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216-465: – in Europe  (green & dark grey) – in the European Union  (green) Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Eastern and Southeast Europe . It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to the east, and the Black Sea to the southeast. It has a mainly continental climate , and an area of 238,397 km (92,046 sq mi) with

432-496: A high-income economy , recognized as a middle power in international affairs . It hosts several UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is a growing tourist attraction, receiving 13 million foreign visitors in 2023 . Its economy ranks among the fastest growing in the European Union, primarily driven by the service sector . Romania is a net exporter of cars and electric energy worldwide, and its citizens benefit from some of

648-489: A temperate climate , tempering winters and summers, on much of the continent. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable producing more continental climates . European culture consists of a range of national and regional cultures, which form the central roots of the wider Western civilisation , and together commonly reference ancient Greece and ancient Rome , particularly through their Christian successors , as crucial and shared roots. Beginning with

864-509: A 1521 letter known as the " Letter of Neacșu from Câmpulung ", is notable for including the first documented occurrence of Romanian in a country name: Wallachia is mentioned as Țara Rumânească . Human remains found in Peștera cu Oase ("Cave with Bones"), radiocarbon date from circa 40,000 years ago, and represent the oldest known Homo sapiens in Europe. Neolithic agriculture spread after

1080-871: A German naturalist, Peter Simon Pallas , as a valley that once connected the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and subsequently was proposed as a natural boundary between continents. By the mid-19th century, there were three main conventions, one following the Don, the Volga–Don Canal and the Volga, the other following the Kuma–Manych Depression to the Caspian and then the Ural River, and the third abandoning

1296-643: A Semitic term for west , this being either Akkadian erebu meaning 'to go down, set' (said of the sun) or Phoenician 'ereb 'evening, west', which is at the origin of Arabic maghreb and Hebrew ma'arav . Martin Litchfield West stated that "phonologically, the match between Europa's name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor", while Beekes considers a connection to Semitic languages improbable. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to

1512-818: A boundary along the Terek and Kuban rivers, so southwards from the Kuma and the Manych, but still with the Caucasus entirely in Asia. However, most geographers in the Soviet Union favoured the boundary along the Caucasus crest, and this became the common convention in the later 20th century, although the Kuma–Manych boundary remained in use in some 20th-century maps. Some view the separation of Eurasia into Asia and Europe as

1728-482: A center for Christian denominations other than Eastern Orthodoxy , the form of Christianity that most Romanians currently follow. As such, there are significant numbers of inhabitants of Transylvania that follow Latin Catholicism and Greek Catholicism , and Protestantism . Even though before 1948, the population of Transylvania split between Eastern Orthodox, Greek Catholic and other forms of Christianity, during

1944-582: A common currency, the euro , and participate in the European single market and a customs union . A large bloc of countries, the Schengen Area , have also abolished internal border and immigration controls. Regular popular elections take place every five years within the EU; they are considered to be the second-largest democratic elections in the world after India's . The EU is the third-largest economy in

2160-546: A cultural association to promote the use of Romanian. Fearing Russian expansionism, Romania secretly joined the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy in 1883, but public opinion remained hostile to Austria-Hungary. Romania seized Southern Dobruja from Bulgaria in the Second Balkan War in 1913. German and Austrian-Hungarian diplomacy supported Bulgaria during the war, bringing about

2376-406: A large land mass completely or almost completely surrounded by water at its borders. Prior to the adoption of the current convention that includes mountain divides, the border between Europe and Asia had been redefined several times since its first conception in classical antiquity , but always as a series of rivers, seas and straits that were believed to extend an unknown distance east and north from

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2592-483: A majority in the counties of Covasna (73.6%) and Harghita (84.8%). The Hungarians are also numerous in the following counties: Mureș (37.8%), Satu Mare (34.5%), Bihor (25.2%), and Sălaj (23.2%). Transylvania is rich in mineral resources, notably lignite , iron , lead , manganese , gold , copper , natural gas , salt , and sulfur . Transylvania's GDP (nominal) is $ 194 billion and its GDP per capita measures around $ 28,574. Transylvania's Human Development Index

2808-687: A military dictatorship in early 1941. Romania entered World War II soon after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The country regained Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, and the Germans placed Transnistria (the territory between the rivers Dniester and Dnieper) under Romanian administration. Romanian and German troops massacred at least 160,000 local Jews in these territories; more than 105,000 Jews and about 11,000 Gypsies died during their deportation from Bessarabia to Transnistria. Most of

3024-763: A nation of "Very High Human Development". Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere . It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east. Europe shares the landmass of Eurasia with Asia, and of Afro-Eurasia with both Asia and Africa . Europe

3240-581: A new war required the regular supply of Romanian oil and agricultural products. The two countries concluded a treaty concerning the coordination of their economic policies in 1939, but the King could not persuade Adolf Hitler to guarantee Romania's frontiers. Romania was forced to cede Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union on 26 June 1940, Northern Transylvania to Hungary on 30 August, and Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria in September. After

3456-516: A policy of total reimbursement of the foreign debt by imposing austerity steps that impoverished the population and exhausted the economy. The process succeeded in repaying all of Romania's foreign government debt in 1989. At the same time, Ceaușescu greatly extended the authority of the Securitate secret police and imposed a severe cult of personality , which led to a dramatic decrease in the dictator's popularity and culminated in his overthrow in

3672-559: A political crisis in 2012. Near the end of 2013, The Economist reported Romania again enjoying "booming" economic growth at 4.1% that year, with wages rising fast and a lower unemployment than in Britain. Economic growth accelerated in the midst of government liberalisation in opening up new sectors to competition and investment—most notably, energy and telecoms. In 2016, the Human Development Index ranked Romania as

3888-632: A population of 19 million people (2023). Romania is the twelfth-largest country in Europe and the sixth-most populous member state of the European Union . Europe's second-longest river, the Danube , empties into the Danube Delta in the southeast of the country. The Carpathian Mountains cross Romania from the north to the southwest and include Moldoveanu Peak , at an altitude of 2,544 m (8,346 ft). Romania's capital and largest city

4104-763: A precise eastern boundary of Europe arises in the Early Modern period, as the eastern extension of Muscovy began to include North Asia . Throughout the Middle Ages and into the 18th century, the traditional division of the landmass of Eurasia into two continents, Europe and Asia, followed Ptolemy, with the boundary following the Turkish Straits , the Black Sea , the Kerch Strait , the Sea of Azov and

4320-614: A principle was enacted, but women could not vote or be candidates. Calypso Botez established the National Council of Romanian Women to promote feminist ideas. Romania was a multiethnic country, with ethnic minorities making up about 30% of the population, but the new constitution declared it a unitary national state in 1923. Although minorities could establish their own schools, Romanian language, history and geography could only be taught in Romanian. Agriculture remained

4536-658: A rapprochement between Romania and the Triple Entente of France, Russia and the United Kingdom. The country remained neutral when World War I broke out in 1914, but Prime Minister Ion I. C. Brătianu started negotiations with the Entente Powers. After they promised Austrian-Hungarian territories with a majority of ethnic Romanian population to Romania in the Treaty of Bucharest , Romania entered

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4752-658: A residue of Eurocentrism : "In physical, cultural and historical diversity, China and India are comparable to the entire European landmass, not to a single European country. [...]." During the 2.5 million years of the Pleistocene , numerous cold phases called glacials ( Quaternary ice age ), or significant advances of continental ice sheets, in Europe and North America, occurred at intervals of approximately 40,000 to 100,000 years. The long glacial periods were separated by more temperate and shorter interglacials which lasted about 10,000–15,000 years. The last cold episode of

4968-600: A result of Hungarian oppression in the region. In April 1990, a sit-in protest contesting the results of that year's legislative elections and accusing the FSN, including Iliescu, of being made up of former Communists and members of the Securitate grew rapidly to become what was called the Golaniad . Peaceful demonstrations degenerated into violence, prompting the intervention of coal miners summoned by Iliescu. This episode has been documented widely by both local and foreign media, and

5184-685: A result, the Reconquista took the greater part of eight hundred years, in which period a long list of Alfonsos, Sanchos, Ordoños, Ramiros, Fernandos, and Bermudos would be fighting their Christian rivals as much as the Muslim invaders. During the Dark Ages, the Western Roman Empire fell under the control of various tribes. The Germanic and Slav tribes established their domains over Western and Eastern Europe, respectively. Eventually

5400-564: A series of reforms, including the secularisation of the property of monasteries and agrarian reform, but a coalition of conservative and radical politicians forced him to abdicate in February ;1866. Cuza's successor, a German prince, Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (or Carol I), was elected in May. The parliament adopted the first constitution of Romania in the same year. The Great Powers acknowledged Romania's full independence at

5616-529: A significant improvement in living standards as the country successfully reduced domestic poverty and established a functional democratic state. However, Romania's development suffered a major setback during the late 2000s' recession leading to a large gross domestic product contraction and a budget deficit in 2009. This led to Romania borrowing from the International Monetary Fund. Worsening economic conditions led to unrest and triggered

5832-595: Is Bucharest . Other major urban centers include Cluj-Napoca , Timișoara , Iași , Constanța and Brașov . Settlement in the territory of modern Romania began in the Lower Paleolithic , later becoming the kingdom of Dacia before Roman conquest and Romanisation . The modern Romanian state emerged in 1859 through the union of Moldavia and Wallachia and gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877. During World War I , Romania joined

6048-401: Is also evidence that Homo sapiens arrived in Europe around 54,000 years ago, some 10,000 years earlier than previously thought. The earliest sites in Europe dated 48,000 years ago are Riparo Mochi (Italy), Geissenklösterle (Germany) and Isturitz (France). The European Neolithic period—marked by the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock, increased numbers of settlements and

6264-408: Is another valuable resource. IT , electronics and automotive industries are important in urban and university centers like Cluj-Napoca ( Robert Bosch GmbH , Emerson Electric ), Timișoara ( Alcatel-Lucent , Flextronics and Continental AG ), Brașov , Sibiu , Oradea and Arad . The cities of Cluj Napoca and Târgu Mureș are connected with a strong medical tradition, and according to

