 The Geto-Dacians
It was when the Greeks settled on the Western shore of the Black Sea (Pontus Euxinus), where they set up the colonies of Tomis, Histria, Callatis, Olbia and Appolonia, that the local Thracians came into contact with the Greek world. The Greek historian Herodotus was the first to mention the population North of the Danube as Getae (Getians).
In the 6th century B.C., there are records of the Geto-Dacians, an ethno-historical entity branched out from the great Thracian trunk. The first archaeological findings relate to the Basarabi culture in Dobrudja materialized in an exquisite kind of pottery. The Geto-Dacians inhabited the vast area that stretched between the Northern Carpathian chain and the Balkan mountains.
Geto-Dacian society flourished under king Burebista (ca 82-44 B.C.), a contemporary and opponent of Caesar, and a friend of Pompey. Around the year 70 B.C., external conditions being propitious and Burebista's political and military actions successful, the Geto-Dacian people had a unique and firm rule, and a strong organization.
Burebista's country, rooted in the former social and political tradition, was strengthened by the king's conquest of Greek cities, like Tomis, Histria and Callatis on the Black Sea shore, and by eliminating the threat of Celtic invasion. In this way, Burebista came to rule over the whole Thracian-Geto-Dacian world, from the Haemus Mountains (the Balkans) to the Wooded Carpathians, from Tyras (the Dnestr) to the Tisza.
Controlling both sides of the Danube, Burebista was "the first and the greatest of the Thracian kings", as he is referred to in writing by Acornion of Dyonisopolis. The unifying centre of the Geto-Dacian state lay in the Orastie mountain zone (Sureanu) - a natural Transylvanian stronghold; there, Burebista developed a whole system of fortifications, which was to be continued by his followers Dicomes, Scoryllo, Cotiso.
His successful unifying endeavour, which led to the unity of the Geto-Dacian people, language and civilisation, made the king feel stronger, a fact which led him into believing that he was capable of measuring his military strength with that of the Romans. He was supported by the great priest Daecaeneus. Intent upon taking advantage of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, he lent his support to the latter. Unfortunately, Caesar, emerging victorious, planned to take revenge on the Dacians in war. But his murder in the year 44 B.C. delayed an armed confrontation by some one hundred and twenty years. Shortly after Caesar's death, Burebista himself was overthrown by a plot of the aristocracy discontented with the king's absolute power. After his fall, the state weakened and lost part of its territory.
The Geto-Dacians were to witness a new period of cultural and political prosperity when Decebal (A.D. 87-106) acceded to the throne. Geto-Dacian civilisation was by then at its climax. In the 1st century B.C., as the Roman Empire was expanding, the Danube became the border between the Roman Empire and the Geto-Dacians. Dobrudja was already under Roman rule beginning with the reign of Augustus.
Eventually, the Romans did declare war on the Dacians, after a first confrontation (A.D. 87-89), and they waged two bloody wars (A.D. 101-102 and 105-106). The Geto-Dacians were defeated, the Empire led by Trajan extended its bounds over the Danube and turned part of Dacia into a Roman imperial province. Two monuments commemorate the events: one is Trajan's Column, in Rome, the work of Apollodorus of Damascus (A.D. 113), and the other is Trophaeum Traiani, at Adamclisi (A.D. 109).
The conquest of Dacia by the Romans and its turning into an imperial province (A.D. 106-271) brought about major changes in the native population's economic, social and political life. The Geto-Dacians continued to remain the main ethnic community both in the free and in the occupied territories. They continued to work side by side with the Roman colonists and veterans, who had been brought into the new Imperial province of Dacia from everywhere in the Roman World.
The spirit of the conquerors, backed by the diligence of the local population, proved very profitable for the country: Dacia reached a high level of material and spiritual culture. The intense process of Romanization stamped a lasting mark on the language of the Romanian people, on their name, conscience and culture. The Romanian people's formation relied on two basic ethnic elements, namely the Geto-Dacians, and the Romans, who superposed, with a minor Slavic adjustment.
