Romania is a country with a centuries-old and very interesting history . It is a nation that has customs and culture that go back several centuries in time. A territory that has gone through various wars, stages and historical periods that are worth knowing. At Curio Sfera -Historia.com , we explain the history of Romania and its origin .
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- 1Origin of Romania
- 2Antiquity and Middle Ages
- 3Ottoman rule
- 4Birth of the Romanian State
- 5Romania in the World Wars
- 6Communist period
- 7Dictatorship of Ceausescu
- 8Romanian democratic history
- 9History of the Romanian flag
Origin of Romania
To know the origin of Romania , it is first necessary to first know its geographical location.
Its lands are bordered to the east by the Black Sea, by Hungary and Serbia and Montenegro, to the north and northeast by Ukraine and Moldova and to the south by Bulgaria.
Throughout history, Romania has passed from hand to hand, coveted by the great European rulers: Hungarians, Turks and Russians. That is why Romania cultivates its land like its ancestors, still prides itself on the work of its craftsmen and keeps some medieval customs alive.
Only the proximity of the capital, Bucharest, endows a part of the country with structures somewhat similar to those of Western Europe.
Romania ( România ) is one of the least known countries in Europe. Its conservative social structures and recent political history , which has kept it off the beaten path, have prevented the disclosure of its magnificent painted churches of Bucovina, the beautiful valleys of Transylvania and the mysterious white beaches of the Black Sea. .
- Continent: Europe.
- Surface: 237,500 km2.
- Capital: Bucharest.
- Population: 19,530,631 inhabitants.
- Currency: Leu.
- Official language: Romanian.
Antiquity and Middle Ages
The language and the name of the Romanian people have their origins in the Roman occupation . Its ethnic constitution seems to be due to the union of the pre-Roman populations with the Roman colonizers, to which later contributions from various invading peoples were added.
The Dacians were a very combative people
The territory of present-day Romania roughly corresponds to that of ancient Dacia . Its inhabitants were known by the names of Getas and Dacians . In the 1st century the Dacian state was formed and under the reign of Decébalo (86-106), who fought three wars (86-89, 101-102 and 105-106) against the Romans, they seized Dada.
In times of Trajano (year 107) it constituted a province, quickly romanized. His influence also extended over more peoples to the east, as Bastarnae and roxolani .
When the movements of the Germanic peoples took place , Dacia was invaded by the Goths , and in the days of Aurelian (271-272) the Romans finally evacuated it.
Until the thirteenth century, Dacia suffered the successive penetration and domination of Goths, Gepids, Huns, Avars, Slavs, Bulgarians, Magyars, Pechenegs, Cumans and Mongols.
The old demographic substratum descended from the Romanized Dacia did not disappear in the face of the constant invasions of Germanic and Asian peoples , but these left strong traces on the ethnic reality of the future Romanian population .
During the 13th century, that Latin-speaking population, with a strong contribution of Slavic vocabulary, was influenced by Eastern Christianity .
In this same century Transylvania was conquered and colonized by Magyars , and a large part of the indigenous population migrated to the Danubian plains. In Transylvania, only a subservient Romanian peasant population remained subject to the conquering minority.
At the beginning of the 14th century, north of the Danube and east of the Carpals, the Romanian states of Wallachia and Moldavia began to take shape . The first, with a large Serbian and Bulgarian population, was founded by the Basarab voivode (1324-52).
The second, Moldavia, with a large Slavic population (Ruthenians), was also shaking off Hungarian rule and achieved, through the Bogdan I voivode (1359-65), autonomy.
The main activity of the voivodes of Wallachia and Moldavia was almost entirely centered on the war against the Hungarians, still sovereigns of Transylvania, who tended to expand towards the Danubian plains, and against Poland , which from central Europe was seeking an outlet to the Black Sea .
Ottoman rule
Since the 15th century a new danger, the Ottoman, threatened the Balkans. While Stephen III the Great of Moldavia (1457-1504) defeated a Turkish army in 1475, the Hungarians were defeated in Mohács by the Ottomans (1526), which definitively ended the Hungarian hegemony over future Romania .