6480-488: Is closest to Anatolia (or Asia Minor), but is considered part of Europe politically and it is a member state of the EU. Malta was considered an island of North-western Africa for centuries, but now it is considered to be part of Europe as well. "Europe", as used specifically in British English , may also refer to Continental Europe exclusively. The term "continent" usually implies the physical geography of

6696-756: Is commonly considered to be separated from Asia by the watershed of the Ural Mountains , the Ural River , the Caspian Sea , the Greater Caucasus , the Black Sea , and the waterway of the Bosporus Strait . Europe covers about 10.18 million km (3.93 million sq mi), or 2% of Earth's surface (6.8% of land area), making it the second-smallest continent (using the seven-continent model ). Politically, Europe

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6912-478: Is divided into about fifty sovereign states , of which Russia is the largest and most populous , spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a total population of about 745 million (about 10% of the world population ) in 2021; the third-largest after Asia and Africa. The European climate is affected by warm Atlantic currents, such as the Gulf Stream , which produce

7128-562: Is generally considered a transcontinental country divided entirely by water, while Russia and Kazakhstan are only partly divided by waterways. France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain are also transcontinental (or more properly, intercontinental, when oceans or large seas are involved) in that their main land areas are in Europe while pockets of their territories are located on other continents separated from Europe by large bodies of water. Spain, for example, has territories south of

7344-418: Is known for the scenery of its Carpathian landscape and its rich history, coupled with its multi-cultural character. It also contains Romania's second-largest city, Cluj-Napoca , and other very well preserved medieval iconic cities and towns such as Brașov , Sibiu , Târgu Mureș , Bistrița , Alba Iulia , Mediaș , and Sighișoara . It is also the home of some of Romania's UNESCO World Heritage Sites such as

7560-710: Is one of the most important cultural centres of Romania and was designated the European Capital of Culture for the year 2007, along with the city of Luxembourg . It was formerly the centre of the Transylvanian Saxon culture and between 1692 and 1791 and 1849–65 was the capital of the Principality of Transylvania . Alba Iulia , a city located on the Mureș River in Alba County, has since

7776-710: Is ranked 0.829, which makes Transylvania the 2nd most developed region in Romania after Bucharest-Ilfov and makes it comparable to countries like the Czech Republic, Poland and Estonia. There are large iron and steel , chemical, and textile industries. Stock raising, agriculture , wine production and fruit growing are important occupations. Agriculture is widespread in the Transylvanian Plateau , including growing cereals, vegetables, viticulture and breeding cattle, sheep, swine, and poultry. Timber

7992-722: Is remembered as the June 1990 Mineriad . The subsequent disintegration of the Front produced several political parties, including most notably the Social Democratic Party (PDSR then PSD) and the Democratic Party (PD and subsequently PDL). The former governed Romania from 1990 until 1996 through several coalitions and governments, with Ion Iliescu as head of state. Since then, there have been several other democratic changes of government: in 1996 Emil Constantinescu

8208-550: Is sometimes considered to mark the end of antiquity; alternatively antiquity is considered to end with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE; the closure of the pagan Platonic Academy of Athens in 529 CE; or the rise of Islam in the early 7th century CE. During most of its existence, the Byzantine Empire was one of the most powerful economic, cultural, and military forces in Europe. During

8424-422: Is somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent compared to any clear-cut definition of the term "continent". The current division of Eurasia into two continents now reflects East-West cultural, linguistic and ethnic differences which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line. The geographic border between Europe and Asia does not follow any state boundaries and now only follows a few bodies of water. Turkey

8640-654: Is the largest religion, but other faiths also are present, including Jews and Muslims . Under the Habsburgs , Transylvania served as a place for "religious undesirables". People who arrived in Transylvania included those that did not conform to the Catholic Church and were sent here forcibly, as well as many religious refugees. Transylvania has a long history of religious tolerance, ensured by its religious pluralism. Transylvania has also been (and still is)

8856-617: Is well documented from the end of the 11th century. Scholars who reject the Daco-Roman continuity theory say that the first Vlach groups left their Balkan homeland for the mountain pastures of the eastern and southern Carpathians in the 11th century, establishing the Romanians' presence in the lands to the north of the Lower Danube. Exposed to nomadic incursions, Transylvania developed into an important border province of

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9072-737: The Gesta Hungarorum , the Vlach ( Blacorum, Blacus ) leader Gelou ruled part of Transylvania before the Hungarians arrived. Historians debate whether he was a historical person or an imaginary figure. The gyulas from the seven chieftains of the Hungarians governed Transylvania in the 10th century. King Stephen I of Hungary asserted his claim to rule all lands dominated by Hungarian lords. He personally led his army against his maternal uncle Gyula III and Transylvania became part of

9288-512: The 2008 summit in Bucharest. The country applied in June 1993 for membership in the European Union and became an Associated State of the EU in 1995, an Acceding Country in 2004, and a full member on 1 January 2007. During the 2000s, Romania had one of the highest economic growth rates in Europe and has been referred at times as "the Tiger of Eastern Europe". This has been accompanied by

9504-420: The April Laws of 1848. After the failure of the revolution, the March Constitution of Austria decreed that the Principality of Transylvania be a separate crown land entirely independent of Hungary . The separate status of Transylvania ended with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 , and it was reincorporated into the Kingdom of Hungary ( Transleithania ) as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire . It

9720-481: The Arab countries and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) allowed Romania to play a key role in the Israel– Egypt and Israel–PLO peace talks. As Romania's foreign debt increased sharply between 1977 and 1981 (from US$ 3 billion to $ 10 billion), the influence of international financial organisations—such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank —grew, gradually conflicting with Ceaușescu's autocratic rule. He eventually initiated

9936-427: The Austro-Hungarian Compromise brought about the union of the province with Hungary in 1867. Ethnic Romanian politicians sharply opposed the Hungarian government's attempts to transform Hungary into a national state, especially the laws prescribing the obligatory teaching of Hungarian. Leaders of the Romanian National Party proposed the federalisation of Austria-Hungary and the Romanian intellectuals established

10152-404: The Bran Castle in Brașov County (14th century), and the Hunyad Castle in Hunedoara (15th century). Notable writers such as Emil Cioran , Lucian Blaga , George Coșbuc , Ioan Slavici , Octavian Goga , Liviu Rebreanu , Endre Ady , Elie Wiesel , Elek Benedek and Károly Kós were born in Transylvania. Liviu Rebreanu wrote the novel Ion , which introduces the reader to a depiction of

10368-527: The Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century. From that time, the term designated the sphere of influence of the Western Church , as opposed to both the Eastern Orthodox churches and to the Islamic world . A cultural definition of Europe as the lands of Latin Christendom coalesced in the 8th century, signifying the new cultural condominium created through the confluence of Germanic traditions and Christian-Latin culture, defined partly in contrast with Byzantium and Islam , and limited to northern Iberia ,

10584-410: The Carpathian Basin . The First Bulgarian Empire expanded into Southern Transylvania in the 9th century. Smaller Slavic polities were also present, nevertheless they could hardly keep their independence. In the late 9th century, Transylvania was reached and conquered by the Hungarian conquerors . There is an ongoing scholarly debate over the demographics in Transylvania at the time. According to

10800-595: The Carpathian Mountains . The area includes the Transylvanian Plain . Other areas to the west and north are widely considered part of Transylvania; in common reference, the Western border of Transylvania has come to be identified with the present Romanian-Hungarian border, settled in the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, although geographically the two are not identical. Ethnographic areas: Light yellow – historical region of Transylvania Dark yellow – historical regions of Banat , Crișana and Maramureș Grey – historical regions of Wallachia , Moldavia and Dobruja The area of

11016-460: The Centru development region , another six (Bihor, Bistrița-Năsăud, Cluj, Maramureș, Satu Mare, Sălaj) form the Nord-Vest development region , while four (Arad, Caraș-Severin, Hunedoara, Timiș) form the Vest development region . Cluj-Napoca , commonly known as Cluj, is the second most populous city in Romania (as of the 2021 census), after the national capital Bucharest , and is the seat of Cluj County . From 1790 to 1848 and from 1861 to 1867, it

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11232-425: The Congress of Berlin and Carol I was crowned king in 1881. The Congress also granted the Danube Delta and Dobruja to Romania. Although Romanian scholars strove for the unification of all Romanians into a Greater Romania , the government did not openly support their irredentist projects. The Transylvanian Romanians and Saxons wanted to maintain the separate status of Transylvania in the Habsburg Monarchy, but

11448-415: The Danubian Principalities ) in 1774. Taking advantage of the Greek War of Independence , a Wallachian lesser nobleman, Tudor Vladimirescu, stirred up a revolt against the Ottomans in January 1821, but he was murdered in June by Phanariot Greeks. After a new Russo-Turkish War , the Treaty of Adrianople strengthened the autonomy of the Danubian Principalities in 1829, although it also acknowledged

11664-414: The Don (ancient Tanais ). But maps produced during the 16th to 18th centuries tended to differ in how to continue the boundary beyond the Don bend at Kalach-na-Donu (where it is closest to the Volga, now joined with it by the Volga–Don Canal ), into territory not described in any detail by the ancient geographers. Around 1715, Herman Moll produced a map showing the northern part of the Ob River and

11880-439: The European population at the time. The plague had a devastating effect on Europe's social structure; it induced people to live for the moment as illustrated by Giovanni Boccaccio in The Decameron (1353). It was a serious blow to the Roman Catholic Church and led to increased persecution of Jews , beggars and lepers . The plague is thought to have returned every generation with varying virulence and mortalities until

12096-406: The Great Union Day (also called Unification Day , ) occurring on December 1, celebrates this event. The holiday was established after the Romanian Revolution , and marks the unification not only of Transylvania but also of the provinces of Banat , Bessarabia and Bukovina with the Romanian Kingdom . These other provinces had all joined with the Kingdom of Romania a few months earlier. In 1920,

