HISTORY A BRIEF HISTORY OF ROMANIA

Transcription

1 HISTORY A BRIEF HISTORY OF ROMANIA Early history The earliest written evidence of people living in the territory of the present-day Romania comes from Herodotus in book IV of his Histories written c. 440 BCE. Herein he writes that the tribal confederation of the Getae were defeated by the Persian Emperor Darius the Great during his campaign against the Scythians. The Dacians, widely accepted as part of the Getae described earlier by the Greeks, were a branch of Thracians that inhabited Dacia (corresponding to modern Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, northern Bulgaria and surroundings). The Dacian Kingdom reached its maximum expansion during King Burebista, between 82 BCE - 44 BCE. Under his leadership Dacia became a powerful state which threatened the regional interests of the Romans. Julius Caesar intended to start a campaign against the Dacians, due to the support that Burebista gave to Pompey, but was assassinated in 44 BC. A few months later, Burebista shared the same fate, assassinated by his own noblemen. Another theory suggests that he was killed by Caesar's friends. His powerful state was divided in four and did not become unified again until 95 AD, under the reign of the Dacian King, Decebalus. Decebalus The Roman Empire conquered Moesia by 29 BC, reaching the Danube. In 87 AD Emperor Domitian sent six legions into Dacia, which were defeated at Tapae. The Dacians were eventually defeated by Emperor Trajan in two campaigns stretching from 101 AD to 106 AD, and about half of the Dacian Kingdom became a province of th Roman Empire called "Dacia Traiana". A Roman triumphal column built in Rome under the supervision Apollodorus of Damascu, commemorates Roman emperor Trajan's Column Trajan's victory in the Dacian Wars. The Roman rule lasted 165 years. During this period the province was fully integrated to the Roman Empire and a sizeable part of the population was newcomers from other provinces. The Roman colonists introduced the Latin language. According to followers of the continuity theory, the intense Romanization gave birth to the Proto-Romanian language. The province was rich of ore deposits (especially gold and silver in places like Alburnus Maior). As a result of invasions by Germanic tribes, Roman troops were pulled out of Dacia around 271 AD, making it the first province to be abandoned. The territory was later invaded and dominated by various peoples, including Goths, Huns, Gepids, Avars, Bulgars, Slavs, Magyars, Pechenegs, and Cumans, who have been labelled as "migratory peoples" in Romanian historiography. Many of these populations also settled cohabitated and mixed with the locals. Several competing theories have been proposed to explain the relations (or non-relations) between ancient Dacians and present-day Romanians. Middle Ages In the Middle Ages, Romanians lived in three Romanian principalities: Wallachia (Romanian: Țara Românească "The Romanian Land"), Moldavia (Romanian: Moldova) and in Transylvania. The existence of independent Romanian voivodeships in Transylvania as early as the 9th century is mentioned in Gesta Hungarorum, but by the 11th century, Transylvania had become a largely autonomous part of the Kingdom of Hungary. In the other parts, many small local states with varying degrees of independence developed, but only under Basarab I and Bogdan I the larger principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia would emerge in the 14th century to fight the threat of the Ottoman Empire. 1

