The Union of Moldavia and Wallachia — Romania Formed
Alexandru Ioan Cuza was elected ruling prince of Moldavia on 5 January 1859 and of Wallachia on 24 January, creating a personal union of the two Romanian principalities and, in practice, the state that became Romania. The manoeuvre was deliberate. The Paris Convention of 1858, agreed by the great powers after the Crimean War, had granted the two Ottoman vassal principalities separate assemblies, separate princes and a handful of joint institutions — a settlement designed by Austria and the Ottomans to prevent unification, which the population had voted for in the ad hoc divans of 1857. The unionists found the loophole: the convention did not say the two princes had to be different people. Cuza was a moderate liberal, a colonel and a compromise candidate in Moldavia, and the Wallachian assembly, under pressure from crowds in Bucharest, elected the same man three weeks later. The powers accepted the fait accompli, France and Russia readily and Austria and Britain reluctantly, and the union was recognised for Cuza's lifetime only. He merged the administrations and assemblies anyway, and the name Romania was adopted in 1862. His reforms were substantial and made him enemies on all sides: secularisation of the monastery estates, which held about a quarter of the land, land reform freeing the peasants from labour dues, universal male suffrage, and civil and criminal codes on the French model. He was deposed by a conspiracy of liberals and conservatives in February 1866 and replaced by a German prince. Carol I reigned for forty-eight years and secured full independence from the Ottomans in 1878. The union of 1859 is still commemorated as the founding act of the modern Romanian state.
- Year: 1859 CE
- Category: Political