12312-460: The Greeks and Phoenicians gave rise to early Mediterranean cities. Early Iron Age Italy and Greece from around the 8th century BCE gradually gave rise to historical Classical antiquity, whose beginning is sometimes dated to 776 BCE, the year of the first Olympic Games . Ancient Greece was the founding culture of Western civilisation. Western democratic and rationalist culture are often attributed to Ancient Greece. The Greek city-state,

12528-399: The Habsburg monarchy gained possession of Transylvania through the Hungarian crown . After the failure of Rákóczi's War of Independence in 1711, Habsburg control of Transylvania was consolidated, and Hungarian Transylvanian princes were replaced with Habsburg imperial governors. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 , the Hungarian government proclaimed union with Transylvania in

12744-421: The High Middle Ages been the seat of Transylvania's Roman Catholic diocese . Between 1541 and 1690 it was the capital of the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom and the later Principality of Transylvania . Alba Iulia also has historical importance: after the end of World War I, representatives of the Romanian population of Transylvania gathered in Alba Iulia on 1 December 1918 to proclaim the union of Transylvania with

12960-402: The Holy League against the Ottoman Empire in 1594. The Wallachian prince, Michael the Brave , united the three principalities under his rule in May 1600. The neighboring powers forced him to abdicate in September, but he became a symbol of the unification of the Romanian lands in the 19th century. Although the rulers of the three principalities continued to pay tribute to the Ottomans,

13176-399: The Huns , defeated and shattered the Goths, and settled in the area. After the death of Hun King Attila , their empire disintegrated and the Gepids conquered the region in 455, under King Ardaric . For two centuries, the Gepids controlled Transylvania. The Ostrogoths systematically pushed the Gepids out of Pannonia . King Elemund , on the other hand, successfully fought battles against

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13392-400: The Inquisition against heretics. In the Iberian Peninsula , the Reconquista concluded with the fall of Granada in 1492 , ending over seven centuries of Islamic rule in the south-western peninsula. In the east, a resurgent Byzantine Empire recaptured Crete and Cyprus from the Muslims, and reconquered the Balkans. Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe from the 9th to

13608-409: The Iron Curtain , with NATO in the West and the Warsaw Pact in the East . This divide ended with the Revolutions of 1989 , the fall of the Berlin Wall , and the dissolution of the Soviet Union , which allowed European integration to advance significantly. European integration is being advanced institutionally since 1948 with the founding of the Council of Europe , and significantly through

13824-442: The Irtysh River , a major tributary of the Ob, as components of a series of partly-joined waterways taking the boundary between Europe and Asia from the Turkish Straits, and the Don River all the way to the Arctic Ocean. In 1721, he produced a more up to date map that was easier to read. However, his proposal to adhere to major rivers as the line of demarcation was never taken up by other geographers who were beginning to move away from

14040-423: The Jewish population reported Hungarian as their primary language, so they were also counted as ethnically Hungarian in the 1910 census). At the same time, the percentage of the Romanian population decreased from 59.0% to 53.8% and the percentage of the German population decreased from 11.9% to 10.7%, for a total population of 5,262,495. Magyarization policies greatly contributed to this shift. The percentage of

14256-406: The Kingdom of Hungary in 1002. After the Battle of Mohács in 1526 it belonged to the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom , from which the Principality of Transylvania emerged in 1570 by the Treaty of Speyer . During most of the 16th and 17th centuries, the principality was a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire ; however, the principality had dual suzerainty ( Ottoman and Habsburg ). In 1690,

14472-442: The Kingdom of Hungary in 1002. Place names derived from the Hungarian tribes evidence that major Hungarian groups settled in Transylvania from the 950s. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Southeast and Northeast Transylvania was settled by Saxon colonists. In Romanian historiography, Romanians constituted an important part of Transylvania's population even on the eve of the Mongol Invasions . Hungarian historiography claims that

14688-462: The Kingdom of Hungary . The Székelys—a community of free warriors—settled in central Transylvania around 1100 and moved to the easternmost regions around 1200. Colonists from the Holy Roman Empire —the Transylvanian Saxons ' ancestors—came to the province in the 1150s. A high-ranking royal official, styled voivode , ruled the Transylvanian counties from the 1170s, but the Székely and Saxon seats (or districts) were not subject to

14904-409: The Kingdom of Romania by the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. In 1940, Northern Transylvania reverted to Hungary as a result of the Second Vienna Award , but it was returned to Romania after the end of World War II . In popular culture, Transylvania is commonly associated with vampires because of the influence of Bram Stoker 's 1897 novel Dracula and the many subsequent books and films that

15120-433: The Kingdom of Romania . In Transylvania, there are many medieval smaller towns such as Sighișoara , Mediaș , Sebeș , and Bistrița . Official censuses with information on Transylvania's population have been conducted since the 18th century. On May 1, 1784 the Emperor Joseph II called for the first official census of the Habsburg Empire , including Transylvania. The data was published in 1787, and this census showed only

15336-419: The Mediterranean Sea —namely, Ceuta and Melilla —which are parts of Africa and share a border with Morocco. According to the current convention, Georgia and Azerbaijan are transcontinental countries where waterways have been completely replaced by mountains as the divide between continents. The first recorded usage of Eurṓpē as a geographic term is in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo , in reference to

15552-708: The Megalithic Temples of Malta and Stonehenge , were constructed throughout Western and Southern Europe. The modern native populations of Europe largely descend from three distinct lineages: Mesolithic hunter-gatherers , descended from populations associated with the Paleolithic Epigravettian culture; Neolithic Early European Farmers who migrated from Anatolia during the Neolithic Revolution 9,000 years ago; and Yamnaya Steppe herders who expanded into Europe from

15768-607: The Neandertal valley in Germany ) appeared in Europe 150,000 years ago (115,000 years ago it is found already in the territory of present-day Poland ) and disappeared from the fossil record about 40,000 years ago, with their final refuge being the Iberian Peninsula. The Neanderthals were supplanted by modern humans ( Cro-Magnons ), who seem to have appeared in Europe around 43,000 to 40,000 years ago. However, there

15984-655: The Pechenegs and the Cuman-Kipchaks , caused a massive migration of Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north, and temporarily halted the expansion of the Rus' state to the south and east. Like many other parts of Eurasia , these territories were overrun by the Mongols . The invaders, who became known as Tatars , were mostly Turkic-speaking peoples under Mongol suzerainty. They established

16200-693: The Pontic–Caspian steppe of Ukraine and southern Russia in the context of Indo-European migrations 5,000 years ago. The European Bronze Age began c. 3200 BCE in Greece with the Minoan civilisation on Crete , the first advanced civilisation in Europe. The Minoans were followed by the Myceneans , who collapsed suddenly around 1200 BCE, ushering the European Iron Age . Iron Age colonisation by

16416-630: The Serbian Principality (later Kingdom and Empire ), and the Duchy of Croatia (later Kingdom of Croatia ). To the east, Kievan Rus' expanded from its capital in Kiev to become the largest state in Europe by the 10th century. In 988, Vladimir the Great adopted Orthodox Christianity as the religion of state. Further east, Volga Bulgaria became an Islamic state in the 10th century, but

16632-551: The Slavs , and the 9th century First Bulgarian Empire . During the late 9th century, Transylvania was reached and conquered by the Hungarian tribes , and Gyula's family from the seven chieftains of the Hungarians ruled it in the 10th century. King Stephen I of Hungary asserted his claim to rule all lands dominated by Hungarian lords. He personally led his army against his maternal uncle Gyula III and Transylvania became part of

16848-545: The Székely Land of Eastern Transylvania, and along the newly created border. In August 1940, with the arbitration of Germany and Italy under the Second Vienna Award , Hungary gained Northern Transylvania (including parts of Crișana and Maramureș ), and over 40% of the territory lost in 1920. This award did not solve the nationality problem, as over 1.15–1.3 million Romanians (or 48% to more than 50% of

17064-456: The Treaty of Karlowitz ; however, some anti-Habsburg elements within the principality submitted to the emperor only in the 1711 Peace of Szatmár , when Habsburg control over Principality of Transylvania was consolidated. The Grand Principality of Transylvania was reintroduced 54 years later in 1765. The Hungarian revolution against the Habsburgs started in 1848, and grew into a war for

17280-470: The Treaty of Trianon established new borders and much of the proclaimed territories became part of Romania. Hungary protested against the new state borders, as they did not follow the real ethnic boundaries, for over 1.3 or 1.6 million Hungarian people, representing 25.5 or 31.6% of the Transylvanian population (depending on statistics used), were living on the Romanian side of the border, mainly in

17496-1165: The Villages with fortified churches , the Historic Centre of Sighișoara , the Dacian Fortresses of the Orăștie Mountains and the Roșia Montană Mining Cultural Landscape . It was under the rule of the Agathyrsi , part of the Dacian Kingdom (168 BC–106 AD), Roman Dacia (106–271), the Goths , the Hunnic Empire (4th–5th centuries), the Kingdom of the Gepids (5th–6th centuries), the Avar Khaganate (6th–9th centuries),

17712-545: The decline of the Roman Empire , Europe entered a long period of change arising from what historians call the " Age of Migrations ". There were numerous invasions and migrations amongst the Ostrogoths , Visigoths , Goths , Vandals , Huns , Franks , Angles , Saxons , Slavs , Avars , Bulgars , Vikings , Pechenegs , Cumans , and Magyars . Renaissance thinkers such as Petrarch would later refer to this as

17928-474: The empire came close to the brink of collapse. Thus, the new young emperor Franz Joseph I had to call for Russian help under the Holy Alliance. Czar Nicholas I answered, and sent an army of 200,000 men with 80,000 auxiliary forces. Finally, the joint army of Russian and Austrian forces defeated the Hungarian forces. After the restoration of Habsburg power, Hungary was placed under martial law. Following

