Early life Born to a political family in
Tecuci, he was the nephew of
Alexandru Bădărău, twice a minister in
Conservative cabinets during the early 1900s, and a descendant of the
Moldavian
boyar known as ; his grandfather was strong unionist, a supporter of the Union of Moldova with Wallachia, while his father was a member of the
Socialist Party. The Manoilescus moved to
Iași when Mihail was a child. Having been the recipient of the
Gazeta Matematică prize in 1910, he went on to study at the "
Școala de Poduri și Șosele" (the School of Bridges and Roads) in
Bucharest, completing his training as a
valedictorian in 1915. Manoilescu was subsequently assigned to the Ministry of Public Works, and later moved to an artillery regiment in
Roman. Upon Romania's entry into
World War I, he was assigned to the Directorate of Ammunitions (led by
Tancred Constantinescu), and designed an original type of 210
mm howitzer, which, after southern Romania was invaded by the
Central Powers (
see Romanian Campaign), was produced in . After the conflict, in 1919, he had a minor role in the
National Liberal Party (PNL) governments, assisting General Constantinescu as Head of the Industrial Recovery Directorate and later as General Director of Industry. He was responsible for measures such as organizing the Industrial Exhibition, carrying out industrial statistics, and unifying legislation related to the industry. he met the
fascist dictator
Benito Mussolini and became his admirer (calling the
Fascist regime "a truly constructive political revolution, one that can only compare itself with the
great French revolution in scale and novelty"). Subsequently, he was active in collaboration with the ''
Comitati d'azione per l'universalità di Roma'' and other Italian-led projects of international cooperation.
1927 trial He was then an advocate of the crowning of
Carol Caraiman as
King of Romania (in the place of his underage son
Mihai). In the autumn of 1927, while distributing Carol's appeals to the leaders of various political parties and carrying his letter to
Queen Marie, he was arrested (
martial law was proclaimed by the
Ion I. C. Brătianu government in the incident's wake). Manoilescu, who benefited from Averescu's vocal support, was
acquitted when tried by a court subordinated to the Council of War in late November. His own testimony was indicated by
Time as arguing that Carol was alarmed by an alleged growth in
republicanism and only wished to be part of the
Regency. He also stated: "The Prince is too loyal and decent to think of dethroning his own son." While accusing the executive of having previously attempted to purchase his silence, Manoilescu stressed his belief that
King Ferdinand had, just before his death, asked Brătianu for Carol to be allowed to return. The acquittal came as a shock, given rumors that Premier Brătianu had instructed the court to find Manoilescu guilty. In an unusual incident during the first day of trial, news correspondents from abroad were told that international phone connections had been severed—they resorted to crossing the
Danube into
Bulgaria at
Giurgiu, using phones there to contact their employers, and repeated the trip several times over the following days. as well as under
Nicolae Iorga (1931-1932). He was elected to the
Assembly of Deputies for the PNȚ in 1930, representing
Caraș County. In his memoirs, Manoilescu claimed that, at the time, he had played a hand in the release of
Mihai Gheorghiu Bujor (imprisoned since 1918, due to his
Bolshevik activism and designs for a
communist revolution); Manoilescu authored a series of articles in his support, and allegedly intervened alongside King Carol The incident contributed to PNŢ inner-conflict that caused Manoilescu to leave the grouping. Between 1932 and 1937, he was assigned a seat in the
Senate, representing the
Romanian Chamber of Commerce. the topic blended with his support for
authoritarianism and the
one-party system, as Manoilescu rejected
democracy (which, in his view, encouraged the majority-forming peasantry to decide on matters that did not concern it).
The role and destiny... criticized the course of Romanian social development: "[...] an oversized bourgeoisie which mimicks the
boyars of yesteryear and has an
over-bourgeois way of living, oversized in comparison with its means, creates a certain social instability and features a high percentage of individual failures.That is why
the Romanian bourgeoisie is not in fact a bourgeoisie in one of its most essential features; whereas the
Occident focuses on
accumulation,
security and
the future, our bourgeoisie will focus on
spending,
satisfaction and
the present. Whereas the Western bourgeois work for their children, the Romanian bourgeois will often only work for themselves." Among others, Manoilescu adopted some of the
Poporanist ideas on
capital and its international circulation, as present in the works of
Constantin Stere (in turn influenced by the
Marxist Werner Sombart). He argued that a national economy could
develop only if it minimized its contacts with the
world market and relied instead on cultivating
internal demand for a local industry. At the same time, his magazine supported a
nationalist and
racist approach, viewing corporatism as "the guarantee of
Romanianization", and proclaiming that "the racial basis of Romania is the same as that of
Aryan Europe". Manoilescu himself welcomed the
antisemitic policies of the
Alexandru Vaida-Voevod government. Manoilescu's corporatist and protectionist ideas began to be applied in
Brazil, as the basis of that country's industrial development during its
Estado Novo regime. His opinion that the engagement of
productive forces in industry, seen as always more productive than
agriculture and other
raw materials, is a welcomed process constituted an influence on both
Celso Furtado and
Raúl Prebisch Mihail Manoilescu, together with the French economist
François Perroux, prepared the way for the reception of corporatism in Brazil during the 1930s. Establishing corporatism in Brazil was partly achieved by translating and publishing into Portuguese some of Manoilescu's works. During the
Interwar, Manoilescu's economic and political essays were published in
Spain,
Portugal, Brazil and
Chile. His works also had some influence in
Argentina, although not as much as in Brazil and Chile. On the other hand, Manoilescu's advocacy of
autarkic measures has been compared to the measures enforced by later
Stalinist regimes, including that of
Nicolae Ceaușescu in Romania, who on at least one occasion described his works as a major contribution to the theory of
underdevelopment.
