Open data
interests also have to be balanced with other competing interest. Two of these
competing interests are privacy and data protection. In Chap. 7, Lorenzo Dalla Corte
identifies the relevance of distinguishing these two rights. He arrives at a complex
mix of different types of information including private personal data, non-private
personal data and non-private personal data that can be opened. The performance of
open data and open data initiatives is addressed in Chap. 8, in which Glenn
Vancauwenberghe discusses the different dimensions of open data assessments, and
analyses the differences and similarities in existing open data assessments. The
technological components of open data infrastructures are considered in Chap. 9. In
this chapter, Stanislav Ronzhin, Erwin Folmer and Rob Lemmens use the five star
model of Tim Berners Lee to explain the technological challenges of open data. They
argue that linked (open) data provides the needed mechanisms and conventions for
seamless integration of semantically heterogeneous datasets.
Although open data initiatives and infrastructures have been developed at dif-
ferent administrative levels, especially at the national level much effort is done to
implement open data and coordinate the efforts and activities of different stake-
holders. To give the reader better insight in past and ongoing open data initiatives,
and the way the different components of open data discussed in this book are
implemented, the book also highlights and investigates open data implementations
in four different countries. In Chap. 10, Glenn Vancauwenberghe and Jamie Fawcett
present the history of open data in the United Kingdom, starting from the very first
steps towards open data in the 90s to the most recent developments. Chapter 11 by
Bastiaan van Loenen focuses on the Netherlands, one of the frontrunners worldwide
in opening spatial data. In Chap. 12, Xue Mei looks at open data developments in
China, a country where especially at the local level many data have been opened by
government. The fourth country explored in this book is Indonesia. In Chap. 13,
Agung Indrajit explores how this emerging economy is embracing open data.
The final chapter of this book, Chap. 14, demonstrates that current developments
towards open data, which can be referred to as the democratisation of data, is resulting
in a very small number of data companies having access to a significant portion of data
available globally including open government data, without sharing this data with
society. Hendrik Ploeger and Bastiaan van Loenen argue that this skewed balance in
the information position of government, citizens and the (big) data companies may
result in a data dictatorship dominating our information societies in the coming
decades. Therefore they hold that the current open data system should be revolu-
tionised from the democratisation of data available to the happy few into a data
democracy for all.
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Janssen K (2011) The influence of the PSI directive on open government data: An overview of
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Jetzek T (2017) Innovation in the Open Data Ecosystem: Exploring the Role of Real Options Thinking
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Chapter 2
Towards Open Data Across the Pond
Lorenzo Dalla Corte
Contents
2.1 Introduction........................................................................................................................ 12
2.2 Towards Openness............................................................................................................. 12
2.3 US: From the Sebastopol Meeting to the Obama Administration ................................... 13
2.4 EU: From PSI Re-use to Open Data?............................................................................... 15
2.5 A Glimpse of the Future? ................................................................................................. 20
2.5.1 Building a European Data Economy ..................................................................... 21
2.5.2 Towards a Common European Data Space ........................................................... 24
2.6 International Developments............................................................................................... 26
2.7 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 29
References .................................................................................................................................. 29
Abstract There is a general, international, and multifaceted trend that is shaping the
global narrative towards openness as a default setting. The open data movement has
been both influencing and influenced by the concepts of Open Government, Open
Access, and Open Source; by Freedom of Information laws, and by the regulatory
initiatives aiming at fostering the re-use of Public Sector Information. The general
aim is promoting information availability, as free of restraints as reasonably possible,
to reach a multiplicity of different goals. Transparency, efficiency, accountability,
economic growth, and democratic participation are amongst the core values upheld,
from an instrumental perspective, by the striving towards openness. This chapter
highlights a number of international initiatives that revolve around open data, and
that have been instrumental in framing the concept as understood nowadays.
Keywords Open data Open Government History Developments

Openness
L. Dalla Corte (&)

Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Knowledge Center Open Data,
Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands
e-mail: l.dallacorte@tilburguniversity.edu
L. Dalla Corte
Tilburg University (TILT), Tilburg, The Netherlands
© T.M.C. ASSER PRESS and the authors 2018 11

B. van Loenen et al. (eds.), Open Data Exposed, Information Technology and Law
Series 30, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-261-3_2
12 L. Dalla Corte
2.1 Introduction
There is a general, international, and multifaceted trend that is shaping the global
narrative towards openness as a default setting. The open data movement has been
both influencing and influenced by the concepts of Open Government, Open
Access, and Open Source; by Freedom of Information laws, and by the regulatory
initiatives aiming at fostering the re-use of Public Sector Information (PSI).
Open data’s general aim is promoting information availability, as free of restraints
as reasonably possible, to reach a multiplicity of different goals. Transparency, effi-
ciency, accountability, economic growth, and democratic participation are amongst
the core values upheld, from an instrumental perspective, by the striving towards
openness.
This chapter highlights a number of initiatives that have been instrumental for
the concept of open data and for the goals it pursues. It starts by highlighting a few
important landmarks in the US and in the EU. The analysis, due to the topic’s
breadth and to the multiplicity of jurisdictions and organisations involved with open
data, is bound to leave out many important initiatives, mostly at a national level.
This chapter will therefore also account for several international developments
revolving around the concept of open data, but is by no means an exhaustive
account of the emergence of such a rapidly developing movement.
2.2 Towards Openness
The brief review of what makes the concept of open data undertaken in Chap. 1
takes the Open Definition as a starting point. As this section aims at briefly giving
some contextual historical and genealogical1 notes on the concept of open data, it
appears appropriate to start by mentioning the roots of the Open Definition itself, as
specified by its authors:
The Open Definition was initially derived from the Open Source Definition, which in turn
was derived from the original Debian Free Software Guidelines, and the Debian Social
Contract of which they are a part […] This definition is substantially derivative of those
documents and retains their essential principles.
The idea underlying open data’s openness (partly) derives from the open source
movement,2 which results clearly from the references to FLOSS and to open formats
1
Gray 2014.
