[oconnor663]

I think before the introduction of move semantics in C++11, there were a lot of cases where you needed new and delete to get basic things working. (Moving an fstream around is a relevant example.) So the modern rule of "don't use new and delete in application code" really wasn't practical before that.

[jcelerier]

No, pretty much everything could be done with swap (like moving an fstream as you say). Sure, it's a bit more cumbersome, but it was still RAII.

[nyanpasu64]

I suppose RAII is an old concept, but move semantics allowing RAII to transfer ownership and avoid manual new/free of non-copied resources was uncommon until C++11.