However, the Romanian principalities had to accept Ottoman rule, which lasted until the second half of the 19th century.
Although there were attempts at independence, such as that of the voivode Michael the Brave of Wallachia (1593-1601), who, after defeating the Turks , reunited for the first time in a single state Transylvania, Moldavia and Wallachia (1600).
Birth of the Romanian State
In the 19th century, a nationalist movement developed in Wallachia and Moldavia that wanted to form a Romanian state . The nationalist movement of 1848 was stifled by the joint intervention of the Russian and Turkish armies, after the Crimean War the principalities were placed under the protection of the European powers.
Signature of the Treaty of Paris in 1856
The treaty of Paris (1856) decreed the holding of elections. These were held first in Moldavia, and Prince Alejandre Cuza (1859) was elected, also elected in Wallachia. With him the governments of the two principalities, although separated by law, were in fact unified.
In 1866 Alejandro I Cuza was forced to abdicate , because his measures (expropriation of ecclesiastical property, agrarian reform, new electoral law, education law, etc.) caused the discontent of the ruling classes.
Elected Carlos de Hohenzollern-Sígmaringen , with the name of Carlos I (1881-1914), the country actively participated alongside Russia in the war against Turkey (1877-1878); conquest of Plevna), despite which, the tsar seized southern Bessarabia, which was ceded to him in exchange for the Dobrudja ( treaty of Berlin, 1878 ).
In this treaty the independence of Romania was recognized . Converted into a kingdom (1881), it participated in the Second Balkan War .
Romania in the World Wars
By the Treaty of Bucharest (1913), the territory located south of Dobrudja (Silistra) was annexed to Romania. King Carlos I died in 1914, he was succeeded to the throne by his nephew Fernando I Hohenzollern (1914-27).
During World War I , and after entering the war alongside the Allies (1916), Romania had to sign the Peace of Bucharest , which was denounced after the Allied victory.
Bucharest Peace Sign
This brought the union to the country of Bucovina, Transylvania, Banat, part of Hungary and Bessarabia. In 1925 Carlos, Fernando’s son, resigned the throne, and after his death (1927) his grandson Miguel I was proclaimed king .
In 1930 Carlos returned to the country and proclaimed himself king under the name of Carlos II (1930-40), whose reign was characterized by intense social and political upheaval.
Carlos II had to abdicate and, again, was proclaimed King Michael I in 1940, but under the dictatorship of General Antonescu , Romania sided with Germany in World War II and participated as an ally in the invasion of the USSR ( 1941).
Communist period
In connection with the arrival of Soviet troops, a popular insurrection in Bucharest, prepared by the Communists, allowed them to seize power at the head of a patriotic bloc (23 August 1944).
The anti-communist demonstrations were crushed by the Soviet army, which occupied Bucharest and disarmed the Romanian troops .
Petru groza
The Kremlin envoy, A. Vichinsky, forced the resignation of the Government of General Radescu and imposed another led by Petru Groza , dominated by the Communists (March 1945), which decreed important social and political changes (nationalizations and land grants to peasants ).
After an electoral simulation, the Government decreed the prohibition of the Peasant Party and forced the abdication of King Miguel, who was expelled from the country on December 30, 1947, at the same time that the People’s Republic of Romania was proclaimed , whose Constitution was an imitation from the soviet
By the treaty of Paris (1947) , Rumania lost Bessarabia and the Bucovina of the north, annexed by the USSR, as well as the Dobrudja of the south, that happened to Bulgaria; but he regained Transylvania.
The Romanian Communist Party , led by Gheorghiu-Dej , its general secretary since 1945, took the name of the Partido Obrero in February 1948 after absorbing the Social Democratic Party, and consolidated its progress in the March elections of the same year.
In June 1952 P. Groza , head of the Government since 1945, assumed the presidency of the Presidium of the Republic (Head of State), leaving that of the Government in the hands of Gheorghiu-Dej.
After this change, a new Constitution came into force (September 1952) , which confirmed communist rule and made Romania another popular democracy of the socialist bloc .