2
The parallelism results clearly from the four fundamental freedoms of free software, as framed by
Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation: “The freedom to run the program as you
wish, for any purpose (freedom 0); The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so
it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1); The freedom to redistribute copies so you can
help your neighbour (freedom 2); The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to
others (freedom 3)”—Free Software Foundation n.a.
2 Towards Open Data Across the Pond 13
and standards characterizing the concept of open data.3 There are, however, several
other factors that contributed in shaping open data.
Indeed, the same degree of merit in introducing and evolving the notion of open
data must be given to the Open Science and Open Access movements, which aim at
rendering scientific output and governmental information—in particular if publicly
funded—as free from limitations as reasonably possible, shaping scientific research
just as the FLOSS movement shaped software. Furthermore, as it has been pointed
out,4 the open data movement has been developing paralleling the Right to
Information (RTI) one,5 which is mainly concerned with enhancing transparency
and accountability within public administrations, and whose connection with the
notion of open data results therefore apparent. Aside from RTI instances, the open
data movement gained additional traction by leaning on the social, economic and
political ratio underlying PSI reuse:6 the potential for increased efficiency and for
added value and growth deriving from the reuse of PSI pushed open data instances
within environments in which transparency and openness would not have had the
same level of traction.
The last decades saw open data growing from relatively narrow academic and
professional circles to a full-fledged movement that is arguably changing how both
the public and the private sectors operate, often in a radical fashion.
2.3 US: From the Sebastopol Meeting to the Obama

Administration
In December 2007, a group of thirty US scholars, entrepreneurs, and Internet activists

held a meeting in Sebastopol, California.7 The participants came mostly from the
open source and open culture communities; its aim was to frame the concept of Open
Government Data, and to have it adopted by that time’s US presidential candidates.8
Its outcome turned out to be the Open Government Data Principles, which were
drafted as to embody a general, overarching idea: the fact that publicly held infor-
mation is a common good and should be exploited as much as possible to generate
additional knowledge and growth. The principles specify what such an idea entails in
practice: in a nutshell, opening data by default, fostering participation and inclusion,
and promoting cooperation.
3
See Open Knowledge International n.a.; see also Pomerantz and Peek 2016.
4
Kitchin 2014, p. 48.
5
See Gray and Darbishire 2011.
6
PSI is logically connected to, and yet distinct from, the notion of open data: see Carrara et al.
2016. The next subsection will elaborate on the similarities and the differences between the two
concepts.
7
Malamud 2007.
8
Chignard 2013.
14 L. Dalla Corte
The Sebastopol meeting’s call, expression of a broader trend that was increasingly
gaining consensus amongst the general population, was not ignored by the US
administration. In 2009, the White House issues a memorandum on Transparency and
Open Government,9 in which it endorsed the principles of transparency, participation,
and collaboration, directing “the Chief Technology Officer, in coordination with the
Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Administrator of
General Services, to coordinate the development by appropriate executive depart-
ments and agencies […] of recommendations for an Open Government Directive, to
be issued by the Director of OMB, that instructs executive departments and agencies
to take specific actions implementing the principles set forth”.10 The same year, in
May, the US launched its open data portal, Data.gov;11 in December, the White House
issued the Open Government Directive,12 through which it mandated precise dead-
lines and steps to be followed for the completion of the national open data program.13
Open data features prominently in the Digital Government Strategy issued by the
Obama administration in 2012, as well. On April 27, 2011, the US President issued
Executive Order 13571 (Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer
Service),14 in which the Federal CIO (Chief Information Officer) was tasked “with
developing a comprehensive Government-wide strategy to build a 21st century digital
Government that delivers better digital services to the American people”.15 Because
of that order,16 the US Open Data Strategy was released under the title “Digital
Government: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American
People”.17 The Strategy provides US agencies with a 12-month roadmap, whose path
is divided into milestones, and that results in the publication of several related
deliverables. The Strategy’s objective is threefold: enabling the access to high-quality
digital government information and services; ensure that the government’s digital
transformation is performed “in smart, secure and affordable ways”, and unlock the
utility of open government data to spur innovation, foster growth, and improve the
quality of US governmental services.18 It builds on four overarching principles, which
can be seen as integrating the ones deriving from the Open data conceptualization and
movement, and that have arguably had a role in shaping the open data milieu as
understood nowadays. The strategy is based on an “Information-Centric” approach
(principle 1), through which to shift “from managing “documents” to managing
discrete pieces of open data and content which can be tagged, shared, secured, mashed
9
Obama 2009.
10
Obama 2009.
11
Data.gov n.a.
12
Orszag 2009.
13
See the following subsection for an overview of the US Open Government Directive.
14
Obama 2011.
15
Obama 2012a.
16
See, however, also Obama 2012b.
17
Obama 2012b.
18
The White House 2012.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
number of soldiers, Kuropatkin’s army would have numbered
approximately one million!
And the people who thus shed their blood more freely than the
Christian Russians would be excusable if they deserted en masse,
because the Jews enjoy none of the privileges accorded to the
Russians, and they could not therefore be blamed if they refused to
look upon Muscovy as their fatherland. But, in spite of the injustice
done them by the Czar’s Government, they generously gave their
lives to the Czar. And the Czar’s agents in return egged on the
hooligans of all Southern and Western Russia to pillage, burn, and
destroy Jewish property, and to beat and kill Jewish men and
203
women.
These experiences and the apprehension of massacres on a
larger scale have impelled the Jews to form a great revolutionary
association for organised resistance to the organised forces of their
enemies. A secret society—already notorious as the Bund—arose in
Lithuania, whence it spread to Poland and other parts of the Russian
Empire. Its aims are to foster Jewish national feeling and to protect
Jewish interests. But the protection which this body could afford the
victims of deliberate persecution was necessarily limited. If it rescued
them from occasional slaughter, it could not defend them against
chronic starvation. Consequently, the exodus, especially from the
Province of Mohileff, continued: The emigrants were, for the most
part, Jewish young people of both sexes, who, not having any
means of existence, left the towns and villages. Some villages even
became quite deserted. In the town of Mohileff itself, where there are
no factories of any kind or industrial or commercial undertakings
except shops which are held by Jews, business was quite
204
suspended. Within the next five months no fewer than 75,160
205
Russian Jews arrived in New York alone.
