Romania – Modern Age
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, huge economic and social changes took place because of the dissolution of the mediaeval structures. So, the Romanians products were attracted in the European circuit and the national idea became very powerful like anywhere in Europe.
The national Renaissance in Transylvania was started by Bishop Inocentiu Micu-Klein who embodied the emancipation of the Transylvanian Romanians irrespective of their confessional, social and ethnic differences. The Austrian authorities promised national recognition if they joined forces against the Hungarian revolutionaries.
The quest for renewal in Wallachia was expressed in the revolution led by Tudor Vladimirescu (1821). Although the Ottoman and Czarist troops occupied the Danube principalities that same year, the sacrifices made by the Romanians brought about the abolition of the Phanariot regime and native voivodes were again appointed on the thrones of Moldavia and Wallachia.
In 1859, with French support, Alexandru Ioan Cuza was elected to the thrones of Moldavia and Wallachia, creating a national state known as the United Romanian Principalities on the 11th of December 1861. This was renamed Romania in 1862. The age of the Union featured a vast and comprehensive reform project relating to institutions, economy, and education. Bucharest became the official capital of Romania.
After the abdication of Alexandru Ioan Cuza (1866), Carol of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a relative of the royal family of Prussia, who was supported by Napoleon III and Bismark, was proclaimed on the 10th of May 1866, following a plebiscite, ruling prince of Romania, with the name of Carol I.
The Russian helped the Romanians declare their independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877. After the War of Independence (1877), Dobrudja became part of Romania. In 1881, Romania became a kingdom and Carol I was crowned as the first king of Romania. He was succeeded by his nephew King Ferdinand in 1914.
In August 1914, when World War I broke out, Romania declared neutrality. Two years later, Romania enters the war on the side of the Triple Entente aiming to regain its lost territories (part of Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina). In the summer of 1917, in the great battles of Marasti, Marasesti and Oituz, the Romanians aborted the attempt made by the Central Powers to defeat and get Romania out of the war by occupying the rest of its territory. The fall of the Habsburg monarchy in the autumn of 1918 made it possible for the nations that had been under Austrian-Hungarian oppression to emancipate themselves. In November 1918, the National Council of Bukovina voted in Cernauti to join that province to Romania. On the 1st of December 1918, Transylvania and Banat became part of Romania too being called “the Big Union” – fulfilling a dream that has lasted for centuries.
In 1930, Carol II, Ferdinand's I son became king of Romania. In 1939, Germany demanded a monopoly on Romanian exports in exchange for the guarantee of its borders. In 1940, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina joined the Soviet Union. Northern Transylvania and Southern Dobrudja were given to Hungary and respectively to Bulgaria by force. Marshall Ion Antonescu forced Carol II to flee Romania. His son Michael took the throne. Marshall Antonescu imposed a military dictatorship and Romania joined Germany against the Soviet Union to regain Bessarabia. In 1944, King Michael succeeded in arresting Marshall Antonescu and in changing the sides and joining The Soviet Union against the Fascist Germany. In 1947, the communists, who gradually took power, forced King Michael to abdicate and proclaim Romania a People's Republic. After Stalin’s death Romania becomes distant from Moscow. In 1968, Nicolae Ceausescu, the communist leader gets the praise and the aid from the West, because he blamed the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia. Although his intentions were good at the beginning, Nicolae Ceausescu ended as one the worst dictators ever.
