Alexandru Ioan Cuza

Alexandru Ioan Cuza (born March 20, 1820, Huşi, Moldavia [now in Romania]—died May 15, 1873, Heidelberg, Germany) was the first prince of united Romania, architect of national rural reform and peasant emancipation.

The scion of an old boyar family, Cuza studied in Paris, Pavia, and Bologna, participated in revolutionary agitation against Russo-Turkish rule in his native Moldavia (1848), obtained the rank of colonel, and subsequently achieved prominence as a delegate to the Moldavian assembly (divan ad hoc) in 1857. Two years later, despite the Great Powers’ determination that the Romanian principalities should enjoy separate autonomy, he was successively elected prince of Moldavia (January 1859) and of Walachia (February 1859), thus effecting a personal union that presaged the formal proclamation of Romanian unity in 1861. He attempted to rule in the plebiscitary manner of the French emperor Napoleon III and openly courted the peasantry as “the state’s active force.” In 1863 he expropriated the vast lands owned by the monasteries of Moldavia and Walachia, and the following year he introduced a large-scale land-redistribution program (August 1864), which not only provided the peasants with ownership of their own plots but also emancipated them from all manorial services and tithes; the program, however, was only partly successful. In addition, the Prince, intending to provide universal free and obligatory educational services, built more schools at all levels and introduced a program to award scholarships to poor students. He also introduced reform in the electoral laws as well as the judicial system and revised the state structure through a new constitution, the Statut (1864), to enhance his own authority. Nevertheless, his policies provoked the opposition of both conservatives and radical liberals, as well as some middle-class elements; in 1866, political leaders, who had formed a conspiracy, forced Cuza to abdicate and go into exile.