Romania: The Kingdom to World War I1881 to the Present

After becoming a kingdom, Romania continued to be torn by violence and turmoil, caused mainly by the government's failure to institute adequate land reform, by the corruption of government officials, and by frequent foreign interference. There was no real attempt to curb the anti-Semitic excesses through which the peasants, encouraged by demagogues, vented their feelings against the Jewish agents of the absentee Romanian landlords, the boyars. A major peasant revolt in 1907 was directed against both the Jews and the boyars. Romania remained neutral in the first (1912) of the Balkan Wars but entered the second war (1913), against Bulgaria, and gained S Dobruja.

Although Romania had adhered (1883) to the Triple Alliance, it proclaimed its neutrality when World War I broke out in 1914. In the same year Ferdinand succeeded Carol as king. Romanian irredentism in Transylvania helped to bring Romania into the Allied camp, and in 1916 Romania declared war on the Central Powers. Most of the country was overrun by Austro-German forces, and in Feb., 1918, by the Treaty of Bucharest, Romania consented to a harsh peace. On Nov. 9, 1918, Romania again entered the war on the Allied side, and the general armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, annulled the Treaty of Bucharest. Shortly thereafter, Romania annexed Bessarabia from Russia, Bukovina from Austria, and Transylvania and the Banat from Hungary.

Romanian armed intervention (1919) in Hungary defeated the Communist regime of Béla Kun and helped to put Admiral Horthy into power. Romania's acquisition of Bukovina, Transylvania, part of the Banat (the rest going to Yugoslavia [now in Serbia]), and Crişana-Maramureş (until then a part of Hungary) was confirmed by the treaties of Saint-Germain (1919) and Trianon (1920), but the USSR did not recognize Romania's seizure of Bessarabia. A series of agrarian laws beginning in 1917 did much to break up the large estates and to redistribute the land to the peasants. The large Magyar population as well as other minority groups were a constant source of friction.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• The Rise and Fall of Romanian Communism
• The 1920s through World War II
• The Kingdom to World War I1881 to the Present
• History to 1881
• Government
• Economy
• Land and People
• Bibliography

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