Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors. - Voltaire

The following list points to resources across the Internet dealing with Romanian history.

December 1989 *

View this 5 dramatic photographs by Mihai Popescu Stoenesti of the Romanian Revolution.

Romanian History *

A brief history of Romania is provided from ancient times through the Revolution.

Romanian Revolution *

Learn more about the Coup d' Etat of 1989.

The first material testimonies attest to the existence of man on present-day Romanian soil since 2,000,000 years ago (Bugiulesti, Valcea County). The originality of the cultural area, related to the other European prehistorical cultures can be noted in the art of clay moulding (the painted vessels of Cris, Turdas, Cucuteni, the zoomorphic and anthropomorphic clay statuettes. To mention only "The Thinker", discovered at Hamangia (Cernavoda), "The Clay Tables of Tartaria" (incised pictorial motifs), which all point to the existence of an early archaic writing - the first in Europe - around the year 4,000 B.C. This alphabet dates to about the same period as the Sumerian writing. The continuators of this ancient civilization were the Geto-Dacians.

In the first century B.C. the Dacian king Burebista (82-44 B.C.) helped by the great priest Deceneu, united all the Geto-Dacian tribes under his rule, founding the kingdom of Dacia, a powerful body politic, with the political and religious capital in Transylvania, at Sarmizegetusa. In the early second century A.D., when the Dacian state was at its acme, thanks to the rule of king Decebal (87-106), the Roman imperial armies, led by emperor Traian (98-117) conquered Dacia (A.D. 106) and turned it into a Roman province which they colonized with Romans and Romanized elements. Thus the Geto-Dacians were Romanized too. After the withdrawal of the Roman army administration south of the Danube, between the years 271 and 275, despite the migratory people's attacks, the Daco-Roman population continued uninterruptedly to live in the land of their birth. Until the 7th century, their neighbours were the Roman Empire and then the eastern Roman Empire which held numerous bridgeheads north of the Danube. The ethnogenesis of the Romanian people was thus concluded. Numerous migratory peoples (Goths, Huns, Gepidae, Avarians, Slavs, Bulgarians, Cumani, Petchenegs, Hungarians etc.) roamed the territory of Romania, exercising a passing influence which, in most of the cases, ended with their assimilation by the autochthons.

The Romanians became Christian starting the 4th century, and after the great schism of the Christian church, in 1054, they preserved an Orthodox rite. The state organization was first attested in the 10th century - feudal bodies politic foreshadowing the big Romanian feudal states. The pre-state politic bodies in Transylvania were led by dukes, kniezes or voivodes like Gelu, Glad, Menumorut, Ahtum; in Moldavia, Wallachia and Dobruja by djupans, kniezes or voivodes like Gheorghe, Sestlav, Satza, Tatu, Roman, a.o. Bigger state entities are attested in the 13th century, under the rule of voivodes Litovoi, Ioan, Farcas and Seneslau. In the 13th century, the hungarian lords ended the conquest of Transylvania, begun in the l0th century by the Hungarian tribes, stopping their advance and settling in the Pannonian Plain. The voivodship of Transylvania was to belong to the Hungarian crown until 1541, when the Kingdom of Hungary disappeared as a state. South of the Carpathians, in the 14th century, Basarab I (1324-1352) unified the bodies politic, rounding the great voivodship of Wallachia, and Bogdan I (1359-1365) created the great voivodship of Moldavia. Both rulers consolidated the independence of their states, defeating the armies of the Hungarian Kingdom that attempted to strengthen its domination over these two states.

In the late 14th century, the Ottoman danger loomed at the Danube. The three Romanian Lands, the voivodship of Transylvania, Moldavia and Wallachia, were to turn, for several centuries, into the bastion defending the Christian world from the onrush of the Islam. Princes like Mircea cel Batran, Iancu de Hunedoara, Vlad Tepes, Stefan cel Mare, Radu de la Afumati, and Petru Rares vanquished the armies of mighty sultans like Baiazid I Ildirim (The Thunder), Mahommet II (the conqueror of Constantinople) and Soleyman the Magnificent. In the 14th century Turkish suzerainty was established over the three Romanian Lands, which, nonetheless, preserved their autonomy. The prince of Wallachia, Mihai Viteazul (1593-1601) regained the country's independence and unified all the Romanians in the first centralized Romanian state, including Wallachia, Transylvania and Moldavia (1600-1601). The short-lived was undone by the intervention of the Ottoman Empire, the kingdom of Poland, and the Habsburg
Empire, worried to have a powerful Romanian state. The accomplishment of Mihai Viteazul was made possible by the unity of kin and language of all the Romanians, by awakening national consciousness and its assertion throughout the entire Romanian space. His deed served as an example. The voivodes of the three Romanian Lands, ruling after Mihai Viteazul, tried to follow suit, and recreate the ancient kingdom of Dacia. Very near to this goal was Matei Basarab (1632-1654), the mastermind and general commander of the anti-Ottoman league, set up by the Romanian Lands, Poland and Russia. The man who founded ideologically the doctrine of the Romanian people's unity was the scholar prince of Moldavia, Dimitrie Cantemir (1693, 1710-1711), a member of the Berlin Academy. Under the influence of the European Enlightenment, in Transylvania - since 1661 a voivodship under the suzerainty of the Habsburg Empire - bishop Inochentie Micu and the representatives of the Transylvanian School (Samuil Micu, Gheorghe Sincai, Petru Maior, Ion Budai Deleanu, a.o.) jellied into form the national ideology, which they buttressed up with historical, linguistic and philosophical arguments.

Archaeology