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Europe · The modern states

Kingdom of Romania

1859/1881–1947

Romania originated in the 1859 union of the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia under Alexandru Ioan Cuza, an act of double election that the Great Powers accepted as the "United Principalities." Cuza's ouster in 1866 brought the German prince Carol of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen to the throne.

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Existed
1859/1881–1947
Shown on the map
1919–1944, 1947 (2 periods)
Peak area
305k km²
Region
Europe

Overview

Romania originated in the 1859 union of the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia under Alexandru Ioan Cuza, an act of double election that the Great Powers accepted as the "United Principalities." Cuza's ouster in 1866 brought the German prince Carol of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen to the throne. Full independence was recognised at the Congress of Berlin (1878), and Carol I was crowned King of Romania in 1881, founding a constitutional monarchy.

Decline and legacy

Romania seized southern Dobruja in the Second Balkan War (1913), entered World War I on the Allied side in 1916, was largely overrun, but emerged among the war's greatest territorial winners. Through the Union of 1918 and the treaties of Saint-Germain and Trianon, "Greater Romania" absorbed Transylvania, Bessarabia, Bukovina and the Banat, roughly doubling in size and adding large Hungarian, German, Jewish and Ukrainian minorities. Interwar politics oscillated between liberal constitutionalism, the royal dictatorship of Carol II (from 1938), and the rise of the fascist, antisemitic Iron Guard. In 1940 Romania lost Bessarabia to the USSR (Molotov–Ribbentrop) and northern Transylvania to Hungary (Second Vienna Award); Marshal Ion Antonescu then aligned Romania with Nazi Germany and participated in the invasion of the USSR and in the Holocaust. According to the Wiesel Commission (the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania) Final Report of 2004, "between 280,000 and 380,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews were murdered or died during the Holocaust in Romania and the territories under its control" (along with roughly 11,000 Roma) — a genocide long minimised in Romanian memory. King Michael's coup of August 1944 switched Romania to the Allies. A Soviet-backed takeover followed; the monarchy was abolished in December 1947.

Common questions

What was the Kingdom of Romania?
Romania originated in the 1859 union of the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia under Alexandru Ioan Cuza, an act of double election that the Great Powers accepted as the "United Principalities." Cuza's ouster in 1866 brought the German prince Carol of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen to the throne.
When did the Kingdom of Romania exist?
The Kingdom of Romania existed 1859/1881–1947. On this map it is drawn 1919–1944, 1947.
How large was the Kingdom of Romania?
At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the Kingdom of Romania covered about 305,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
How did the Kingdom of Romania end?
Romania seized southern Dobruja in the Second Balkan War (1913), entered World War I on the Allied side in 1916, was largely overrun, but emerged among the war's greatest territorial winners. Through the Union of 1918 and the treaties of Saint-Germain and Trianon, "Greater Romania" absorbed Transylvania, Bessarabia, Bukovina and the Banat, roughly doubling in size and adding large Hungarian, German, Jewish and Ukrainian minorities.

Sources

This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each state as the primary basis, cross-checked against Encyclopædia Britannica, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the ICTY and the 2004 Wiesel Commission for genocide and atrocity figures, and current news reporting (Reuters, AP, BBC, and others) for 2025–2026 political developments, which should be verified against live sources. The article this entry is anchored on:

This entry was last updated .

This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made

Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.

Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).

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