GEOGRAPHY
Romania is bordered to the east by Moldova, to the north by Ukraine, to the south by Bulgaria, to the southwest by serbia and Montenegro, and to the west by Hungary. The Black Sea touches Romania in the southeast. Romania’s total area is 91,700 square miles. The Carpathian Mountains, including the Transylvanian Alps in the south, run from northern to southwestern Romania in a crescent shape. Bukovina, a forested region, is found in the eastern Carpathians. Romania’s highest peak, Moldoveanu, measures 8,343 feet.
Beyond the mountainous region lies the Tisza Plain in the west; hills, small plateaus, and arable lowlands make up the remaining terrain. The Danube is the principal river of Romania, running along the Bulgarian and Serbian and Montenegrin frontier. The Prut River forms the border with Moldova. Romania’s largest lake is Lake Razelm, part of the saline lagoon on the coast of the Black Sea.
INCEPTION AS A NATION
The name Romania is derived from that of the Romans who conquered earlier peoples and
ROMANIANS:
NATIONALITY
Nation:
Romania; Rumania; Roumania
Derivation of name:
Meaning "Roman realm"
Government:
Republic
Capital:
Bucharest
Language:
Romanian, a Romance language, is the official language; Hungarian, German, Serbo-Croatian, Turkish, and Romani are also spoken.
Religion:
About 70 percent of the population practice Romanian Orthodoxy; about 6 percent are Catholic and an equal number are Protestant; atheists, Muslims, and Jews constitute the remaining percentages.
Earlier inhabitants:
Thracians; Celts;
Romans; Goths; Heruli; Gepids; Huns; Avars; Slavs; Pechenegs; Byzantines; Mongols; Turkics; Vlachs
Demographics:
Romanians make up about 90 percent of the population and Hungarians about 7 percent; remaining minorities include Rroma, Ukrainians, Germans, Ruthenians, Russians, Serbs, Croats, Turks, Bulgarians, Tatars, and Slovaks.
Who in turn were displaced by tribes of Germanics and followed by tribes of Slavs. Romania was also invaded by steppe peoples such as the Huns, Avars, and Pechewegs, and Mongols. The Byzantines also established a presence there. In the 13th century c. e. Hungarian expansion forced many Vlachs to relocate south and east of the carpathian Mountains, establishing the principalities of Walachia and Moldavia. These principalities were vassels to either Hungary or Poland until their conquest by the Ottoman Turks (see Turkics) in the 16th century Michael the Brave, who ruled in 1593-1601, gained independence from the Ottoman Empire and consolidated control over the three Romanian lands, Transylvania, Walachia, and Moldavia. In 1601 Transylvania fell to Hungarian rule and the Ottoman Empire regained control over Walachia and Moldavia.
Revolts broke out in the principalities in 1821; Russia established a protectorate over the two principalities, eliminating Ottoman control. The Treaty of Paris in 1856 ended the wars between Russia and Turkey and confirmed Walachia and Moldavia, now united with Bessarabia, as an independent tributary of the Ottoman Empire. In 1862 the principalities were unified as a hereditary monarchy under the name of Romania and received international recognition at the Congress of Berlin in 1878.
Romania acquired Transylvania from Hungary and officially incorporated Bessarabia at the end of World War I (1914-18). During World War II (1939-45) Hungary reclaimed Transylvania and then returned it to Romania while ceding some territory to the Soviet Union (USSR). In 1947 Romania abolished its monarchy and declared itself a Communist republic. Romania renamed itself the Socialist Republic of Romania in 1950s, breaking ties with the Soviet Union. The collapse of Communist power in 1991 allowed the creation of Romania’s current democratic form of government. The same year Moldova, formerly the Moldavian soviet Socialist Republic, also gained independence.
1881 Romania is proclaimed kingdom.
1884 O scrisoare pierduta (A lost letter), play by Ion Luca Caragiale, opens.
1886 George Enescu performs violin concerto in Paris as teenager.
1904 Novelist Mihail Sadoveanu moves to Bucharest and begins literary career.
1906 Sculptor Constantin Brancusi first exhibits his work in Paris.
1914-18 During World War I Romania maintains neutrality until 1916, entering on side of Allies; peace treaty, ending war, allows for Romanian expansion.
