National Awakening of Romania - Resistance Movements

Resistance Movements

See also: 1848 Wallachian Revolution, Wallachian uprising of 1821, Regulamentul Organic, Danubian principalities, Transylvanian School, and Avram Iancu

The unsuccessful Tudor Vladimirescu's rebellion in 1821 was followed by the Revolutions of 1848 in Moldavia, Wallachia, and Transylvania which sought complete independence for the first two and national emancipation in the third. These goals were unfulfilled, but were the basis of the subsequent revolutions. The Great Powers did not support the Romanians' expressed desire to unite in a single state, forcing Romania to proceed alone against the Turks. The electors in both Moldavia and Wallachia chose the same person – Alexandru Ioan Cuza – as prince (Domnitor in Romanian). Thus, Romania was created as a personal union, albeit a Romania that didn't include Transylvania, where Romanian nationalism inevitably ran up against Hungarian nationalism. For some time yet, Austria-Hungary, especially under the Dual Monarchy of 1867, would keep the Hungarians firmly in control, even in parts of Transylvania where Romanians constituted a local majority.

In 1861 the Transylvanian Association for the Literature and Culture of the Romanians (ASTRA) was founded in Sibiu (then Hermannstadt), protected by an uncommonly enlightened local government composed largely of Transylvanian Saxons (Germans).