Formation of Greater Romania
In 1918 the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the defeat of the Central Powers created the conditions for Romanian unification. Bessarabia voted for union with Romania in March 1918; Bukovina's local assembly voted for union in November; and the National Assembly of Transylvania, meeting at Alba Iulia on 1 December 1918, proclaimed union. The treaties of Versailles, Trianon, and Neuilly formally confirmed these acquisitions, nearly doubling Romania's territory and population from the pre-war kingdom. King Ferdinand I and his British wife Queen Marie were confirmed as monarchs of the enlarged state. România Mare — Greater Romania — incorporated large Hungarian (roughly 1.6 million in Transylvania alone), German, Jewish, Bulgarian, and Ukrainian minorities. The integration of such diverse populations into a centralised Romanian nationalist state produced structural tensions that would shape Romanian politics through the 1930s, while the scale of Hungary's losses at Trianon generated the revisionist irredentism that drove Hungarian foreign policy for two decades.
- Year: 1918 CE
- Category: Political