How this readiness to quit hearth and home, in order to seek a
new life under unknown skies in the furthest corners of the earth,
carries us back across the ages to the flight of Israel from Egypt! To
the Russian Jews groaning in servitude the Czar’s Empire is a
foreign land; his religion a foreign religion. In leaving Russia they
leave a hotbed of idolatry as fierce, as cruel, as Godless as the
idolatry of Egypt, Babylon, Syria, or Rome. To them the Russian god
who can sanction such persecution is a veritable Moloch. He can
claim no kinship with Jehovah. They owe it to themselves to escape
from the house of bondage, and to their God to continue bearing
witness to His unity. They, therefore, like their remote ancestors,
seek freedom of worship by expatriation. Treated as aliens in their
native country, they renounce it with as little regret as if they had not
been born and bred in it. There are, of course, both in Poland and in
Russia proper Jews who would gladly conform in everything except
religion. Such Jews deplore the estrangement of the Jew from the
Gentile, and believe that the lot of the former can be improved only
by the removal of the legal restrictions which perpetuate that
estrangement. According to them, if the Jews were allowed to mingle
freely with the other inhabitants of the Empire, they would in time
lose all those characteristics which mark them off as a people apart,
and become patriotic subjects of the Czar. But the Russian
Government in its persecution of the race makes no invidious
distinctions between these “Assimilators” and their sterner brethren.
The Jew who ventures to advise assimilation alienates his friends
without conciliating his masters. By its indiscriminate severity the
Russian autocracy feeds the old spirit of dogged resistance, sullen
resentment, and inflexible arrogance.
It also feeds, as might have been expected, the old dream of
Redemption and national rehabilitation. The Russian Ghetto at the
present day is the citadel of Hebrew orthodoxy and the recruiting
ground for the Zionist movement of which we shall speak in the
sequel. It is natural that it should be. The Jew in the Empire of the
Czars finds little or no scope for development. As we have seen, he
is debarred from holding real property, from pursuing liberal
professions, from engaging in many trades. He is a stranger in the
land of his birth, an outcast among his fellow-countrymen. Chronic
contempt and oppression are only relieved by periodical massacre.
Forbidden to be a citizen, he cannot be a patriot. He has no life in
the present. He, therefore, lives in the future. He is an
uncompromising idealist. The same conditions which deprive him of
all inducement to national assimilation also encourage his religious
and social separatism. The intolerance of his Christian neighbours
reacts on his own bigotry. If politically he lives on hopes, religiously
he lives on traditions. Amidst all his calamities, the Jew of the
Russian Ghetto is sustained by the expectation that the real history
of his race is still to come. He believes that the ruins of the Temple
will one day prove the foundations of new greatness. While awaiting
the fulfilment of the ancient prophecies, he clings to the tribal
distinctions, to the ceremonial laws, and to all those rules of
omission and performance which tend to perpetuate his self-
isolation. In the West the Jews have, as patriotic citizens of various
states, succeeded, by generous concessions quite compatible with
true loyalty to their traditions, in the effort to reconcile the old Jewish
life with modern political conditions. In Russia the Jews are denied
the opportunity. But they still love the land. Therein lies the irony and
the hope.
Such is the lot of Israel in Russia. It is hardly better on the
western side of the Pruth—in that other European country which
within three days’ journey of London continues the Middle Ages.
CHAPTER XXII
IN ROUMANIA
In no part of Europe is mediaeval prejudice against the Hebrew race

more fiercely rampant than in Roumania; for in no other part of
Europe, save Russia, are mediaeval social conditions and modes of
thought and conduct so rife. There is hardly any middle class in
Roumania yet. In that country industries are unknown, commerce is
scarce and the mechanics are few. Theoretically a modern
constitutional state, in reality it is a country peopled by two extreme
castes: the small peasant proprietors or labourers, and the nobles.
The husbandman drudges in the open country and the nobleman
dissipates in the capital. In fact, though not in name, we find in the
Roumania of to-day Froissart’s England, less the splendour and the
servitude of feudalism. Out of a population of five and a half millions,
five millions are peasants, and these, deprived to a large extent of
the rights of citizenship and of the opportunities for self-
improvement, live in almost as abject misery and as crass
206
ignorance as they did five centuries ago, represented by only
thirty members in the Lower House of the national Parliament and by
none in the Senate, while the remaining eleven twelfths of the Lower
House and the whole of the Senate are elected by the aristocracy of
a quarter of a million, which also furnishes all the officials. The one
product of the nineteenth century that has found a sincere
appreciation in Roumania is Nationalism, and it is under this modern
cloak that mediaeval bigotry loves to parade its terrors on the banks
of the Danube.
In Moldavia, the northern portion of the kingdom, Jews are first
heard of in the fifteenth century, though they do not become
conspicuous until the eighteenth. It was in a village of this province
that was born, about 1700, Israel Baalshem, the founder of the
Hebrew sect of dissenters known, or rather not known, as the “New
Chassidim.” Baalshem’s mission, when denuded of those vulgar
accessories of the supernatural without which man seems incapable
of being lifted to higher things, was a noble one. In the century which
preceded his advent Judaism had degenerated into a school of
casuistry; simplicity was lost in a maze of sophistical subtlety,
conscience was stifled beneath a mountain of formalism, and faith
207
was drowned in the ocean of Rabbinical nonsense. In no part of
Europe was the decay more complete than in these regions. The
long-ringleted Rabbis of Poland had extended their lethal domination
over Moldavia, and with their solemn puerilities had perpetuated the
spiritual sterility of those districts. This, at all events, is the
impression made on the mind of a modern student, whose
rationalism may dull him to the latent spirituality of the Rabbis and
reveal to him perhaps all too clearly their sophistry. But, in any case,
sophistry can only appeal to a people which has reached an
advanced stage of intellectual senility. The Moldavian Jews were still
in their intellectual infancy. It was emotion and not logic that their
soul craved for. The Rabbis were mere priests, the Jews of Moldavia
needed a prophet. Israel Baalshem arrived in time to supply the
demand and to tear asunder the net of Talmudism.