Iron Guard Despite the increasingly tense relations between Carol and the fascist
Iron Guard, Manoilescu was viewed with interest by the latter. By the late 1930s, he was himself a supporter of the Guard (which he hoped to see turning into a corporatist movement—"an instrument to validate the goals of the [Guard's] national revolution"), and donated part of his land to one of the latter's enterprises. His new discourse was ridiculed by his former colleagues in the National Peasants' Party, as "desperate attempts to exit from the [old generation of politicians] and sit among the new men". In February 1937, he began discreetly financing the Guard's newly created paper,
Buna Vestire (he was exposed as the man behind it by virtually all political commentators of the time). In the
election of 1937, he ran for the
Senate on the
Everything for the Fatherland Party list (which served as a front for the Iron Guard). According to his political adversary
Constantin Argetoianu, the party's unofficial leader
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu made similar proposals to philosopher
Nae Ionescu and General
Gheorghe Moruzi: Ionescu denied the request because, as a self-proclaimed pillar of the Guard, he could not accept such a lowly position, while Moruzi called Manoilescu "a con artist" and alluded to his reported connection with
Magda Lupescu.
Foreign minister signing the
Second Vienna Award, with Manoilescu to the right, August 30, 1940 In July 1940, at the moment of crisis when
Bessarabia and
Northern Bukovina were
ceded to the Soviet Union, Manoilescu was named foreign minister in the pro-fascist government headed by
Ion Gigurtu. The new executive was faced with eventually successful attempts by
Hungary, backed by Italy and Nazi Germany, to revise its border with Romania by the
Treaty of Trianon, in reality a dictate. Manoilescu, who was a supporter of the
Axis alliance, attempted in vain to make use of his influence with Italian authorities. While
German Foreign Minister,
Joachim von Ribbentrop, communicated the final decision, in the Gold Room of the
Belvedere Palace, Manoilescu fainted, after seeing the map of the new borders, imposed by Germany and Italy, whilst the Hungarian side jubilated. In September, he was involved in negotiations with
Soviet envoys regarding a
détente between the two countries; at the time, examining the situation created by warm relations between the Axis and the Soviet Union (
see Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact), the
fall of France and the
United Kingdom's isolation (which had deprived Romania of diplomatic alternatives), Manoilescu argued that Romania looked "with respect" towards
Moscow,
Berlin, and
Rome. Asked by the Soviet delegation to account for alleged new border incidents, he stiffly denied that these had ever occurred.
1940s, imprisonment and death The responsibility for the Transylvanian compromise weighed heavily on him later in the following year, when the Iron Guard, revived by the leadership of
Horia Sima, came to government and proclaimed the
National Legionary State; it refused to appoint Manoilescu to any leadership position. He did however continue to serve as Foreign Minister during the short-lived
First Antonescu cabinet, bringing the overall duration of his 1940 term to 70 days (July 4 to September 14). After the
Iron Guard's 1941 Rebellion, he remained present on the political stage as a supporter of
Ion Antonescu's dictatorship (
see Romania during World War II). In autumn 1940, he represented his country to
Rome, where he attempted to persuade Italian officials to look into information about Hungarian violence in Northern Transylvania, and, in July 1942, traveled to the
Independent State of Croatia to meet with
Otto Franges, his collaborator on an overview of
Southeast European economy. Set free in December 1945, he resumed work on his unfinished writings, and became an advocate of harvesting
geothermal power in Romania (his innovations in the field were patented on the name of his son, Alexandru Manoilescu). Manoilescu was ultimately brought to
Sighet Prison, where he died at the end of 1950. Typhus had left him with heart problems, which were aggravated in detention; with no medical attention, this led to his death; His family was told of his death only in May 1958. ==Honors==