18144-516: The ethnic Romanians from Transylvania, Banat, Crișana and Maramureș backed by the mobilization of Romanian troops , proclaimed Union with Romania on 1 December 1918. The Proclamation of Union of Alba Iulia was adopted by the Deputies of the Romanians from Transylvania and supported one month later by the vote of the Deputies of the Saxons from Transylvania. The national holiday of Romania ,

18360-635: The fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE, Christian consolidation of Europe in the wake of the Migration Period marked the European post-classical Middle Ages . The Italian Renaissance spread in the continent a new humanist interest in art and science which led to the modern era . Since the Age of Discovery , led by Spain and Portugal , Europe played a predominant role in global affairs with multiple explorations and conquests around

18576-722: The fastest internet speeds globally . Romania is a member of several international organizations , including the European Union , NATO , and the BSEC . "Romania" derives from the local name for Romanian ( Romanian : român ), which in turn derives from Latin romanus , meaning " Roman " or "of Rome ". This ethnonym for Romanians is first attested in the 16th century by Italian humanists travelling in Transylvania , Moldavia , and Wallachia . The oldest known surviving document written in Romanian that can be precisely dated,

18792-656: The last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago. Earth is currently in an interglacial period of the Quaternary, called the Holocene . Homo erectus georgicus , which lived roughly 1.8 million years ago in Georgia , is the earliest hominin to have been discovered in Europe. Other hominin remains, dating back roughly 1 million years, have been discovered in Atapuerca , Spain . Neanderthal man (named after

19008-585: The national flag . In Transylvania, most Romanians supported the imperial government against the Hungarian revolutionaries after the Diet passed a law concerning the union of Transylvania and Hungary. Bishop Andrei Șaguna proposed the unification of the Romanians of the Habsburg Monarchy in a separate duchy, but the central government refused to change the internal borders. The Treaty of Paris put

19224-569: The polis , was the fundamental political unit of classical Greece. In 508 BCE, Cleisthenes instituted the world's first democratic system of government in Athens . The Greek political ideals were rediscovered in the late 18th century by European philosophers and idealists. Greece also generated many cultural contributions: in philosophy , humanism and rationalism under Aristotle , Socrates and Plato ; in history with Herodotus and Thucydides ; in dramatic and narrative verse, starting with

19440-521: The "Dark Ages". Isolated monastic communities were the only places to safeguard and compile written knowledge accumulated previously; apart from this, very few written records survive. Much literature, philosophy, mathematics, and other thinking from the classical period disappeared from Western Europe, though they were preserved in the east, in the Byzantine Empire. While the Roman empire in

19656-524: The 12th centuries, with a population of approximately 400,000. The Empire was weakened following the defeat at Manzikert , and was weakened considerably by the sack of Constantinople in 1204 , during the Fourth Crusade . Although it would recover Constantinople in 1261, Byzantium fell in 1453 when Constantinople was taken by the Ottoman Empire . In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes, such as

19872-570: The 12th to the 15th centuries, the Grand Duchy of Moscow grew from a small principality under Mongol rule to the largest state in Europe, overthrowing the Mongols in 1480, and eventually becoming the Tsardom of Russia . The state was consolidated under Ivan III the Great and Ivan the Terrible , steadily expanding to the east and south over the next centuries. The Great Famine of 1315–1317

20088-748: The 14th and 16th centuries: it saw the flowering of art , philosophy , music , and the sciences , under the joint patronage of royalty , the nobility, the Roman Catholic Church and an emerging merchant class. Patrons in Italy, including the Medici family of Florentine bankers and the Popes in Rome , funded prolific quattrocento and cinquecento artists such as Raphael , Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci . Transylvania Transylvania

20304-499: The 18th century. During this period, more than 100 plague epidemics swept across Europe. The Renaissance was a period of cultural change originating in Florence , and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The rise of a new humanism was accompanied by the recovery of forgotten classical Greek and Arabic knowledge from monastic libraries, often translated from Arabic into Latin . The Renaissance spread across Europe between

20520-476: The 1930s. The democratic parties were squeezed between conflicts with the fascist and anti-Semitic Iron Guard and the authoritarian tendencies of King Carol II . The King promulgated a new constitution and dissolved the political parties in 1938, replacing the parliamentary system with a royal dictatorship. The 1938 Munich Agreement convinced King Carol II that France and the United Kingdom could not defend Romanian interests. German preparations for

20736-506: The 2nd century. Scholars accepting the Daco-Roman continuity theory—one of the main theories about the origin of the Romanians —say that the cohabitation of the native Dacians and the Roman colonists in Roman Dacia was the first phase of the Romanians' ethnogenesis . The Carpians , Goths , and other neighbouring tribes made regular raids against Dacia from the 210s. The Romans could not resist, and Emperor Aurelian ordered

20952-400: The 50 years of peace that followed are known as Golden Age of Athens , the seminal period of ancient Greece that laid many of the foundations of Western civilisation. Greece was followed by Rome , which left its mark on law , politics , language , engineering , architecture , government , and many more key aspects in western civilisation. By 200 BCE, Rome had conquered Italy and over

21168-585: The Allies , and after the war, territories including Transylvania and Bukovina were integrated into Romania. In World War II , Romania initially aligned with the Axis but switched to the Allies in 1944. After the war, Romania became a socialist republic and a member of the Warsaw Pact , transitioning to democracy and a market economy after the 1989 Revolution . Romania is a developing country with

21384-612: The British Isles, France, Christianised western Germany, the Alpine regions and northern and central Italy. The concept is one of the lasting legacies of the Carolingian Renaissance : Europa often figures in the letters of Charlemagne's court scholar, Alcuin . The transition of Europe to being a cultural term as well as a geographic one led to the borders of Europe being affected by cultural considerations in

21600-528: The Bulgar elite had already begun in the 9th century. Following the conquest of southern Transylvania around 830, people from the Bulgar Empire mined salt at the local salt mines. The Council of Preslav declared Old Church Slavonic the language of liturgy in the country in 893. The Vlachs also adopted Old Church Slavonic as their liturgical language. The Magyars (or Hungarians) took control of

21816-878: The Communist Period the Orthodox Church was much more favored by the state which has led to Eastern Orthodoxy being the religion of the majority of Transylvanians. However, among the Hungarian and German minorities only a small part are Eastern Orthodox. The main two religions of the Hungarian minority are Reformed (Calvinism) and Roman Catholicism; among Germans the main religions are Roman Catholicism (slightly over half of Germans in Romania ), followed by Lutheranism and Eastern Orthodox. There are also Pentecostals and Baptists , particularly in Banat and Crișana. Babeș-Bolyai University , located in Cluj-Napoca

22032-577: The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture built the largest settlements in Neolithic Europe , some of which contained as many as three thousand structures and were possibly inhabited by 20,000 to 46,000 people. The first fortified settlements appeared around 1800 BC, showing the militant character of Bronze Age societies. Greek colonies established on the Black Sea coast in the 7th century BC became important centres of commerce with

22248-778: The Danubian Principalities under the collective guardianship of the Great Powers in 1856. After special assemblies convoked in Moldavia and Wallachia urged the unification of the two principalities , the Great Powers did not prevent the election of Alexandru Ioan Cuza as their collective domnitor (or ruling prince) in January 1859. The united principalities officially adopted the name Romania on 21 February 1862. Cuza's government carried out

22464-508: The Don altogether, following the Greater Caucasus watershed to the Caspian. The question was still treated as a "controversy" in geographical literature of the 1860s, with Douglas Freshfield advocating the Caucasus crest boundary as the "best possible", citing support from various "modern geographers". In Russia and the Soviet Union , the boundary along the Kuma–Manych Depression was the most commonly used as early as 1906. In 1958,

22680-603: The Early Middle Ages, and soon spread throughout Europe. A struggle for influence between the nobility and the monarchy in England led to the writing of Magna Carta and the establishment of a parliament . The primary source of culture in this period came from the Roman Catholic Church . Through monasteries and cathedral schools , the Church was responsible for education in much of Europe. The Papacy reached

22896-559: The East, especially relating to areas under Byzantine, Ottoman, and Russian influence. Such questions were affected by the positive connotations associated with the term Europe by its users. Such cultural considerations were not applied to the Americas, despite their conquest and settlement by European states. Instead, the concept of "Western civilization" emerged as a way of grouping together Europe and these colonies. The question of defining

23112-753: The Eastern Roman Empire. They were defeated by the Lombards and Avars in 567. In the following years, the Avars took full control over Transylvania, heavily settling the area with Slavic tribes who accepted their suzerainty. The expansion of the Frankish Empire , however, imposed a growing threat on them and their khaganate was crushed in the Avar Wars . The Avars and Slavs, although substantially depleted in number, continued to inhabit

23328-600: The European Pontic steppe , occupied the Lower Danube region in 680. After the Avar Khaganate collapsed in the 790s, the First Bulgarian Empire became the dominant power of the region, occupying lands as far as the river Tisa . The First Bulgarian Empire had a mixed population consisting of the Bulgar conquerors, Slavs , and Vlachs (or Romanians) but the Slavicisation of

23544-421: The Frankish tribes were united under Clovis I . Charlemagne , a Frankish king of the Carolingian dynasty who had conquered most of Western Europe, was anointed " Holy Roman Emperor " by the Pope in 800. This led in 962 to the founding of the Holy Roman Empire , which eventually became centred in the German principalities of central Europe. East Central Europe saw the creation of the first Slavic states and

23760-404: The Great 's efforts to make Russia more European, ignored the whole boundary question with his claim that neither Russia, Scandinavia, northern Germany, nor Poland were fully part of Europe. Since then, many modern analytical geographers like Halford Mackinder have declared that they see little validity in the Ural Mountains as a boundary between continents. The mapmakers continued to differ on

23976-443: The Hungarian Army's surrender at Világos (now Șiria , Romania) in 1849, their revolutionary banners were taken to Russia by the Tsarist troops and were kept there both under the Tsarist and Communist systems (in 1940 the Soviet Union offered the banners to the Horthy government). After the Ausgleich of 1867, the Principality of Transylvania was once again abolished. The territory then became part of Transleithania , an addition to