2 By 1541, as with the entire Balkan Peninsula and most of Hungary, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Transylvania were under Ottoman suzerainty, preserving partial or full internal autonomy until the mid-19th century (Transylvania until 1711). In 1600, the three principalities were ruled simultaneously by the Wallachian Prince Michael the Brave (Mihai Viteazul), which was considered in later periods as the precursor of a modern Romania and became a catalyst for achieving a single Romanian state. Mihai Viteazul Independence and monarchy During the period of the Austro-Hungarian rule in Transylvania and of Ottoman suzerainty over Wallachia and Moldavia, most Romanians were given few rights in a territory where they formed the majority of the population. Nationalistic themes became principal during the Wallachian uprising of 1821, and the 1848 revolutions in Wallachia and Moldavia. After the failed 1848 revolutions not all the Great Powers supported the Romanians' expressed desire to officially unite in a single state. But in the aftermath of the Crimean War, the electors in both Moldavia and Wallachia voted in 1859 for the same leader, Alexandru Ioan Cuza, as Domnitor (prince in Romanian), and the two principalities became a personal union formally under the Carol I of Romania suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire. Following coup d'état in 1866, Cuza was exiled and replaced with Prince Carol I of Romania of the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. During the Russo-Turkish War Romania fought on the Russian side, and in the aftermath, it was recognized as an independent state both by the Ottoman Empire and the Great Powers by the Treaty of San Stefano and the Treaty of Berlin. The new Kingdom of Romania underwent a period of stability and progress until World War I & II Romania remained neutral for the first two years of World War I. Following the secret Treaty of Bucharest, according to which Romania would regain its territories from Austria-Hungary, it joined the Entente Powers and declared war on 27 August The Romanian military campaign began disastrously for Romania as the Central Powers occupied two-thirds of the country within months, before reaching a stalemate in Total military and civilian losses from 1916 to 1918, within contemporary borders, were estimated at 748,000. After the war, the transfer of Bukovina from Austria was acknowledged by the 1919 Treaty of Saint Germain, of Banat and Transylvania from Hungary by the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, and of Bessarabia from Russian rule by the 1920 Treaty of Paris. The following interwar period is referred as Greater Romania, the application of radical agricultural reforms and the passing of a new constitution created a democratic framework and allowed for quick economic growth. With oil production of 7.2 million tons in 1937, Romania ranked second in Europe and seventh in the world, and was Europe's second-largest food producer. However, the early 1930s were marked by social unrest, high unemployment, and strikes, as there were over 25 separate governments throughout the decade. On several occasions in the last few years before World War II, the democratic parties were squeezed between conflicts with the chauvinistic Iron Guard and the authoritarian tendencies of King Carol II. During World War II, Romania tried again to remain neutral, but on 28 June 1940, it received a Soviet ultimatum with an implied threat of invasion in the event of non-compliance. Again foreign powers created heavy pressure on Romania, by means of the Soviet-Nazi Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of non-aggression from 23 August As a result of it the Romanian government and the army were forced to retreat from Bessarabia as well as from northern Bukovina in order to avoid war with the Soviet Union. Carol II was compelled to abdicate and appointed general Ion Antonescu as the new Prime-Minister with full powers in ruling the state by royal decree. Romania was prompted to join the Axis military campaign. Thereafter, southern Dobrogea was ceded to Bulgaria, while Hungary received Northern Transylvania as result of an Axis powers' arbitration. Romanian contribution to Operation Barbarossa was 2

3 enormous, with the Romanian Army of over 1.2 million men in the summer of 1944, fighting in numbers second only to Nazi Germany. Romania was the main source of oil for the Third Reich, and thus became the target of intense bombing by the Allies. Growing discontent among the population eventually peaked in August 1944 with King Mihai's coup, and the country switched sides to join the Allies. It is estimated that the coup shortened the war by as much as six months. Even though the Romanian Army had suffered 170,000 casualties after switching sides, Romania's role in the defeat of Nazi Germany was not recognized by the Paris Peace Conference of 1947, as the Soviet Union annexed Bessarabia and other territories corresponding roughly to present-day Republic of Moldova. The Antonescu regime played a major role in the Holocaust in Romania, applying the Nazi policies of oppression and genocide of Jews and Gypsies, mainly in the Eastern territories regained by the Romanians from the Soviet Union in Transnistria and in Moldavia. Jewish Holocaust victims in Romania totalled more than 280,000, plus another 11,000 Gypsies. Communism During the Soviet occupation of Romania, the Communist-dominated government called for new elections in 1946, which were fraudulently won, with a fabricated 70% majority of the vote. Thus they rapidly established themselves as the dominant political force and in 1947, forced King Michael I to abdicate and leave the country, and proclaimed Romania a people's republic. Romania remained under the direct military occupation and economic control of the USSR until During this period, Romania's vast natural resources were continuously drained by mixed Soviet-Romanian companies (SovRoms) set up for unilateral exploitative purposes. In 1948, the state began to nationalize private firms and to collectivize Elena and Nicolae Ceaușescu agriculture. Until the early 1960s, the Communist government established a terror regime carried out mainly through the Securitate (the Romanian secret police). During this period they launched several campaigns of purges in which numerous "enemies of the state" and "parasite elements" of the society were imprisoned for political or economic reasons, tortured and eventually killed. Punishments included deportation, internal exile and internment in forced labour camps and prisons, sometimes for life; dissent was vigorously suppressed by the regime. Nevertheless, anticommunist resistance was one of the most long-lasting in the Eastern Bloc. Tens of thousands of people were killed as part of repression in Communist Romania. A 2006 Commission estimated the number of direct victims of the communist repression at two million people. This excludes civilians who died in liberty as a result of their "treatment" and malnutrition in communist prisons and those who died because of the dire economic circumstances in the country, and whose numbers remain unknown but could reach a few millions. In 1965, Nicolae Ceaușescu came to power and started to conduct the foreign policy more independently from the Soviet Union. Thus, communist Romania was the only Warsaw Pact country who refused to participate at the Sovietled 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia (Ceaușescu even publicly condemned the action as "a big mistake, [and] a serious danger to peace in Europe and to the fate of communism in the world ); it was also the only communist state to maintain diplomatic relations with Israel after the 1967 Six-Day War; and established diplomatic relations with West Germany the same year. At the same time, close ties with the Arab countries (and the PLO) allowed Romania to play a key role in the Israel Egypt and Israel PLO peace talks. As Romania's foreign debt sharply increased between 1977 and 1981 (from US$3 billion to $10 billion), the influence of international financial organizations (such as the IMF and the World Bank) grew, gradually conflicting with Ceaușescu's autocratic rule. The latter eventually initiated a policy of total reimbursement of the foreign debt by imposing austerity steps that impoverished the population and exhausted the economy. At the same time, Ceaușescu greatly extended the authority of the Securitate secret police and imposed a severe cult of personality, which led to a dramatic decrease in the dictator's popularity and culminated in his overthrow and eventual execution, together with his wife, in the violent Romanian Revolution of December