An angel announced his birth and foretold to his parents that
their son would enlighten Israel. After a virtuous, if somewhat
eccentric life, devoted at first to prayer and lamentation in the savage
solitude of the Carpathian mountains, then to hysterical rapture and
to miracles in the haunts of men, Baalshem bequeathed his doctrine
and his enthusiasm to faithful disciples who carried the legacy over
Moldavia, Galicia, and the Russian “pale.” The principal dogma of
Baalshem’s teaching is the universality of God, His real and living
presence in every part of creation, pervading, inspiring, and vivifying
all. Every being, every thing, every thought, every action is a
manifestation or an image of Divine power and love. All things are
holy, or contain in them the germs of holiness. This knowledge is the
fruit of faith, not of learning. It is a revelation. The practical results of
this ethereal teaching are love, charity, and cheerful optimism. For
how can one presume to hate, despise, or condemn anything as evil,
foolish, unclean, or ugly, since it is the vehicle of Goodness, of
Wisdom, of Purity, and of Beauty? The true lover of the Creator must
also be a lover of His creatures. The end and aim of our life is union
with God—fusion with the Light of which all things are more or less
dim reflections. From this exposition of his doctrine it will be seen
that Israel Baalshem was a typical mystic. He belongs to the same
family of seers as the Neo-Platonists, as St. Teresa and St. John of
the Cross, as John Bunyan and George Fox, as the Mohammedan
Sufis, and many other inspired dissenters who, scattered though
they are over many countries, many centuries and many creeds,
have three cardinal characteristics in common: protest against
formalism, thirst for vision or revelation, and intense desire for
absorption in the One.
This Gospel of Love first preached “in the wild ravines of
Wallachia and the dreary steppes of the Ukraine” found many
listeners. The Rabbis—the upholders of book-taught wisdom—
denounced the doctrine of direct inspiration. The “Pious” retaliated
with denunciations of the Rabbis. The contest resulted in
excommunication, in cremation of books and in persecution, which
only helped to spread the new teaching further. However, after the
death of the founder and the first apostles, there arose internal
dissensions which led to a subdivision of the “Pious” into sects.
Degeneration, hypocrisy, and corruption followed disintegration, love
was forgotten in the pursuit of sectarian and selfish ambitions, and
to-day the Chassidim, though numbering in Roumania, Poland, and
South-western Russia about half a million of adherents, are scorned
by the orthodox as a mob of fanatics, redeemed by genuine faith, but
208
deluded and exploited by leaders who are no longer saints.
The Jews of Moldavia, already numerous in the time of Israel
Baalshem, received new additions towards the end of the eighteenth
century. Then a large number of Jewish refugees entered the
country from Austria, Poland, and Russia, so that at the beginning of
the nineteenth century they are found scattered all over the province
as village inn-keepers and resident traders, or as itinerant merchants
visiting the rural districts and buying or advancing money upon the
crops. In the big towns also they established important colonies—as
for example in Jassy, where they form more than one third of the
population, and in Galatz, where they occupy whole streets with their
shops. In all these centres they live by trade or as craftsmen—
tinsmiths, glaziers, shoemakers, hatters, tailors, butchers, bakers
and the like. The southern province of Wallachia is studded with
smaller colonies both of Spanish and of Polish Jews, while there are
families, settled chiefly in Bucharest, whose ancestors have been in
the country from time immemorial. Like their brethren of Moldavia the
Wallachian Jews also are engaged in commerce, handicrafts, and
finance, thus forming that industrious and intelligent middle class
which the Christian population lacks. These Jews for ages lived on
terms of comparative peace with their neighbours; the rich among
them educating their children at the schools frequented by the
children of the native nobility. But these friendly relations were not
destined to endure.
As in many other lands, so in Roumania the religion, the
success, and the aloofness of the Jew raised a host of enemies
against him among the Christians. Here, as elsewhere, the Jews
were often accused of child-murder in the eighteenth century. But,
while under Turkish domination, the Christians were obliged to
suppress an animosity which they had no power of satisfying. It is
not till the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Russia’s
interference loosened the Sultan’s grasp on the Danubian provinces
and the Nationalist spirit added fuel to the older hatred, that the first
symptoms of anti-Judaism appear in Moldavia. In 1804 Prince
Mourousi issued a decree forbidding the Jews to hold land, except
that attached to inns. The process of restriction, once commenced,
advanced with steady and rapid strides, accompanied by periodical
assaults on the unpopular race. The fact that the Jews had gathered
the threads of commerce in their own hands was alleged as a reason
for crushing them. But for this fact no one could be held responsible,
unless it were the Roumanians themselves. An essentially
agricultural people, the native Christians despise trade, which
consequently has always been left to the Jews in Moldavia, just as in
Wallachia it is largely monopolised by Greeks and Armenians. In
1840 the opening of the Black Sea to international commerce drew
many more Jews to the country, and the ill-feeling against them grew
in proportion to the increase in their numbers. In 1867 the
Roumanian politician, Bratiano, exploited the widespread prejudice
for electioneering purposes, and the active persecution of Israel
entered upon its acutest stage. Religious fanaticism in some
measure, and racial rivalry in a greater, lent colour to a hostility
which arose mainly from economic jealousy. Usury, that plausible
phantom of a long-exploded fallacy, was brought forward as an
additional excuse for intolerance.