24192-437: The Hungarian authorities' support. After the Soviet victory in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, Iuliu Maniu , a leader of the opposition to Antonescu, entered into secret negotiations with British diplomats who made it clear that Romania had to seek reconciliation with the Soviet Union. To facilitate the coordination of their activities against Antonescu's regime, the National Liberal and National Peasants' parties established

24408-423: The Jewish population of Moldavia, Wallachia, Banat and Southern Transylvania survived, but their fundamental rights were limited. After the September 1943 Allied armistice with Italy , Romania became the second Axis power in Europe in 1943–1944. After the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, about 132,000 Jews – mainly Hungarian-speaking – were deported to extermination camps from Northern Transylvania with

24624-427: The Levant and North Africa and making inroads into Asia Minor . In the mid-7th century, following the Muslim conquest of Persia , Islam penetrated into the Caucasus region. Over the next centuries Muslim forces took Cyprus , Malta , Crete , Sicily , and parts of southern Italy . Between 711 and 720, most of the lands of the Visigothic Kingdom of Iberia were brought under Muslim rule—save for small areas in

24840-414: The Mediterranean Sea without the inclusion of any mountain ranges. Cartographer Herman Moll suggested in 1715 Europe was bounded by a series of partly-joined waterways directed towards the Turkish straits, and the Irtysh River draining into the upper part of the Ob River and the Arctic Ocean . In contrast, the present eastern boundary of Europe partially adheres to the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, which

25056-475: The National Democratic Bloc, which also included the Social Democratic and Communist parties. After a successful Soviet offensive, the young King Michael I ordered Antonescu's arrest and appointed politicians from the National Democratic Bloc to form a new government on 23 August 1944. Romania switched sides during the war, and nearly 250,000 Romanian troops joined the Red Army's military campaign against Hungary and Germany, but Joseph Stalin regarded

25272-514: The Old Kingdom, most notably to Bucharest ). According to the results of the 2011 census , the total population of Transylvania was 6,789,250 inhabitants and the ethnic groups were: Romanians – 70.62%, Hungarians – 17.92%, Roma – 3.99%, Ukrainians – 0.63%, Germans (mostly Transylvanian Saxons and Banat Swabians, but also Zipsers, Sathmar Swabians, or Landlers) – 0.49%, other – 0.77%. Some 378,298 inhabitants (5.58%) have not declared their ethnicity. The ethnic Hungarian population of Transylvania form

25488-401: The Orthodox Romanian prelates to accept the union with the Roman Catholic Church in 1699. The Church Union strengthened the Romanian intellectuals' devotion to their Roman heritage. The Orthodox Church was restored in Transylvania only after Orthodox monks stirred up revolts in 1744 and 1759. The organisation of the Transylvanian Military Frontier caused further disturbances, especially among

25704-413: The Ottomans. Most Wallachian and Moldavian princes paid a regular tribute to the Ottoman sultans from 1417 and 1456, respectively. A military commander of Romanian origin, John Hunyadi , organised the defence of the Kingdom of Hungary until his death in 1456. Increasing taxes outraged the Transylvanian peasants, and they rose up in an open rebellion in 1437, but the Hungarian nobles and

25920-479: The Romanian army on behalf of the Entente Powers a day before Germany capitulated on 11 November 1918. Austria-Hungary quickly disintegrated after the war. The General Congress of Bukovina proclaimed the union of the province with Romania on 28 November 1918, and the Grand National Assembly proclaimed the union of Transylvania, Banat, Crișana and Maramureș with the kingdom on 1 December. Peace treaties with Austria, Bulgaria and Hungary delineated

26136-404: The Romanian majority has significantly increased since the declaration of the union of Transylvania with Romania after World War I in 1918. The proportion of Hungarians in Transylvania was in steep decline as more of the region's inhabitants moved into urban areas, where the pressure to assimilate and Romanianize was greater. The expropriation of the estates of Magyar magnates , the distribution of

26352-399: The Romanians as the fourth privileged nation was forced into exile. Uniate and Orthodox clerics and laymen jointly signed a plea for the Transylvanian Romanians' emancipation in 1791, but the monarch and the local authorities refused to grant their requests. The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca authorised the Russian ambassador in Istanbul to defend the autonomy of Moldavia and Wallachia (known as

26568-426: The Romans for decades, but the Roman army defeated his troops in 106 AD. Emperor Trajan transformed Banat , Oltenia , and the greater part of Transylvania into a new province called Roman Dacia , but Dacian and Sarmatian tribes continued to dominate the lands along the Roman frontiers. The Romans pursued an organised colonisation policy, and the provincials enjoyed a long period of peace and prosperity in

26784-524: The Saxons. In retaliation, the Saxons distributed poems of cruelty and other propaganda characterising the sadistic Vlad III Dracula as a drinker of blood. The earliest known reference to Transylvania appears in a Medieval Latin document of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1078 as ultra silvam , meaning "beyond the forest" ( ultra meaning "beyond" or "on the far side of" and the accusative case of Sylva ( sylvam ) "woods, forest"). Transylvania, with an alternative Latin prepositional prefix, means "on

27000-433: The Soviet Geographical Society formally recommended that the boundary between the Europe and Asia be drawn in textbooks from Baydaratskaya Bay , on the Kara Sea , along the eastern foot of Ural Mountains, then following the Ural River until the Mugodzhar Hills , and then the Emba River ; and Kuma–Manych Depression, thus placing the Caucasus entirely in Asia and the Urals entirely in Europe. The Flora Europaea adopted

27216-413: The Soviet-led 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia . Ceaușescu even publicly condemned the action as "a big mistake, [and] a serious danger to peace in Europe and to the fate of Communism in the world". It was the only Communist state to maintain diplomatic relations with Israel after 1967's Six-Day War and established diplomatic relations with West Germany the same year. At the same time, close ties with

27432-468: The Székelys in 1764 . Princes Dimitrie Cantemir of Moldavia and Constantin Brâncoveanu of Wallachia concluded alliances with the Habsburg Monarchy and Russia against the Ottomans, but they were dethroned in 1711 and 1714, respectively. The sultans lost confidence in the native princes and appointed Orthodox merchants from the Phanar district of Istanbul to rule Moldova and Wallachia. The Phanariot princes pursued oppressive fiscal policies and dissolved

27648-400: The Tanais (the modern Don River) as the boundary. The Roman Empire did not attach a strong identity to the concept of continental divisions. However, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire , the culture that developed in its place , linked to Latin and the Catholic church, began to associate itself with the concept of "Europe". The term "Europe" is first used for a cultural sphere in

27864-403: The Treaty of Trianon, 27 years earlier, thus confirming the return of Northern Transylvania to Romania. From 1947 to 1989, Transylvania, along with the rest of Romania, was under a communist regime . The ethnic clashes of Târgu Mureș between ethnic Romanians and Hungarians in March 1990 took place after the fall of the communist regime and became the most notable inter-ethnic incident in

28080-497: The Vlach population entered Transylvania from the Balkans only in the 12th century, and the devastating invasion of Mongols had also as consequence the large-scale immigration by Romanians, however the immigration of Romanians did not happen all at once, the process of settlement stretched over several centuries. After the Battle of Kosovo and Ottoman arrival at the Hungarian border, thousands of Vlach and Serbian refugees came to Transylvania. Between 1002 and 1526, Transylvania

28296-422: The adoption of Christianity ( c. 1000 CE) . The powerful West Slavic state of Great Moravia spread its territory all the way south to the Balkans, reaching its largest territorial extent under Svatopluk I and causing a series of armed conflicts with East Francia . Further south, the first South Slavic states emerged in the late 7th and 8th century and adopted Christianity : the First Bulgarian Empire ,

28512-543: The army. The neighboring powers took advantage of the situation: the Habsburg Monarchy annexed the northwestern part of Moldavia, or Bukovina , in 1775, and the Russian Empire seized the eastern half of Moldavia, or Bessarabia , in 1812. A census revealed that the Romanians were more numerous than any other ethnic group in Transylvania in 1733, but legislation continued to use contemptuous adjectives (such as "tolerated" and "admitted") when referring to them. The Uniate bishop , Inocențiu Micu-Klein who demanded recognition of

28728-638: The arrival of a mixed group of people from Thessaly in the 6th millennium BC. Excavations near a salt spring at Lunca yielded the earliest evidence for salt exploitation in Europe; here salt production began between the 5th and 4th millennium BC. The first permanent settlements developed into "proto-cities", which were larger than 320 hectares (800 acres). The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture —the best known archaeological culture of Old Europe —flourished in Muntenia , southeastern Transylvania and northeastern Moldavia between c. 5500 to 2750 BC. During its middle phase (c. 4000 to 3500 BC), populations belonging to

28944-411: The basis of many modern legal systems, funded the construction of the Hagia Sophia and brought the Christian church under state control. From the 7th century onwards, as the Byzantines and neighbouring Sasanid Persians were severely weakened due to the protracted, centuries-lasting and frequent Byzantine–Sasanian wars , the Muslim Arabs began to make inroads into historically Roman territory, taking

29160-435: The boundary between the lower Don and Samara well into the 19th century. The 1745 atlas published by the Russian Academy of Sciences has the boundary follow the Don beyond Kalach as far as Serafimovich before cutting north towards Arkhangelsk , while other 18th- to 19th-century mapmakers such as John Cary followed Strahlenberg's prescription. To the south, the Kuma–Manych Depression was identified c.  1773 by

29376-400: The continent The prevalent definition of Europe as a geographical term has been in use since the mid-19th century. Europe is taken to be bounded by large bodies of water to the north, west and south; Europe's limits to the east and north-east are usually taken to be the Ural Mountains , the Ural River , and the Caspian Sea ; to the south-east, the Caucasus Mountains , the Black Sea , and

