Romania | History, Map, & Facts - Encyclopedia Britannica

1. Includes a maximum of 18 elective seats for ethnic minorities.
2. The leu was redenominated on July 1, 2005. As of that date 10,000 (old) lei (ROL) = 1 (new) leu (RON).

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:

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.