Analogous causes led to analogous conditions in Roumania’s
western neighbour, Servia. Under Ottoman rule the lot of the Jew in
that country differed little from that of his Christian fellow-slave. The
Mohammedan theocracy recognises no rights except those of the
true believers. Both Jews and Christians, inasmuch as they refuse to
accept the latest addition to the revealed Word of God, are outside
the pale of citizenship. But, on the whole, the Jews, thanks to their
pacific disposition and lack of political aspirations, as well as to the
closer resemblance between the Mosaic and the Mohammedan
forms of worship, suffered less than the Christian rayahs from
Turkish oppression. The emancipation of the province, while
rescuing the Christian from ignominy, condemned the Jew to an
even worse fate. Under the Turk the Jew was at least allowed the
congenial privilege of buying and selling, whereas under the
Christian even that consolation was denied to him. In Servia, by a
curious dispensation of constitutional legislation, the very opposite to
the one prevailing amongst us before 1858, the Jews, while
forbidden the most elementary rights of citizenship, were
theoretically eligible to the highest offices in the state. According to
Servian law, a Jew could be a Prime Minister, but not a grocer. He
might make laws for others, but could not appeal to them for his own
protection. This Gilbertian state of things had attracted the attention
of the friends of Israel abroad, and for many years successive
representatives of Great Britain and of other Western Powers at
Belgrade, spurred by the Jewish charitable associations, had
endeavoured to induce the Servians to grant to the Jews the
necessaries, as well as the luxuries, of existence. In 1875 the
Servians, no longer able to resist the pressure of Europe, proceeded
to show their liberality by electing a Jew to the Skuptchina. But the
European Powers declined to be deluded by this clever display of
legerdemain. Our own Foreign Office, besides steps taken directly at
Belgrade, made an effort to enlist Prince Bismarck’s and Prince
Gortchakoff’s powerful influence on behalf of the Servian Israelites.
The effort was, of course, unsuccessful. The German Chancellor
cared nothing for the Jews, and his Russian colleague less than
209
nothing.
Meanwhile similar remonstrances were made, and similar results
obtained, at Bucharest, until the Congress of Berlin in 1878 afforded
the champions of the Jews and justice an opportunity of forcing upon
the Roumanians the counsels of toleration to which they had hitherto
210
refused to listen. Among these champions none was more
staunch than Lord Beaconsfield. It was the one subject on which the
Commander of the Tories out-whigged the most advanced of Whigs.
Even Gladstone in the most radical period of his career pronounced
Disraeli on the Jewish Question “much more than rational, he was
211
fanatical.” Though baptized at the age of twelve, Disraeli
remained a genuine and loyal son of Israel. While as a British
statesman of a certain school he opposed Gladstone’s campaign on
behalf of the Eastern Christians in 1876, as a Jew he was working
heart and soul on behalf of the Eastern Jews. He also was
consistent. By the aid of M. Waddington, the French Delegate at the
Congress of Berlin, and his own diplomatic adroitness, Disraeli
succeeded in gaining over Prince Bismarck and, through him, in
overcoming the good Emperor William’s conscientious scruples
about the propriety of treating Eastern Jews as if they were
Christians. And so it came to pass that by Art. 44 of the Treaty of
Berlin the recognition of Roumanian Independence was made
conditional upon the abolition of all religious disabilities in the
Danubian principalities.
What followed might have supplied valuable material to
Aristophanes. To the stipulation of the Treaty the Roumanians
returned the astounding answer that “there was no such thing as a
Roumanian Jew.” This calm denial of the existence of more than a
quarter of a million of human beings failed to satisfy the signatories
to the Treaty. Thereupon the Roumanians lifted up their voices and,
with remarkable lack of sense of the ludicrous, protested against the
“iniquity” of being forced to admit the Jews to the rights of
Roumanian citizenship, solemnly declaring that the Russian or even
the Turkish yoke was preferable to this grievous condition. The chief
reasons brought forward by Roumanian politicians in justification of
their attitude in 1878, and since that date re-echoed even in this
country by apologists of Roumanian bigotry, were based upon
grounds of national sentimentality. It was urged that it is contrary to
Roumanian traditions to admit to political equality any one who is not
of pure Roumanian blood; that the preservation of the purity of their
race has ever been the chief concern of the Roumanians; and that
the accident of being born on Roumanian soil does not constitute a
title to the status of Roumanian citizenship.
Now, apart from the facts that the ancestors of many Roumanian
Jews have been in the country for ages, and that many of their
descendants have fought gallantly for Roumania’s freedom, the
“purity of race,” on which Roumanian patriots are so fond of dwelling,
is as pure a myth as any to be found in the collection of legends that
still passes for history in the Balkan Peninsula. In the first place, the
very origin of the Roumanians is surrounded by a denser cloud of
mist than that which usually surrounds the origin of nations. That
their language is akin to Latin is no more certain proof of the Roman
descent which they claim than is the parallel kinship of Spanish,
Portuguese, and French to the tongue of ancient Rome a proof of
the Latin origin of the modern Spaniards, Portuguese, and
Frenchmen. But, even granting that Rome is, to use the phrase of a
recent Roumanian Minister, “le berceau de leur race,” the original
nucleus of Roman colonists has undergone in the course of ages
such matrimonial vicissitudes as must have caused the blood to lose
a considerable portion of its primitive “purity.” The Roman settlers
found the country already peopled by an alien race. Ovid, banished
by Augustus to Tomi on the Black Sea—near the modern town of
Kustendje—describes the district as one inhabited by savages. All
his letters from the country during his ten years’ exile are one long
lament over his hard fate. He dwells again and again
8–17 a.d.
on the bitterness of the lot which has cast him among
people who do not understand Latin, he expresses the fear that he
will gradually forget his own tongue, and his whole correspondence
is an alternate wail on the horrors of barbarous warfare and the
hardships of barbarous life.
Towards the end of the first century Trajan conquered Dacia, the
modern Wallachia, and, in pursuance of the old Roman policy, the
conquerors endeavoured to confirm their hold upon the country by
the settlement of Latin colonists and by the introduction of the Latin
language. The Latinisation of Dacia was, however,
250 a.d.
interrupted by the invasion of the Goths, a warlike
horde lured by the prospect of reaping where the peaceful peasantry
of Dacia had sown under the protection of the Roman eagles. They
met with no opposition in the newly and imperfectly settled province;
and this absence of opposition is the best proof of the precarious
nature of the Roman rule and of the paucity of the Roman settlers.