29592-453: The continent. Chinese, for example, uses the word Ōuzhōu ( 歐洲 / 欧洲 ), which is an abbreviation of the transliterated name Ōuluóbā zhōu ( 歐羅巴洲 ) ( zhōu means "continent"); a similar Chinese-derived term Ōshū ( 欧州 ) is also sometimes used in Japanese such as in the Japanese name of the European Union, Ōshū Rengō ( 欧州連合 ) , despite the katakana Yōroppa ( ヨーロッパ ) being more commonly used. In some Turkic languages,

29808-424: The continents as the lands given by Noah to his three sons; Europe was defined as stretching from the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar , separating it from Northwest Africa , to the Don, separating it from Asia. The convention received by the Middle Ages and surviving into modern usage is that of the Roman era used by Roman-era authors such as Posidonius , Strabo , and Ptolemy , who took

30024-436: The country and proclaimed Romania a people's republic . Romania remained under the direct military occupation and economic control of the USSR until the late 1950s. During this period, Romania's vast natural resources were drained continuously by mixed Soviet-Romanian companies ( SovRoms ) set up for unilateral exploitative purposes. In 1948, the state began to nationalise private firms and to collectivise agriculture. Until

30240-449: The country as an occupied territory within the Soviet sphere of influence. Stalin's deputy instructed the King to make the Communists' candidate, Petru Groza , the prime minister in March 1945. The Romanian administration in Northern Transylvania was soon restored, and Groza's government carried out an agrarian reform. In February 1947, the Paris Peace Treaties confirmed the return of Northern Transylvania to Romania, but they also legalised

30456-402: The development of major commercial routes along the coast of the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas . The growing wealth and independence acquired by some coastal cities gave the Maritime Republics a leading role in the European scene. The Middle Ages on the mainland were dominated by the two upper echelons of the social structure: the nobility and the clergy. Feudalism developed in France in

30672-428: The dominant power of Eastern Europe, but Béla IV of Hungary's land grant to the Knights Hospitallers in Oltenia and Muntenia shows that the local Vlach rulers were subject to the king's authority in 1247. Basarab I of Wallachia united the Romanian polities between the southern Carpathians and the Lower Danube in the 1310s. He defeated the Hungarian royal army in the Battle of Posada and secured

30888-540: The early 1960s, the government severely curtailed political liberties and vigorously suppressed any dissent with the help of the Securitate —the Romanian secret police. During this period the regime launched several campaigns of purges during which numerous " enemies of the state " and "parasite elements" were targeted for different forms of punishment including: deportation, internal exile, internment in forced labour camps and prisons—sometimes for life—as well as extrajudicial killing . Nevertheless, anti-communist resistance

31104-446: The early 7th century. The Goths were expanding towards the Lower Danube from the 230s, forcing the native peoples to flee to the Roman Empire or to accept their suzerainty . The Goths' rule ended abruptly when the Huns invaded their territory in 376, causing new waves of migrations. The Huns forced the remnants of the local population into submission, but their empire collapsed in 454. The Gepids took possession of

31320-466: The end of the 18th century, gave rise to radical economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe and eventually the wider world. Both world wars began and were fought to a great extent in Europe, contributing to a decline in Western European dominance in world affairs by the mid-20th century as the Soviet Union and the United States took prominence and competed over dominance in Europe and globally. The resulting Cold War divided Europe along

31536-402: The epic poems of Homer ; in drama with Sophocles and Euripides ; in medicine with Hippocrates and Galen ; and in science with Pythagoras , Euclid , and Archimedes . In the course of the 5th century BCE, several of the Greek city states would ultimately check the Achaemenid Persian advance in Europe through the Greco-Persian Wars , considered a pivotal moment in world history, as

31752-412: The evacuation of the province Dacia Trajana in the 270s. Scholars supporting the continuity theory are convinced that most Latin-speaking commoners stayed behind when the army and civil administration were withdrawn. The Romans did not abandon their fortresses along the northern banks of the Lower Danube for decades, and Dobruja (known as Scythia Minor ) remained an integral part of the Roman Empire until

31968-411: The fact that most of the former industrial and economic enterprises which were built and operated during the communist period were closed, mainly as a result of the policies of privatisation of the post–1989 regimes. Corruption has been a major issue in contemporary Romanian politics. In November 2015, massive anti-corruption protests which developed in the wake of the Colectiv nightclub fire led to

32184-410: The following two centuries it conquered Greece , Hispania ( Spain and Portugal ), the North African coast, much of the Middle East , Gaul ( France and Belgium ), and Britannia ( England and Wales ). Expanding from their base in central Italy beginning in the third century BCE, the Romans gradually expanded to eventually rule the entire Mediterranean basin and Western Europe by the turn of

32400-409: The former Dacia province. Place names that are of Slavic origin abound in Romania, indicating that a significant Slavic-speaking population lived in the territory. The first Slavic groups settled in Moldavia and Wallachia in the 6th century, in Transylvania around 600. The nomadic Avars defeated the Gepids and established a powerful empire around 570. The Bulgars , who also came from

32616-469: The heads of the Saxon and Székely communities jointly suppressed their revolt. The formal alliance of the Hungarian, Saxon, and Székely leaders, known as the Union of the Three Nations , became an important element of the self-government of Transylvania. The Orthodox Romanian knezes ("chiefs") were excluded from the Union. The Kingdom of Hungary collapsed, and the Ottomans occupied parts of Banat and Crișana in 1541. Transylvania and Maramureș , along with

32832-400: The height of its power during the High Middle Ages. An East-West Schism in 1054 split the former Roman Empire religiously, with the Eastern Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire and the Roman Catholic Church in the former Western Roman Empire. In 1095 Pope Urban II called for a crusade against Muslims occupying Jerusalem and the Holy Land . In Europe itself, the Church organised

33048-1114: The historical Voivodeship is 55,146 km (21,292 sq mi). The regions granted to Romania in 1920 covered 23 counties including nearly 102,200 km (39,460 sq mi) (102,787–103,093 km in Hungarian sources and 102,282 km in contemporary Romanian documents). Nowadays, several administrative reorganisations make the territory cover 16 counties ( Romanian : județ ), with an area of 100,290 km (38,722 sq mi), in central and northwest Romania. The 16 counties are: Alba , Arad , Bihor , Bistrița-Năsăud , Brașov , Caraș-Severin , Cluj , Covasna , Harghita , Hunedoara , Maramureș , Mureș , Sălaj , Satu Mare , Sibiu , and Timiș . Transylvania contains both largely urban counties, such as Brașov and Hunedoara counties, as well as largely rural ones, such as Bistrița-Năsăud and Sălaj counties. Since 1998, Romania has been divided into eight development regions , acting as divisions that coordinate and implement socio-economic development at regional level. Six counties (Alba, Brașov, Covasna, Harghita, Mureș and Sibiu) form

33264-399: The idea of water boundaries as the only legitimate divides between Europe and Asia. Four years later, in 1725, Philip Johan von Strahlenberg was the first to depart from the classical Don boundary. He drew a new line along the Volga , following the Volga north until the Samara Bend , along Obshchy Syrt (the drainage divide between the Volga and Ural Rivers ), then north and east along

33480-479: The independence of Wallachia in 1330. The second Romanian principality, Moldavia , achieved full autonomy during the reign of Bogdan I around 1360. A local dynasty ruled the Despotate of Dobruja in the second half of the 14th century, but the Ottoman Empire took possession of the territory after 1388. Princes Mircea I and Vlad III of Wallachia , and Stephen III of Moldavia defended their countries' independence against

33696-434: The lands to the Romanian peasants, and the policy of cultural Romanianization that followed the Treaty of Trianon were major causes of friction between Hungary and Romania. Other factors include the emigration of non-Romanian peoples, assimilation and internal migration within Romania (estimates show that between 1945 and 1977, some 630,000 people moved from the Old Kingdom to Transylvania, and 280,000 from Transylvania to

33912-532: The latter waterway to its source in the Ural Mountains . At this point he proposed that mountain ranges could be included as boundaries between continents as alternatives to nearby waterways. Accordingly, he drew the new boundary north along Ural Mountains rather than the nearby and parallel running Ob and Irtysh rivers. This was endorsed by the Russian Empire and introduced the convention that would eventually become commonly accepted. However, this did not come without criticism. Voltaire , writing in 1760 about Peter

34128-538: The life of Romanian peasants and intellectuals of Transylvania at the turn of the 20th century. Károly Kós was one of the most important writers supporting the movement of Transylvanianism . Transylvania has a very rich and unique religious history. Since the Protestant Reformation , different Christian denominations have coexisted in this religious melting pot, including Romanian Orthodox , other Eastern Orthodox , Latin Catholic and Romanian Greek Catholic , Lutheran , Reformed , and Unitarian branches. Christianity

34344-412: The local chieftains and established Roman Catholic bishoprics (office of a bishop) in Transylvania and Banat in the early 11th century. Significant Pecheneg groups fled to the Byzantine Empire in the 1040s; the Oghuz Turks followed them, and the nomadic Cumans became the dominant power of the steppes in the 1060s. Cooperation between the Cumans and the Vlachs against the Byzantine Empire

34560-420: The local tribes. Among the native peoples, Herodotus listed the Getae of the Lower Danube region, the Agathyrsi of Transylvania and the Syginnae of the plains along the river Tisza at the beginning of the 5th century BC. Centuries later, Strabo associated the Getae with the Dacians who dominated the lands along the southern Carpathian Mountains in the 1st century BC. Burebista

34776-464: The millennium. The Roman Republic ended in 27 BCE, when Augustus proclaimed the Roman Empire . The two centuries that followed are known as the pax romana , a period of unprecedented peace, prosperity and political stability in most of Europe. The empire continued to expand under emperors such as Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius , who spent time on the Empire's northern border fighting Germanic , Pictish and Scottish tribes. Christianity

34992-401: The most talented princes— Gabriel Bethlen of Transylvania, Matei Basarab of Wallachia, and Vasile Lupu of Moldavia—strengthened their autonomy. The united armies of the Holy League expelled the Ottoman troops from Central Europe between 1684 and 1699, and the Principality of Transylvania was integrated into the Habsburg monarchy . The Habsburgs supported the Catholic clergy and persuaded