1920 Bessarabia unites with Romania under Treaty of Paris; Romania enters alliance, Little Entente, with Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
1938 King Carol II becomes dictator.
1939-45 During World War II Romania first sides with Germany, then with Soviet Union.
1940 Under German-Soviet pact Romania cedes Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to Hungary and Soviet Union (USSR).
1947 Romania regains and then loses Transylvania to Soviet Union; Romania becomes Romanian People's Republic.
1948 National Museum of Art of Romania is founded in Bucharest.
1950 La Cantatrice chauve (The Bald Soprano), play by Eugene Ionesco, son of Romanian father and French mother, opens and helps inspire Theater of the Absurd.
1951 National Art Museum is founded in Cluj-Napoca.
1955 Romania joins Warsaw Pact.
1965 Nicolae Ceausescu, Communist Party leader, administers foreign policy independently of Moscow.
1990 Communist regime overthrown; first free elections held.
2004 Romania joins North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
CULTURAL IDENTITY
The physical heart of Romania is its mountain region: the Transylvanian Alps curving northward at their eastern end into the Carpathian Mountains, important since the Bronze Age for their mining and metalworking industries. Although the Romanian language is derived from Latin as are other Romance tongues, the Roman presence in the region, where they established the province of Dacia, was relatively brief, only a century and a half, and at a time late in the Roman Empire’s history when its economic influence in the provinces was dwindling. The Latin language took hold in Dacia because many of its inhabitants (probably mostly the elite class) left rather than suffer Roman rule, and the region was colonized by Romans. The native Dacians had developed a unique theocracy centered on the mountain sanctuary settlement of sarmizegethusa. The Dacians’ ancient roots were Thracian. The Dacian state lay in the region called today Maramures; folk beliefs here and in the Transylvanian Alps in general (such as the
A Romanian woman and child stand by a farmyard fence in this early-20th-century photograph. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-109395])
A Romanian man and woman pose in the traditional costumes of their Saxon ancestors in this late-19th-century photograph. (Library of Congress, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-i08698])
Belief in vampires) may have distant roots in the powerful Dacian religion. In general the spirituality of the Romanian mountain population shows features of the original Thracian background but also the influences of the Eastern and Western civilizations.
Romanians remember military heroes of the past. One of these, Stephan the Great (of Moldavia), led a great struggle against the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century Michael the Brave (of Walachia) also led a briefly successful uprising against the Ottoman Turks in the 16th century. He is a national hero as the first to combine the three territories that were to form Romania.
Among Romanians today great emphasis is placed on multiculturalism among the many ethnic groups who settled the countrys during its long history. The Vlachs, the Slavs, the Ottoman Empire, and the Austro-Hungarian
Empire have all left their marks and have had an influence on the cultural identity Ethnic communities in Romania include Hungarian, German, Polish, Slovak, Ukrainian, and Serbian. The importance of ethnicity in Romania, as in other countries that were under Soviet domination, with its attempt to do away with religion and with customs of the past, is to some extent a “rebound” from past oppression. The Romanian mountain area was never collectivized; the farmers strove to preserve their ancient agricultural and especially cultural traditions. Important among these was a method of transhumance, the so-called short swing in the summer, when more than 4,000 sheepfolds are created. Preserving their cultural identity was a silent form of resistance to the aggression of the political system.
Further Reading_
Ronald D. Bachman, ed. Romania: A Country Study (Washington, D. C.: GPO, 1991).
Vlad Georgescu. The Romanians: A History (Colombus: Ohio State University Press, 1991). Keith Hitchins. The Romanians, 1774-1866 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996).
-. Rumania, 1866-1947 (Oxford: Clarendon,
1994).
Daniel Nelson, ed. Romania after Tyranny (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1992).
Ioan Aurel Pop. Romanians and Romania (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
Kurt W. Treptow and Marcel Popa. Historical Dictionary of Romania (London: Scarecrow, 1996).
World History