Twenty years later the Emperor Aurelian, convinced of the
impossibility of holding the country, relinquished it to the Goths and
Vandals. Upon the evacuation of Dacia most of the Roman subjects
crossed the Danube and settled in the region stretching from the
river’s southern bank, and then was formed the new Dacia which
corresponds to modern Bulgaria. The old country of the same name
on the northern bank of the Danube retained, it is true, a great
number of its inhabitants, but the mere fact of their consenting to
serve a Gothic master, when the option to remain under Roman rule
was open to them, shows how feeble the Roman element must have
been among them. This population was gradually blended with the
dominant Gothic tribe, and there was formed an independent state
inhabited by a mixed race which, characteristically enough, claimed
the renown of a Scandinavian origin, or descent from the old
indigenous “savage Getae” whom Ovid has immortalised in his
Pontic Epistles. Interest promoted peaceful relations, and even
alliance, with the Roman Empire, and thus the Roman language
continued to be heard on the northern bank of the Danube.
Yet another hundred years have passed by, and a new horde of
barbarians, even more fierce and monstrous, overthrew the power of
the Goths, who in abject terror implored the Emperor Valens to
permit them to cross the river and settle in Thrace.
375 a.d.
Valens, hoping to ensure the stability of his Empire by
enlisting the services of new and hardy subjects, granted the request
of the Goths, though not without hesitation and misgivings. The
barbarians crossed the Danube to find themselves compelled to part
with their arms and their children. This harsh demand, justified
though it may have been as a precautionary measure, excited the
indignation of the immigrants, who tried to force a passage in
defiance of the Roman legions. The latter met violence with violence,
until an Imperial order reached them to transport the new-comers
across the river. The passage was stormy, and many were drowned,
but there survived a number sufficient to rout the Imperial troops and
to turn the Eastern Empire into a field of massacre, rapine, and
212
ruin.
Such are the titles upon which the modern Roumanians have
always based their claims to a Roman pedigree. First, it is to be
observed that the term Roumanian includes not only the inhabitants
of Wallachia, the ancient Dacia, occupied for a while by the Roman
legions, but also the inhabitants of Moldavia, over whom the Roman
never bore sway. Secondly, even in Dacia, how many of the original
Romans were there left after the double evacuation and conquest of
the province? Nor did matters improve after the fourth century.
Roumania is the highway over which, during the last fifteen hundred
years, wave after wave of Goth, Hun, Avar, Slav, and Bulgar has
poured on its southward course; and it must be a truly extraordinary
flood that leaves no alluvial deposit behind it. If to these inundations
be added the Greek element which, though never very numerous,
exercised a powerful influence over the country during the Ottoman
domination, it would need exceptionally robust faith to uphold the
purity doctrine.
In fact, the quantity of foreign blood in Roumania is amply
attested by the features of the modern Roumanian peasant and by
the Roumanian language itself. This language, besides a large
admixture of Slavonic words and idioms which the professors of
Bucharest have been earnestly endeavouring to eliminate, is
phonetically very closely related to the Slavonic dialects of the
neighbourhood, and until two generations ago was actually written in
Slavonic characters. It was about 1848—the annus mirabilis of
Continental Nationalism—that the Latin alphabet was introduced,
but, despite the strenuous exertions of patriotic pedants, even this
alphabet had to be modified so as to meet the phonetic requirements
213
of non-Latin throats, and the feat has been accomplished,
clumsily enough, by a profusion of accents and other accessories
more or less picturesque and bewildering. The very family names of
the Roumanians, when not artificially brought into harmony with
modern academic sentiment, reveal a non-Latin origin. Those of the
peasantry are frequently Slavonic, while those of the nobility are not
infrequently Greek. Yet the purists banished the Slavonic element
from the dictionary of the Roumanian language compiled under the
auspices of the Roumanian Academy by two native Latinists. Take,
again, Roumanian folk-lore. Any one who has given the subject even
superficial attention can see at a glance the deep impress of
Slavonic thought and custom in the legends and superstitions of the
Roumanian peasantry. Yet, such are the sublime effects of racial
fanaticism, when a few years ago a competition was instituted at
Bucharest for the best comparative study of the national folk-lore, the
work on which the prize was bestowed did not contain a single
allusion to the folk-lore of the adjacent Slavonic countries.
Of course, these facts, ignored though they are by the
Roumanians and their advocates, do not prevent a Roumanian from
being a Roumanian, however much they may prevent him from
being a Roman; nay, one would be loth to grudge to natives of
Moldo-Wallachia the pleasure of contemplating a long line of noble
Latin ancestors, imaginary though it be, did they not make this
harmless gratification of their vanity an excuse for depriving other
natives of Moldo-Wallachia of the very means of existence.
Moreover, one may not unreasonably ask, in what way would the
enfranchisement of the Jews impair the “purity” of the Roumanian
race? The Jews in other lands are often charged, and not unjustly,
with aversion from intermarriage with the Gentiles. Indeed, the
Roumanians themselves seem to feel the force of this objection, for
they attempt to parry it by the argument that, should the Jews be
admitted to the deliberations of the Roumanian Parliament, they
would form a compact party of obstructionists—why, does not
appear. A more probable result of such an admittance has recently
been suggested by one of those very Jews who, although a
Roumanian for many generations, although educated in Roumania’s
schools and imbued with Roumanian traditions, has been compelled
to leave his country, because that country—“the only country I knew
and, God knows, loved with heart and soul, reckoned me a
‘foreigner’ and as such deprived me of the chance of earning a
livelihood.” This exile declares: “Were the treaty of Berlin lived up to,
and the Jews given emancipation, they, being all literate and city-
dwellers, would, according to the provisions of the electoral law,
belong to either the first or the second electoral college, and would
therefore either share the privileges of the present privileged class,
whose number exactly equals that of the resident Jews, and share
its power, or would compel that privileged class to give up its
privileges and change the laws so as to give the great mass of
214
people a voice in the running of their public affairs.”
When the dialecticians of Bucharest realised that their ingenuity
produced no impression upon the blunt minds of Western statesmen,
they changed their tactics. A commission of deputies was appointed
to investigate and report on the question of Jewish disabilities. The
commissioners’ report began with the subtle distinction between
“Roumanian Jews” and “native Jews,” declaring that only the latter
variety was in existence, and adding that these Jews, though born in
the country, were really aliens. As such, they might obtain
naturalisation, if they applied for it individually; but the boon could
only be granted by a special Act, passed for each particular case.