4 Democracy After the revolution, the National Salvation Front (NSF), led by Ion Iliescu, stated that it would be nothing more than a transitional government. Late in January 1990 however, Iliescu announced he would stand for election as president, and that the FSN would field candidates for parliament. In April 1990, before the first election after the Romanian Revolution, a sitin protest accusing the NSF including Iliescu, of being made up of former Communists (and members of the Securitate), and demanding for the former members of the Communist Party (4 million adults out of a total population of 22 million) to be banned from standing in elections rapidly grew to become what was called the Golaniada but soon to be called Mineriada. Led by students from Bucharest University the demonstrators soon occupied the entire square, declaring that it was the only part of Romania genuinely free of communism. As support for the protests grew, it became an embarrassment to Iliescu and his regime. On 13 June 1990, Iliescu ordered the miners from the Jiu Valley to come in Bucharest to put down the revolt, and to reoccupy the square in the name of the revolution. Over the next three days the miners killed more than 100 people. Iliescu then went on television to thank the miners for their revolutionary zeal and spirit. From January 1990 to September 1991, four Mineriade took place during which more than 200 people have been killed and more than 1500 injured. The subsequent disintegration of the Front produced several political parties including the Social Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party. The former governed Romania from 1990 until 1996 through several coalitions and governments with Ion Iliescu as head of state. Since then there have been several democratic changes of government: in 1996 Emil Constantinescu was elected president, in 2000 Iliescu returned to power, while Traian Băsescu was elected in 2004 and narrowly re-elected in On November 16, 2014, Klaus Iohannis was elected the fifth President of Romania. A BRIEF HISTORY OF BUCHAREST While there are traces of settlements around Bucharest dating back to the Paleolithic period, the city itself is in fact relatively new: mention of it is not made until 1459, as one of the residences of Vlad III (the Impaler/ Dracula ), ruler of Wallachia. The exact origins of the city are therefore unknown. Folklore has it that a shepherd, Bucur, founded the city, but a more likely candidate is Radu Voda (also known as Radu Negru), ruler of Wallachia from c It was under Vlad the Impaler that the city grew to any real size, when it became the preferred site of the Wallachian court. This was based in what is today known as the Old City Centre, around the Curtea Veche. The city was sacked for the first time in 1476, by the Moldavian ruler Stephen the Great, and again by the Turks in During Mihai Bravu s uprising against the Turks in 1594, Bucharest was all but destroyed in heavy fighting. It was not until the reign of Wallachian prince Matei Basarab in the 1640s that the city fully recovered, and the princely court rebuilt. Sacked again in 1655 (by the Transylvanians) Bucharest suffered plague and famine for much of the rest of the 1600s. It was the accession to the Wallachian throne of Constantin Brancoveanu in 1688 which changed Bucharest s fortunes. Brancoveanu negotiated alliances with the Hapsburgs and Russians - keeping the Turks at bay - while overseeing a cultural renaissance at home. It was during his reign that the Brancovenesc-style (a mix of the Renaissance and the Byzantine) so popular with the city s architects for centuries after first appeared. 4