The crisis that shook the Roman Empire in the 3rd century, as well as the pressure exerted by the "Barbarian" populations, made Emperor Aurelianus (A.D. 270-275) withdraw his troops, administrative body and part of the urban population from Dacia southward, across the Danube (A.D. 271), where Dacia Aureliana was set up. However, most of the population, made up of Roman colonists and Romanized Dacians, stayed on and continued to keep up close relations with the South-Danubian Romans. These relationships were very close indeed, as attested by rich archaeological findings in Transylvania (Alba-Iulia, Bratei), Oltenia, Wallachia (Sucidava, Romula, Câmpulung-Muscel), and even in Moldavia, as well as by the wealth of coin hoards which can be found everywhere on present Romania's territory.
The process of Romanization went on north of the Danube after the 3rd century as well. This was largely due to the Christian faith which was spreading out from towns situated on the right bank of the middle and lower streams of the Danube.
Some Roman emperors, and subsequently some of the Byzantine ones, would raid the north-Danubian areas, managing, under Constantine the Great (307 - 337), Valens (364 - 378) and Justinian (527 - 565), to partially restore Roman rule over the former Dacia province.
The "Barbarian" waves that swept across Dacia's territory, i.e. Goths, Huns, Avars, Slavs changed its social and political organisation. Like in other parts of Europe, the barbarians largely destroyed town networks, and, consequently, the core of economic activities shifted from cities to the countryside, which brought about a process of ruralization of the entire society. The Daco-Roman population gathered together in what the Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga would call popular Romanii. The inhabitants of these territories developed a sense of their belonging, or of their having belonged to the Roman Empire. Their main occupation was the cultivation of land and the breeding of animals; their Roman ancestry is still reflected in the Romanian language, as the names of the chief occupations and farm products in Romanian are of Latin origin. The ethnogenesis of the Romanian people was completed by the 8th century.
Beginning with the 10th century, documents of Slavic, Byzantine, Hungarian and Latin sources bear witness to the existence of state formations throughout present Romania's territory. These formations were known as dukedoms, knezdoms and voivodeships, commonly termed by the people as "tari" (terrae)=lands, countries. The first were recorded in Transylvania and Dobrudja, and then in the lands east and south of the Carpathians.
The Transylvanian state formations reached a relatively high level of political and military organisation, putting up a long resistance to the military pressure of the Hungarians between the 9th-11th centuries. In the end, they had to give in and formed one single voievodeship, Transylvania, under Hungarian leadership. However, some of its areas continued to have local autonomy.
By the end of the 11th century and most of the 12th century, Transylvania gradually fell under Hungarian domination; yet, it preserved its own organisation, being ruled by a voivode - a specifically Romanian form of government generalised all over Transylvania until the l6th century, when this status was changed into that of a prince. In order to secure the defence of their frontiers against the inroads made by some populations (Petchenegs, Cumans and especially the Tartars), the Hungarian kings encouraged other ethnic groups of people to settle in Transylvania. This process began in the mid-12th century, when groups of Szeklers (a population mix of steppe migrants, who had followed the Hungarians on their way to Europe), and of Saxons (from Flanders, Luxembourg, the Mosel and the Rhine regions, as well as from Saxony) were brought in.
The changes that took place in Europe in the l4th century, alongside the weakening of the more than one-hundred-year-old Golden Horde, gripped the Romanian lands that lay south and east i.e. Wallachia and Moldavia. The leading Romanian circles from Transylvania, then in conflict with the Hungarian Crown because of the latter's intentions to dissolve the local autonomies, contributed to the process of unification unfolded across the mountains. As people kept crossing the mountains, a new demographic inflow and further political experience were brought to the south-and east-Carpathian leaders.
The economic exchanges, the development of boroughs and of towns linked through transit trade routes with the commercial world abroad offered a good chance to the Romanian political formations to place their unification projects on a viable basis. Once their independence from the Hungarian Crown had been won in battle, the Romanian Principalities - South and East of the Carpathians began to play an increasingly important political, military and cultural role in South-Eastern and Central Europe. The founders of the independent Romanian states were voivodes Basarab I (1324-1352) in Wallachia, and Bogdan I (1359-1365) in Moldavia.
And that is just a little part of our history.
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