This revision was effected by the simple alteration of Art. 7 of the
Roumanian Constitution, which had hitherto restricted the right of
naturalisation to “foreigners of Christian denominations,” into one
embracing all “foreigners” alike, without distinction of creed, who had
lived for ten years in the country.
By this generous concession the Roumanians claimed, and their
apologists have innocently endorsed the claim, that they did as much
as could fairly be expected from them. The illusory and disingenuous
nature of the concession was patent to all, and the friends of the
Jews were quick and emphatic in pointing it out to the Western
Cabinets. But the Western Cabinets had by this time begun to think
that they had done enough for Israel. Some of the Powers, like
Germany, were anxious to conciliate Roumania in order to obtain a
railway concession. Others, like England, were equally anxious to
secure commercial advantages, while they one and all were cordially
tired of the tedious and unremunerative crusade on behalf of justice.
Lord Salisbury, in authorising the British representative
1880
to announce to the Bucharest Government the glad
news that they could henceforth regard their country as a sovereign
state, timidly expressed a hope, on behalf of England and France,
that, in return for the Powers’ forbearance, Roumania, by a liberal
application of the revised article of the Constitution, would bring
matters “into exact conformity with the spirit of the Treaty of Berlin.”
Thus the East once more succeeded in the time-honoured method of
conquering by sheer inertia, and by dividing the Western Powers
through their separate interests; and the Jews were left to float or
founder according to the decrees of Fate. They did not float.
The Roumanians, through the alteration in the letter of their
Constitution, by which the Jews were no longer excluded from the
franchise as non-Christians but as non-Roumanians, had nominally
placed them on a par with other aliens—Englishmen, Frenchmen,
Germans, and Italians—and, having done this, they professed
intense astonishment that the Jews, alone among foreigners,
continued to clamour for civil and political rights. Yet the reason of
their obstinacy is not far to seek. The subjects of England, France,
Germany, and Italy are quite content with their status, for they would
gain nothing by enrolling themselves as Roumanian citizens. Their
nationality affords them ample protection against injustice, while the
wretched Jews, whose cause France and England had pleaded in
vain, if they are not Roumanian citizens, are citizens of no city. They
have no Government to which they might appeal in an hour of need.
Furthermore, it was feared from the very first that the cumbrous
machinery of individual naturalisation would be put in motion as
rarely as possible, and experience has more than confirmed those
fears. During the twenty-four years which elapsed between the
Treaty of Berlin and 1902, very few live Jews were granted the
franchise. For the posthumous naturalisation of the six hundred who
had fallen in battle fighting for the freedom of Roumania, and that of
two hundred more, admitted at the same time, was an exceptional
act of liberality which has created no precedent. From 1878 to 1888,
out of 4000 applications only thirty were granted, and since that date
215
fifty more, bringing up the whole number to a grand total of eighty.
During the same period the disabilities, under which the hapless
race was suffered to remain labouring, have grown almost incredible
in their severity, and have eclipsed the grievances which the Treaty
of Berlin so unsuccessfully attempted to remove. Those grievances
already amounted to oppression. The Jews were obliged to serve in
the army as their Christian fellow-countrymen, and to pay the same
taxes; and yet, though burdened with the same duties, they were
denied equal rights. They were made to assist in the defence of a
country which they were forbidden to call their own, and to contribute
to the expenditure of a Government whose actions they had no voice
in controlling. But, at all events, they were allowed the privilege of
earning a livelihood. Since that time all the weight of Roumanian
legislation and popular fanaticism has been brought to bear upon
one object—the extinction of the Jewish race in the kingdom.
As an example of this systematic persecution may be mentioned
the law of 1885, excluding the Jews from the trade in liquor, which
had been open to them since 1849. This arbitrary act was justified by
the argument that the Jews were fostering the vice of intoxication
among the peasants. But the law has not lessened the consumption
of liquor by a single drop. The Roumanian peasant still drinks as
much as he drank before. Nor does the fact that his drink now comes
from a Christian instead of a Hebrew source seem to produce any
difference in its effects. The truth is that the Roumanian peasant is
one of the most thirsty in the world, occupying as he does the third
place in the scale of universal bibulosity. The brandy bottle is his
companion in joy, and ever present comforter in sorrow. At
weddings, as at funerals, brandy is an honoured guest. On holidays
it enhances the merriment, and on week-days it relieves the
monotony of work. To the brandy bottle, as to an infallible counsellor,
the Roumanian peasant still appeals at times of taxation or any other
domestic calamity.
Among such calamities the greatest and most frequent is famine;
for, though Roumania is, next to Russia, the principal grain-exporting
country in Europe, the Roumanian agriculturist, like his Russian
neighbour, and for similar reasons, is one of the most favourite
victims of hunger. “It sometimes happens,” says the Queen of
Roumania, “that in one year the soil yields enormously, and in the
succeeding year, owing to a failure of the crops, we have famine.... It
is difficult for any but those who have seen it for themselves to
imagine what a poor harvest means in a purely agricultural state. It is
horrible. Hunger in its most appalling aspect stalks everywhere....
Picture fields that look like empty threshing-floors; starving cattle,
their bones starting through their flesh, browsing on the barren
ground, and falling dead from sheer exhaustion; men, women and
children without so much as a handful of meal left to provide their
meagre diet of ‘mamaliga.’” At such times “the taverns are far too
216
much frequented; it is one way of cheating an empty stomach.”
It is, of course, undeniable, and the fact is attested by all those
who have studied the question of temperance reform in any part of
the world, that the supply tends to foster the demand. But no one
has ever asserted that it creates it. Nor has it been demonstrated
that temperance is promoted by the exclusion of one portion of the
population from a trade which is open to all others.
