One Version of Romania's History

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Den | Romania | History | Empire Period

Empire Period
AD 1300 to 1800

Topics covered in this section:

Introduction

The Romanians came late to the party. Unfortunately, by the time they arrived the party was already over.

It's not that they didn't exist before the 14th century but it was only now that they stepped into the spotlight of European history. They were no longer the country in the historic margins. Finally, they were "visible" and some of their voices could be heard.

The Romanians entered their Middle Ages in the 14th century when the rest of Europe was wrapping up their Medieval period and moving rapidly into their Renaissance period. The Romanians will have to run fast if they want to catch up with the rest of Europe.

To avoid confusing those who think of the Middle Ages as a uniquely western European phenomenon, I've decided to call Romania's Middle Ages the Empire Period because of the great empires that surrounded Romania at the time. The trouble was that Romania was not one of these so-called great empires.

Romania was at the time little more than a bunch of small regions organized into the three main principalities of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania. During the Empire Period Romania found herself surrounded and manipulated by the Catholic and Islamic "great powers" of the age. And many of these empires and kingdoms wanted a piece of Romania. All of a sudden, Romania found herself in a very crowded region.

At the beginning of the period Poland sat just north of Moldavia and was the most powerful kingdom on the continent. They launched a barrage of attempts to capture Moldavia and portions of Transylvania. Moldavia also continued to be the target of invading nomads from the steppelands to their east.

Just north and west of Transylvania sat the powerful Hungarian Empire. They had controlled the major part of Transylvania for many years. Later they joined with Austria (unwillingly?) to form the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, which expanded its control to other parts of Romania and of the Balkans in general.

To the south the Ottoman Empire swallowed up portions of the Balkans not claimed by Austria-Hungary. They were confined mostly to the region south of the Danube, but that put them on Wallachia's doorstep.

Romania was quite small. The land was simply three small principalities, with a different "prince" presiding over each. The prince of each wore two hats — that of a voivode (noble) and a domnul (lord). The principalities acted as a buffer zone for the surrounding great powers.

And I now have enough information so that I can shift from presenting whole centuries at a time to presenting historic events a decade or less at a time. At the beginning of the Empire Period I don't have an overwhelming amount of information. But I thought it was an appropriate time to begin breaking this adventure down to the decade level.

So let's jump right in.