5 The Turks finally got the better of Brancoveanu in 1714: ordered to Constantinople to account for himself he was beheaded together with his four sons on the same day by Sultan Ahmed III. No longer trusting local Wallachian princes to serve their interests, the Turks instead appointed a long line of Greek administrators to rule the principality. Known as the Phanariots (they came from the Greek district of Constantinople, Phanar) they would rule over Bucharest until During this time the city grew in size and importance, despite regular disasters: both natural and man-made. The Austrian army occupied the city from , there were major earthquakes in 1802, 1804 and 1812, while plague returned in As many as 40,000 people died in Wallachia during the plague. While still nominally a Turkish province, the Peace of Adrianople which ended the Russo-Turkish war of left Wallachia (and Bucharest with it) under Russian occupation. Fortunately, the general the Russians appointed to govern Bucharest, Pavel Kiseleff, was an enlightened man and a modernizer who during his 14 years in charge of the city ( ) oversaw sweeping changes. He carved out new boulevards, paved many roads, introduced running water and a sewerage system, did the city s first proper census, built schools and hospitals and centralized the city s chaotic fire-fighting service. In January 1859, at the Hotel Concordia on Strada Smardan, Wallachia s nascent Parliament elected Alexandru Ioan Cuza as the principality s new ruler. Given that the Moldovian Parliament had elected the same man to be their leader a few days before, the vote at the Concordia in effect created the first state of Romania. Nevertheless, it would be another 19 years (and require another Russo-Turkish War) before Romania was officially able to declare itself independent of Turkey, in Bucharest grew - and flourished - during the reign of Carol I ( ), Romania s first king. Electricity was introduced in 1882, and the city hosted a grand exhibition, Romania in the World, in 1906, esigned to show how much progress the country was making. Between 6 December 1916 and November 1918, the city was occupied by German forces as a result of the Battle of Bucharest, with the official capital temporarily moved to Iași, in the Moldavia region. After World War I, the official capital moved back to Bucharest. During the 1920s and 1930s Bucharest was one of Europe s most dynamic cities, and architecturally one of its most avant-garde. Large numbers of art deco buildings were constructed around the city. In January 1941, the city was the scene of the Legionnaires' rebellion and Bucharest pogrom. As capital of an Axis country and a major transit point for Axis troops en route to the Eastern Front, Bucharest suffered heavy damage during World War II due to Allied bombings. On 23 August 1944 it was the site of the royal coup which brought Romania into the Allied camp, suffering a short period of Nazi Luftwaffe bombings as well as a failed attempt by German troops to regain the city by force. The Bucharest we know today, however, is as much the product of the communist period, from 1944 to 1989, as anything. During Nicolae Ceaușescu's leadership ( ), much of the historic part of the city was demolished and replaced by "Socialist realism" style development. In 1977 the biggest earthquake in the city s history killed more than 1,500 people and left many buildings destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Ceausescu took this opportunity to remodel the city in his own vision: new districts like Centrul Civic (with People s House as its centrepiece) were constructed, most of them dominated by tower blocks. It was followed by the vast housing estates of Militari and Titan, huge dormitories for workers shipped in from the countryside to staff the newly created industrial platforms of Industriilor, Republica and IMGB. By 1989 almost more than a third of Bucharest had been destroyed and the city s population doubled from 900,000 at the end of World War II to 1.8 million. Bucharest was the scene of the heaviest fighting during the Romanian Revolution of 1989, most of which centred on Piata Revolutiei, Piata Universitatii, the TVR building and Otopeni Airport. Since the revolution, Bucharest has 5

6 continued to grow, although much of that growth has been outside the city limits. The population of the city proper in fact peaked in 2000, at 2.3 million: it is officially now down to 1.9 million (2011 census). A BRIEF HISTORY OF VLAD ȚEPEȘ / VLAD THE IMPALER / DRACULA Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia ( /77), was a member of the House of Drăculești, a branch of the House of Basarab, also known, using his patronymic, as (Vlad) Drăculea or (Vlad) Dracula. He was posthumously dubbed Vlad the Impaler (Romanian: Vlad Țepeș), and was a three-time Voivode of Wallachia, ruling mainly from 1456 to 1462, the period of the incipient Ottoman conquest of the Balkans. His father, Vlad II Dracul, was a member of the Order of the Dragon, which was founded to protect Christianity in Eastern Europe. The noun drac "dragon" itself continues Latin draco. In Modern Romanian, the word drac has adopted the meaning of "devil" (the term for "dragon" now being balaur or dragon). This has led to misinterpretations of Vlad's epithet as characterizing him as "devilish". Vlad III is revered as a folk hero in Romania as well as other parts of Europe for his protection of the Romanian population both north and south of the Danube. As the cognomen "The Impaler" suggests, his practice of impaling his enemies is part of his historical reputation. Vlad's nickname of Țepeș ("Impaler") identifies his favourite method of execution but was only attached to his name posthumously, in c Before this, however, he was known as Kazıklı Bey (Impaler Lord) by the Ottoman Empire after their armies encountered his "forests" of impalement victims. Romanian and Bulgarian documents from 1481 onwards portray Vlad as a hero, a true leader, who used harsh yet fair methods to reclaim the country from the corrupt and rich boyars. During his lifetime, his reputation for excessive cruelty spread abroad, to Germany and elsewhere in Europe. The name of the vampire Count Dracula in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula was inspired by Vlad's patronymic. Thanks to Stoker, Dracula is more commonly associated with the region of Transylvania (though he didn't spend much time there). More information on Vlad Țepeș can be found here. 6