Other laws have been passed, forbidding the Jew to lend money
to the Christian, and the Christian to be ruined by the Jew. The futility
of such enactments, everywhere manifest, is nowhere more clearly
proved than in Roumania. The boyards, impoverished by the
extravagance which characterises the newly-emancipated and semi-
civilised nobleman, still go to the money-lender. But the main object
is achieved—to represent the Jew as corrupting the wealthy, and as
ruining the poor. It would perhaps have been wiser on the part of
Roumanian legislators to try to reform their people instead of
persecuting those who simply minister to its vices and exploit its
follies. Eradicate the demand, and the supply will cease of its own
accord, is a remedy not yet understood at Bucharest. Still primitive in
their mental attitude, Roumanian politicians act on the principle
ridiculed by the Eastern proverb: They beat the saddle when the
beast is to blame.
How far the Roumanian’s misfortunes are to be traced to the Jew
can be shown from the fact, established by statistics, that the
number of Jews in the Balkan States, though the case is far different
in other parts of the world, is in inverse ratio to the advanced
condition of the general population. In Servia the Jews are barely
counted by the hundred (00.20), and so they are in Greece (00.34).
In the latter country the race would be even more scarce, were it not
that many shrewd and enterprising Greeks are tempted to emigrate
to foreign countries. In Bulgaria also the Jews form an insignificant
217
minority (00.76). In the kingdom of Greece they enjoy perfect
freedom of worship and all the rights and privileges of Hellenic
citizens. In the Principality of Bulgaria also they are treated on equal
terms with the Christians. Why is it that in Roumania only they figure
in their hundreds of thousands and are oppressed? The answer is
obvious. The Jews have become numerous in Roumania, where the
degraded condition of the people offers the line of least resistance;
and the rulers of those countries fearing lest, if they do not protect
their own compatriots from the competition of a superior race, the
wealth and influence of the latter might increase to a dangerous
extent, harass and handicap them by prohibitive legislation.
However, the Jew’s fecundity seems to be proof against any
degree of persecution. In spite of all checks, the Jews in Roumania,
as their forefathers in Egypt, “increased abundantly and multiplied,
and the land was filled with them.” The Roumanian legislators were,
therefore, bound, in consistency with their own policy, “to deal wisely
with them.” And now ensued a literal repetition of the first chapter of
the Book of Exodus. King Charles appears to be actuated by the
same fears as those which dictated the policy of Pharaoh: “lest they
multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war,
they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get
them up out of the land.” The experience of thousands of years has
taught no lesson to Roumanian statesmen, and Jewish disabilities
have kept pace with the increase of the victims. At the present
moment the Jews are excluded not only from the public service but
also from the learned professions. They are allowed neither to own
land nor even to till it in the capacity of hired labourers. Mere
residence in a country district is a punishable offence, and when the
Jew, driven from the open country, takes refuge in a city, most
avenues to an honest living are studiously closed to him. He is
permitted to engage in none but the lowest trades and handicrafts.
Nay, even as journeymen artisans the Jews are not allowed to
exceed the proportion of one to two Christians. Education is
altogether forbidden to them. In addition to these and like
restrictions, which doom Israel to perpetual penury and ignorance,
these unfortunate Roumanians who cannot boast a “Latin” pedigree
are treated by their “Roman” fellow-countrymen as pariahs. They are
insulted and baited by high and low, without the slightest means of
redress; their social, as well as their political, status being literally
more degraded than that of the gipsy; and that will convey a
sufficiently clear idea to those who know the feelings of loathing and
horror which that unfortunate outcast inspires in the Roumanian
peasant. In one word, the Roumanian Jews can only be described
as bondsmen in their native land.
In the Middle Ages the Synagogue, as well as the Church,
indulged in various gruesome performances calculated to strike
terror into the hearts of sinners. One of the varieties of the ban,
book, and candle rite was also adopted by the Law Courts as a
means of extracting evidence from unwilling witnesses. The Austrian
newspapers, in the summer of 1902, published detailed accounts of
a judicial torture of the kind, known as “Sacramentum more Judaico,”
revived by the modern Roumanians in cases where Jews are
engaged in litigation with Christians. Without the least regard for his
religious susceptibilities, the Roumanian Jew is obliged to go through
all the ritual solemnity of a mock burial: his nails are cut, he is wound
up in a shroud, placed into a coffin and then laid out, corpse-like, in
the synagogue. The Rabbi, under the eyes of a congregation of
revolted co-religionists and scornful unbelievers, pronounces an
awful, comprehensive and minute malediction upon the Jewish
plaintiff and his progeny, should he not speak the truth. The corpse
repeats the imprecations after the Rabbi; for if he declines to curse
218
himself and his family he loses his case.
At length, worn out by persecution and having abandoned all
hope of succour, the Jews of Roumania began to emigrate in
considerable numbers. In the year 1900 there was a great exodus;
but the stream was temporarily stemmed by the accession to power
of M. Carp, from whose well-known liberality the would-be exiles
anticipated a mitigation of their sufferings. They were disappointed.
M. Carp’s cabinet was short-lived, and its successor, instead of
relieving rather aggravated the sorrows of Israel. Emigration was
resumed and continued on an ever-increasing scale. The Jews now
began to leave the country by tens of thousands, on their way to
England and America, assisted thereto by wealthy co-religionists
219
abroad.
The outpouring of this crowd of needy refugees into Austria was
not calculated to please the inhabitants of that empire. Measures
were taken to prevent any of them from seeking a permanent home
in the dominions of the Hapsburgs, and the police were charged,
gently but firmly, to speed the unwelcome guests on their journey.
When the funds, generously contributed for the purpose, fell short of
the requirements of the travellers, the Austrian authorities hastened
to send them back, and the Austrian newspapers began to denounce
the Government through whose tyranny these destitute Israelites
were compelled to leave their native country. This protest elicited
from the Roumanian Government one of its customary démentis.
Those who had not hesitated to deny the very existence of
“Roumanian Jews” could have no difficulty in declaring that “There is
absolutely no foundation for the malicious statement published by
some foreign papers regarding a wholesale emigration of the Jews
from Roumania.” The statement was based “on a perversion of the
new Roumanian Labour Law,” and the Roumanian Government
deprecated the publication of such articles, “as they might call forth,

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