Romania, the Little Entente and the Struggle for Europe with Owen Grey (Bloomsbury, 2026)

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Welcome to the New Books Network.

Roland Clark (0:50)

Hello and welcome to the New Books Network. My name is Roland Clark and I'm here today talking to Owen Grey about his latest book, Romania, The Little Entente, and the Struggle for Europe. Owen's a specialist in Central and Eastern European history, with a current research focus on Romanian nationalism, statecraft, and international relations. He also has over 15 years of experience in government, European politics, and international diplomacy.

Owen, welcome to the program.

Owen Grey (1:19)

Thank you very much for having me. Good to be here.

Roland Clark (1:21)

Owen, this is a book that focuses on international alliance that a lot of people probably don't know much about. What was the Little Entente?

Owen Grey (1:30)

Absolutely. The Little Entente was pretty much an alliance formed by three comparatively small states in Eastern Europe, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia after the First World War. At its heart, it wanted to protect the gains that it had acquired after the peace settlements, so the Treaty of Trianon, which was the subject of much contention, ended up with Hungary losing about four-fifths of its territory, far outweighing the losses territorially of Germany. But there was a real sense that that peace was fragile and could be overturned at any moment.

You've got to remember that these states are in a part of Europe that was watching on as Russia descended into revolution and the Bolsheviks were about to emerge victorious in a civil war. There was a real sense as to whether that security architecture, the Entente, the big Entente would hold. Really, it was an effort by those three states to really dig in, preserve their gains and make sure that Hungary didn't emerge to avenge what it had lost.

Roland Clark (2:48)

The book focuses really specifically on Romania's involvement in the Little Entente. What sort of situation did Romania find itself in internationally at the end of the First World War?

What sorts of things was Romania hoping to get out of forming an alliance with its neighbors apart from just, we scared of the Hungarians?

Owen Grey (3:08)

Sure. I think the first thing to remember is that these nation states newly created or augmented in Central Eastern Europe. Most of them had emerged from the defeated empires, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. They didn't share the same interests. In fact, they were very suspicious of one another.

We all can recall in reading history and looking at the extent of the bloodshed and struggle in areas like Balkans and Eastern Europe as people struggled for sovereignty and independence. For Romania, it occupied quite a unique position. It was already an Asian state, an independent sovereign state when it entered the First World War. It was augmented by Transylvania, the Banat and Bukravina from Austria-Hungary, also Bessarabia from Russia, and the southern Debrugge it had secured from Bulgaria in the Second Balkan War.

What that meant was that Romania was effectively facing three different foes in post-First World War Europe, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Russia. Czechoslovakia was mostly preoccupied with Germany and Austria-Hungary. Yugoslavia, while it kind of overlapped with Romania in terms of its suspicions of Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary, also had to contend with Italy.

So these interests within the Alliance were quite an array. They overlapped to some extent, but not all. The book very much focuses on that friction that emerges in the interwar years. At the core, Romania wanted an alliance that would protect it on all sides. It didn't get it. It got the Little Entente, which protected it against Austria-Hungary. It got a bilateral treaty as part of that with Yugoslavia that protected it against Bulgaria. But there is no protection against Russia. It proved to be a source of disagreement throughout the 1920s and 1930s between the three states.

Roland Clark (5:27)

So, yeah, it's in a particularly difficult position where everyone hates you.

Owen Grey (5:33)

Absolutely.

Roland Clark (5:34)

The man who ultimately brought Romania into the Little Entente was Tache Ionescu. He's a foreign minister in Britianos National Liberal Government.