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.
The Romanian landscape is approximately one-third mountainous and one-third forested, with the remainder made up of hills and plains. The climate is temperate and marked by four distinct seasons. Romania enjoys a considerable wealth of natural resources: fertile land for agriculture; pastures for livestock; forests that provide hard and soft woods; petroleum reserves; metals, including gold and silver in the Apuseni Mountains; numerous rivers that supply hydroelectricity; and a Black Sea coastline that is the site of both ports and resorts.
The Romanian people derive much of their ethnic and cultural character from Roman influence, but this ancient identity has been reshaped continuously by Romania’s position astride major continental migration routes. Romanians regard themselves as the descendants of the ancient Romans who conquered southern Transylvania under the emperor Trajan in 105 ce and of the Dacians who lived in the mountains north of the Danubian Plain and in the Transylvanian Basin. By the time of the Roman withdrawal under the emperor Aurelian in 271, the Roman settlers and the Dacians had intermarried, resulting in a new nation. Both the Latin roots of the Romanian language and the Eastern Orthodox faith to which most Romanians adhere emerged from the mixture of these two cultures.
From the arrival of the Huns in the 5th century until the emergence of the principalities of Walachia and Moldavia in the 14th century, the Romanian people virtually disappeared from written history. During this time Romania was invaded by great folk migrations and warriors on horseback who traveled across the Danubian Plain. It is believed that in the face of ceaseless violence the Romanians were forced to relocate, finding safety in the Carpathian Mountains. As military chief Helmuth von Moltke observed: “Resistance having nearly always proven useless, the Romanians could no longer think of any other way of defense than flight.”
For the next 600 years the Romanian lands served as battlegrounds for their neighbours’ conflicting ambitions. The Romanians were unable to withstand the imperial pressures first from the Byzantines and then from the Ottoman Turks to the south in Constantinople (now Istanbul), or later from the Habsburg empire to the west and from Russia to the east.
In 1859 the principalities of Walachia and Moldavia were united, and in 1877 they proclaimed their independence from the Ottoman Empire as the modern Romania. This was accompanied by a conversion from the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin and by an exodus of students who sought higher education in western Europe, especially France.
Despite its late start as a European nation-state, Romania in the 20th century produced several world-renowned intellectuals, including composer Georges Enesco, playwright Eugène Ionesco, philosopher Emil Cioran, religion historian Mircea Eliade, and Nobel laureate George E. Palade. On the eve of World War II, journalist Rosa Goldschmidt Waldeck (Countess Waldeck) described her strongest impression of the Romanians:
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Two thousand years of severe foreign masters, barbarian invasions, rapacious conquers, wicked princes, cholera, and earthquakes have given Rumanians a superb sense of the temporary and transitory quality of everything. Experience in survival has taught them that each fall may result in unforeseen opportunities and that somehow they always get on their feet again.
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Turnock, David, Latham, Ernest, Hitchins, Keith Arnold, Cucu, Vasile S.. "Romania". Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 Apr. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/place/Romania. Accessed 9 July 2025.