35208-461: The new borders in 1919 and 1920, but the Soviet Union did not acknowledge the loss of Bessarabia. Romania achieved its greatest territorial extent, expanding from the pre-war 137,000 to 295,000 km (53,000 to 114,000 sq mi). A new electoral system granted voting rights to all adult male citizens, and a series of radical agrarian reforms transformed the country into a "nation of small landowners" between 1918 and 1921. Gender equality as

35424-470: The newly established Austro-Hungarian Empire . Romanian intellectuals issued the Blaj Pronouncement in protest. The region was the site of an important battle during World War I, which caused the replacement of the German Chief of Staff, temporarily ceased German offensives on all the other fronts and created a unified Central Powers command under the German Kaiser. Following defeat in World War I , Austria-Hungary disintegrated. Elected representatives of

35640-441: The northwest ( Asturias ) and largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees . This territory, under the Arabic name Al-Andalus , became part of the expanding Umayyad Caliphate . The unsuccessful second siege of Constantinople (717) weakened the Umayyad dynasty and reduced their prestige. The Umayyads were then defeated by the Frankish leader Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitiers in 732, which ended their northward advance. In

35856-403: The opinion polls. This surprise victory was attributed by many analysts to the implication of the Romanian diaspora in the voting process, with almost 50% casting their votes for Klaus Iohannis in the first round, compared to only 16% for Ponta. In 2019, Iohannis was re-elected president in a landslide victory over former Prime Minister Viorica Dăncilă . The post–1989 period is characterised by

36072-431: The originally Persian name Frangistan ("land of the Franks ") is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa . Clickable map of Europe, showing one of the most commonly used continental boundaries Key: blue : states which straddle the border between Europe and Asia ; green : countries not geographically in Europe, but closely associated with

36288-479: The other side of the woods". The Medieval Latin form Ultrasylvania , later Transylvania , was a direct translation from the Hungarian form Erdő-elve , later Erdély , from which also the Romanian name, Ardeal , comes. That also was used as an alternative name in German überwald ("beyond the forest") (13th–14th centuries) and Ukrainian Залісся ( Zalissia ). Historical names of Transylvania are: The first known civilization to inhabit

36504-426: The overall population (1,440,986 inhabitants). Fényes Elek , a 19th-century Hungarian statistician, estimated in 1842 that in the population of Transylvania for the years 1830–1840 the majority were 62.3% Romanians and 23.3% Hungarians . In the last quarter of the 19th century, the Hungarian population of Transylvania increased from 24.9% in 1869 to 31.6%, as indicated in the 1910 Hungarian census (the majority of

36720-444: The poetry devoted to it. An alternative view is that of Robert Beekes , who has argued in favour of a pre-Indo-European origin for the name, explaining that a derivation from eurus would yield a different toponym than Europa. Beekes has located toponyms related to that of Europa in the territory of ancient Greece, and localities such as that of Europos in ancient Macedonia . There have been attempts to connect Eurṓpē to

36936-450: The population of the ceded territory) remained in Northern Transylvania while 0.36–0.8 million Hungarians (or 11% to more than 20% of the population) continued to reside in Southern Transylvania . The Second Vienna Award was voided on 12 September 1944 by the Allied Commission through the Armistice Agreement with Romania (Article 19), and the 1947 Treaty of Paris reaffirmed the borders between Romania and Hungary as originally defined in

37152-409: The post-communist era. The Transylvanian Plateau , 300 to 500 metres (980–1,640 feet) high, is drained by the Mureș , Someș , Criș , and Olt rivers, as well as other tributaries of the Danube . This core of historical Transylvania roughly corresponds with nine counties of modern Romania. The plateau is almost entirely surrounded by the Eastern , Southern and Romanian Western branches of

37368-540: The presence of units of the Red Army in the country. During the Soviet occupation of Romania , the communist-dominated government called for new elections in 1946, which they fraudulently won , with a fabricated 70% majority of the vote. Thus, they rapidly established themselves as the dominant political force. Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej , a communist party leader imprisoned in 1933, escaped in 1944 to become Romania's first communist leader. In February 1947, he and others forced King Michael I to abdicate and leave

37584-464: The principal sector of economy, but several branches of industry—especially the production of coal, oil, metals, synthetic rubber, explosives and cosmetics—developed during the interwar period . With oil production of 5.8 million tons in 1930, Romania ranked sixth in the world. Two parties, the National Liberal Party and the National Peasants' Party , dominated political life, but the Great Depression in Romania brought about significant changes in

37800-417: The realisation of the European Union (EU), which represents today the majority of Europe. The European Union is a supranational political entity that lies between a confederation and a federation and is based on a system of European treaties . The EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. A majority of its members have adopted

38016-454: The region was divided during the war) was crucial to the Romanian defense industry. Transylvanian factories built until 1945 over 1,000 warplanes and over 1,000 artillery pieces of all types, among others . The culture of Transylvania is complex because of its varied history and longstanding multiculturalism, which has incorporated significant Hungarian (see Hungarians in Romania ) and German (see Germans of Romania ) influences. The region

38232-456: The remote regions of north-western Iberia and the middle Pyrenees the power of the Muslims in the south was scarcely felt. It was here that the foundations of the Christian kingdoms of Asturias , Leon , and Galicia were laid and from where the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula would start. However, no coordinated attempt would be made to drive the Moors out. The Christian kingdoms were mainly focused on their own internal power struggles. As

38448-400: The resignation of Romania's Prime Minister Victor Ponta. During 2017–2018, in response to measures which were perceived to weaken the fight against corruption, some of the biggest protests since 1989 took place in Romania, with over 500,000 people protesting across the country. Nevertheless, there have been significant reforms aimed at tackling corruption. A National Anticorruption Directorate

38664-481: The rest of Banat and Crișana developed into a new state under Ottoman suzerainty, the Principality of Transylvania . Reformation spread and four denominations— Calvinism , Lutheranism , Unitarianism , and Roman Catholicism—were officially acknowledged in 1568. The Romanians' Orthodox faith remained only tolerated, although they made up more than one-third of the population, according to 17th-century estimations. The princes of Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia joined

38880-419: The same classifications top performance hospitals exist there. Native brands include: Roman of Brașov (trucks and buses), Azomureș of Târgu Mureș (fertilizers), Terapia of Cluj-Napoca (pharmaceuticals), Banca Transilvania of Cluj-Napoca (finance), Romgaz and Transgaz of Mediaș (natural gas), Jidvei of Alba county (alcoholic beverages), Timișoreana of Timișoara (alcoholic beverages),

39096-525: The same regions. The reliability of the Gesta is debated. Some scholars regard it as a basically accurate account, others describe it as a literary work filled with invented details. The Pechenegs seized the lowlands abandoned by the Hungarians to the east of the Carpathians. Byzantine missionaries proselytised in the lands east of the Tisa from the 940s and Byzantine troops occupied Dobruja in the 970s. The first king of Hungary , Stephen I , who supported Western European missionaries, defeated

39312-422: The state of the Golden Horde with headquarters in Crimea, which later adopted Islam as a religion, and ruled over modern-day southern and central Russia for more than three centuries. After the collapse of Mongol dominions, the first Romanian states (principalities) emerged in the 14th century: Moldavia and Walachia . Previously, these territories were under the successive control of Pechenegs and Cumans. From

39528-428: The state owned Cugir Arms Factory , and others. The Jiu Valley , located in the south of Hunedoara County , has been a major mining area throughout the second half of the 19th century and the 20th century, but many mines were closed down in the years following the collapse of the communist regime, forcing the region to diversify its economy. During the Second World War, Transylvania (the Southern/Romanian half, as

39744-475: The steppes north of the Lower Danube in the 830s, but the Bulgarians and the Pechenegs jointly forced them to abandon this region for the lowlands along the Middle Danube around 894. Centuries later, the Gesta Hungarorum wrote of the invading Magyars' wars against three dukes— Glad , Menumorut and the Vlach Gelou —for Banat, Crișana and Transylvania. The Gesta also listed many peoples—Slavs, Bulgarians, Vlachs, Khazars , and Székelys —inhabiting

39960-534: The story has inspired. Many Transylvanian Saxons were furious with Vlad the Impaler for strengthening the borders of Wallachia , which interfered with their control of trade routes, and his extreme sadism and barbarity, which by a collection of credible historical accounts of diverse origins, most of which were non-Saxon, led to the industrial-scale execution of over 100,000 people by impaling, some of whom were Saxons. The victims were often arranged in grotesque displays intended to terrorize various groups, including

40176-404: The sultan's right to confirm the election of the princes. Mihail Kogălniceanu , Nicolae Bălcescu and other leaders of the 1848 revolutions in Moldavia and Wallachia demanded the emancipation of the peasants and the union of the two principalities, but Russian and Ottoman troops crushed their revolt. The Wallachian revolutionists were the first to adopt the blue, yellow and red tricolour as

40392-459: The suzerainty of the Habsburg emperor Leopold I , and the region was officially attached to the Habsburg Empire. The Habsburgs acknowledged the Principality of Transylvania as one of the Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen , but the territory of the principality was administratively separated from Habsburg Hungary, and subjected to the direct rule of the emperor's governors. In 1699 the Ottomans legally acknowledged their loss of Transylvania in

40608-428: The territorial losses, the King was forced to abdicate in favour of his minor son, Michael I , on 6 September, and Romania was transformed into a national-legionary state under the leadership of General Ion Antonescu . Antonescu signed the Tripartite Pact of Germany, Italy and Japan on 23 November. The Iron Guard staged a coup against Antonescu, but he crushed the riot with German support and introduced

