Marcel Mitrasca, a scholar of diplomatic history, is fluent in Japanese, Romanian, French and English. Currently he is a visiting scholar at the Aoyama Gakuin University of Tokyo, Japan. He began his work on this topic while at Babes-Bolyai University in Romania. This is his first book-length work in English.

Since Romania entered the EU, the murky territorial questions on her northeastern border have started to receive more attention. What are Moldova, Bassarabia, and Transnistria; and how did they wind up suspended between Romania...

Since Romania entered the EU, the murky territorial questions on her northeastern border have started to receive more attention. What are Moldova, Bassarabia, and Transnistria; and how did they wind up suspended between Romania and Russia?

With President Wilson's famous 14 points, after the First World War, the nationality principle was first upheld as the basis for the creation of new states and for the recombining portions of existing states. How did the interpretation of the principle change in the ensuing years; how consistently was it applied; and in whose interests?

This book, built on extraordinary research using primary resources in Japanese, French, Romanian and other languages, analyses the problem of the Bessarabian Treaty and offers a glimpse of Romanian foreign policy in the 1920s. Under the Treaty, the de facto unification of Bessarabia with Romania was officially recognized - a great success for Romania. Why, then, did that territory end up under Soviet control (in the "Republic of Moldavia")?

Marcel Mitrasca has sifted through unpublished documents from the national archives of Japan  Romania, Great Britain, France and Italy, and presents excerpts to back up his analysis of diplomatic maneuvering between the World Wars. What could Romania's territorial refinements have mattered to Japan? What was Italy s interest? And why was the United States the only Great power to steadfastly refuse to acknowledge Bessarabia's union with Romania? Mitrasca pieces together the evidence, analyzing the overt and covert negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference and in embassies around the world, and traces the evolving situation that in the end produced a result quite different from what was apparently intended in 1920.

This is the strange history that leads to today, where some in Russia seek to persuade the world that Moldova is a natural part of the Slavic family. The language is nearly the same as Romanian, a Romance language with some Slavic admixture, and if history did not start in the 20th century, it is clear that Moldova has little to do with Russia.