Gheorghiu-Dej ceded the head of government to Chivu Sloica in 1955, and Ion Gheorghe Maurer became the presidency of the Presidium after the death of Groza (1958).
A period of consolidation of structural changes in the Romanian economy and society and of relative independence from the USSR followed.
Ceausescu dictatorship
After the death of Gheorghiu-Dej (1965), he replaced him by Nicolae Ceausescu as secretary general of the party. In that same year, the Workers’ Party was renamed the Communist Party (July) and Romania went from a “people’s republic” to a “socialist republic” with a new Constitution (August 1965) .
Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu
The later stage was dominated by Ceausescu, who in 1967 assumed the presidency of the Council of State and imposed a personal dictatorship . When the National Assembly approved the creation of the office of President of the Republic (March 1974), it also elected him to carry it out.
As secretary general of the party, Ceausescu combined loyalty to the Soviet bloc with openness to capitalist countries.
The reforms in the Soviet bloc countries isolated the Romanian regime, which increased the repression. After bloody riots in Brasov (November 1987), where the army fired on the crowd, the situation worsened.
The regime’s isolation was consummated when the United Nations (UN) condemned Romania, for violation of human rights, without the USSR and its allies doing anything to avoid the condemnation (March 1989).
Ceausescu was reelected general secretary of the Communist Party at the XIV Congress (November 1989), but several former leaders of the regime called for reform.
Protest demonstrations in Timisoara, Arad and other cities, harshly repressed by the army, led to a popular uprising in Bucharest (December 1989) .
Romanian democratic history
The National Salvation Front (FSN), emerged from the reformist sector of the Communist Party, occupied television and proclaimed the fall of the regime (December 22, 1989).
Ceausescu and his wife fled Bucharest, but were detained by the insurgents, subjected to a summary trial, sentenced to death for genocide and immediately shot.
Ion Iliescu
An FSN Council, chaired by the former communist Ion Iliescu , seized power and organized a provisional government with Petre Román at the head of the government.
In the first democratic elections in 1990, he won the FSN and Ion Iliescu was elected president of the Republic . In September 1991, a miners’ demonstration in Bucharest that ended in severe disturbances forced the resignation of Roman, who was successively replaced by T. Stolojan (October 1991) and N. Vacaroiu (April 1992).
At the end of 1992 a new Constitution was approved in a referendum that guaranteed political pluralism and a market economy.
Romania and Ukraine signed a treaty (1997) in which the borders derived from World War II were recognized.
Starting in 1992, various governments were formed headed by the National Salvation Front (FSN), the center-right coalition Democratic Convention of E. Constantinescu (president from 1997-2000) that undertook a policy of austerity, according to the IMF , and the Party of Social Democracy of Romania (PDSR), made up of Iliescu supporters.
Iliescu (FSN) has been the longest-serving president, presiding over the Republic from 1990 to 1997, and again from 2000 to 2004. The country joined NATO in March 2004 . On January 1, 2007, Romania joined the European Union.
History of the flag of Romania
To know how and when the Romanian flag was created and its meaning, we need to go back quite a few years in time. In 1989 in cities like Timisoara, Bucharest or Brasov, the revolution had broken out.
Thousands of protesters had taken to the streets. The tricolor flag , now without the coat of arms typical of the communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu, waved with renewed impetus.
It was December 1989. On the same Christmas Day, the dictator and his wife are tried, sentenced to death and immediately executed. Freed of any emblem, the Romanian flag became official in the early 1990s .
In 1848 the three colors of the Romanian flag appeared , at that time arranged in horizontal stripes. They symbolized the alliance of the peoples of Moldavia (blue and red) and Wallachia (blue and yellow), who in the past had fought together against the Ottoman Empire. In 1859 Moldavia and Wallachia were united to form Romania .
In 1918 Transylvania, the homeland of Count Dracula, was integrated into the Romanian state.
The accession to the throne of Prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, in 1866, marked the current disposition of the flag , made official a year later. In the three vertical stripes the royal coat of arms was illustrated. But in 1948 it was replaced by the communist emblems, once the people’s republic was proclaimed.