40824-475: The territory was the Agathyrsi , of the Scythic cultures . From the 4th century BC, Celtic La Tène culture came to domination. The indigenous Dacian tribes engaged in politics from the 1st century BC and united under King Burebista , forming their kingdom Dacia . The Roman Empire made heavy efforts to seize the territory from King Decebalus , resulting in the formation of Roman Dacia in 106, after Trajan 's costly and bloody wars . During Roman rule,

41040-411: The territory, depleted of its indigenous population, was repopulated with Latin colonists and its rich resource stock was systematically exploited. However, the growing threat of East Germanic and Carpic invasions made Emperor Aurelian withdraw his legions and evacuate the citizens south of the Lower Danube in 275, when the province became occupied by the Goths . In 376, a powerful nomadic people,

41256-432: The theory of Daco-Roman continuity, Romanians continuously lived on the territory. Opponents of that hypothesis point to the lack of written, archaeological and linguistic evidence to support it. Hungarian medieval chronicles claimed that the Székely people descended from the Huns , who remained in Transylvania, and later, in combination with the returning Hungarians , conquered the Carpathian Basin . According to

41472-403: The total independence of the Kingdom of Hungary from the Habsburg dynasty . Julius Jacob von Haynau , the leader of the Austrian army, was appointed plenipotentiary to restore order in Hungary after the conflict. He ordered the execution of The 13 Hungarian Martyrs of Arad , and Prime Minister Batthyány was executed the same day in Pest . After a series of serious Austrian defeats in 1849,

41688-420: The treaty. The Principality of Transylvania continued to be part of the Kingdom of Hungary in the sense of public law, which stressed in a highly significant way that John Sigismund's possessions belonged to the Holy Crown of Hungary and he was not permitted to alienate them. The Habsburgs acquired the territory shortly after the Battle of Vienna in 1683. In 1687, the rulers of Transylvania recognized

41904-588: The violent Romanian Revolution of December 1989 in which thousands were killed or injured. After a trial, Ceaușescu and his wife were executed by firing squad at a military base outside Bucharest on 25 December 1989. The charges for which they were executed were, among others, genocide by starvation. After the 1989 revolution, the National Salvation Front (FSN), led by Ion Iliescu , took partial and superficial multi-party democratic and free market measures after seizing power as an ad interim governing body. In March 1990, violent outbreaks went on in Târgu Mureș as

42120-612: The voivodes' authority. Royal charters wrote of the " Vlachs ' land" in southern Transylvania in the early 13th century, indicating the existence of autonomous Romanian communities . Papal correspondence mentions the activities of Orthodox prelates among the Romanians in Muntenia in the 1230s. Also in the 13th century, the Republic of Genoa started establishing colonies on the Black Sea, including Calafat , and Constanța . The Mongols destroyed large territories during their invasion of Eastern and Central Europe in 1241 and 1242. The Mongols' Golden Horde emerged as

42336-454: The war against the Central Powers in 1916. The German and Austrian-Hungarian troops defeated the Romanian army and occupied three-quarters of the country by early 1917. After the October Revolution turned Russia from an ally into an enemy, Romania was forced to sign a harsh peace treaty with the Central Powers in May 1918, but the collapse of Russia also enabled the union of Bessarabia with Romania . King Ferdinand again mobilised

42552-407: The waterways connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea . Islands are generally grouped with the nearest continental landmass, hence Iceland is considered to be part of Europe, while the nearby island of Greenland is usually assigned to North America , although politically belonging to Denmark. Nevertheless, there are some exceptions based on sociopolitical and cultural differences. Cyprus

42768-445: The west and the north, transmitting newly acquired skills in producing copper artifacts. In Western Europe the Neolithic period was characterised not by large agricultural settlements but by field monuments, such as causewayed enclosures , burial mounds and megalithic tombs . The Corded Ware cultural horizon flourished at the transition from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic . During this period giant megalithic monuments, such as

42984-416: The west continued to decline, Roman traditions and the Roman state remained strong in the predominantly Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire , also known as the Byzantine Empire . During most of its existence, the Byzantine Empire was the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in Europe. Emperor Justinian I presided over Constantinople's first golden age: he established a legal code that forms

43200-399: The western shore of the Aegean Sea . As a name for a part of the known world, it is first used in the 6th century BCE by Anaximander and Hecataeus . Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and Europe along the Phasis River (the modern Rioni River on the territory of Georgia ) in the Caucasus, a convention still followed by Herodotus in the 5th century BCE. Herodotus mentioned that

43416-419: The widespread use of pottery—began around 7000 BCE in Greece and the Balkans , probably influenced by earlier farming practices in Anatolia and the Near East . It spread from the Balkans along the valleys of the Danube and the Rhine ( Linear Pottery culture ), and along the Mediterranean coast ( Cardial culture ). Between 4500 and 3000 BCE, these central European neolithic cultures developed further to

43632-411: The world had been divided by unknown persons into three parts—Europe, Asia, and Libya (Africa)—with the Nile and the Phasis forming their boundaries—though he also states that some considered the River Don , rather than the Phasis, as the boundary between Europe and Asia. Europe's eastern frontier was defined in the 1st century by geographer Strabo at the River Don. The Book of Jubilees described

43848-410: The world. The place name Evros was first used by the ancient Greeks to refer to their northernmost province, which bears the same name today. The principal river there – Evros (today's Maritsa ) – flows through the fertile valleys of Thrace , which itself was also called Europe, before the term meant the continent. In classical Greek mythology , Europa ( Ancient Greek : Εὐρώπη , Eurṓpē )

44064-452: The world. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers colonised at various times the Americas , almost all of Africa and Oceania , and the majority of Asia. The Age of Enlightenment , the French Revolution , and the Napoleonic Wars shaped the continent culturally, politically, and economically from the end of the 17th century until the first half of the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution , which began in Great Britain at

44280-422: Was legalised by Constantine I in 313 CE after three centuries of imperial persecution . Constantine also permanently moved the capital of the empire from Rome to the city of Byzantium (modern-day Istanbul ) which was renamed Constantinople in his honour in 330 CE. Christianity became the sole official religion of the empire in 380 CE, and in 391–392 CE the emperor Theodosius outlawed pagan religions. This

44496-399: Was a Phoenician princess. One view is that her name derives from the Ancient Greek elements εὐρύς ( eurús ) 'wide, broad', and ὤψ ( ōps , gen. ὠπός , ōpós ) 'eye, face, countenance', hence their composite Eurṓpē would mean 'wide-gazing' or 'broad of aspect'. Broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and

44712-436: Was also during this period that Romanians experienced the awakening of self-consciousness as a nation, manifested in cultural and ideological movements such as Transylvanian School , and drafted political petitions such as Supplex Libellus Valachorum . After World War I , the National Assembly of Romanians from Transylvania proclaimed the Union of Transylvania with Romania on 1 December 1918, and Transylvania became part of

44928-448: Was elected president, in 2000 Iliescu returned to power, while Traian Băsescu was elected in 2004 and narrowly re-elected in 2009. In 2009, the country was bailed out by the International Monetary Fund as an aftershock of the Great Recession in Europe . In November 2014, Sibiu former FDGR/DFDR mayor Klaus Iohannis was elected president, unexpectedly defeating former Prime Minister Victor Ponta , who had been previously leading in

45144-428: Was eventually absorbed into Russia several centuries later. The period between the year 1000 and 1250 is known as the High Middle Ages , followed by the Late Middle Ages until c. 1500. During the High Middle Ages the population of Europe experienced significant growth, culminating in the Renaissance of the 12th century . Economic growth, together with the lack of safety on the mainland trading routes, made possible

45360-461: Was formed in the country in 2002, inspired by similar institutions in Belgium , Norway and Spain . Since 2014, Romania launched an anti-corruption effort that led to the prosecution of medium- and high-level political, judicial and administrative offenses by the National Anticorruption Directorate . After the end of the Cold War , Romania developed closer ties with Western Europe and the United States, eventually joining NATO in 2004, and hosting

45576-407: Was one of the most long-lasting and strongest in the Eastern Bloc. A 2006 commission estimated the number of direct victims of the Communist repression at two million people. In 1965, Nicolae Ceaușescu came to power and started to conduct the country's foreign policy more independently from the Soviet Union. Thus, communist Romania was the only Warsaw Pact country which refused to participate in

45792-435: Was part of the Kingdom of Hungary , led by a voivode appointed by the King of Hungary . After the Battle of Mohács in 1526, Transylvania became part of the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom . Later, in 1570, the kingdom became the Principality of Transylvania by the Treaty of Speyer , which was ruled primarily by Calvinist Hungarian princes . The Eastern Hungarian king became the first prince of Transylvania , according to

46008-416: Was the birthplace of the Transylvanian School movement, its members, namely Samuil Micu-Klein , Petru Maior , and Gheorghe Șincai , being responsible for the early version of Romanian alphabet . With regard to architecture, the Transylvanian Gothic style is preserved to this day in monuments such as the Black Church in Brașov (14th and 15th centuries) and a number of other cathedrals , as well as

46224-495: Was the first crisis that would strike Europe in the late Middle Ages. The period between 1348 and 1420 witnessed the heaviest loss. The population of France was reduced by half. Medieval Britain was afflicted by 95 famines, and France suffered the effects of 75 or more in the same period. Europe was devastated in the mid-14th century by the Black Death , one of the most deadly pandemics in human history which killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe alone—a third of

46440-458: Was the first Dacian ruler to unite the local tribes. He also conquered the Greek colonies in Dobruja and the neighbouring peoples as far as the Middle Danube and the Balkan Mountains between around 55 and 44 BC. After Burebista was murdered in 44 BC, his kingdom collapsed. The Romans reached Dacia during Burebista's reign and conquered Dobruja in 46 AD. Dacia was again united under Decebalus around 85 AD. He resisted

46656-413: Was the official capital of the Grand Principality of Transylvania . Brașov is an important tourist destination, being the largest city in a mountain resorts area, and a central location, suitable for exploring Romania, with the distances to several tourist destinations (including the Black Sea resorts, the monasteries in northern Moldavia , and the wooden churches of Maramureș ) being similar. Sibiu

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