The Union of the Principalities with Foreign Prince From Strategy of Diplomacy to Romanian National Project

Abstract

"In Romanian hisoriography, the beginnings of the modern idea of political unity, of the national state, are placed in the years of the rule of the native princes (1822-1828) and of the Russian occupation, when the first modern manifestations in this sense appeared, concerning the union of the Wallachia with Moldavia, as a Romanian state, a buffer state between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, based on the historical rights in relation with the Porte, a state with modern institutions, according to the understanding and interests of the elite of the time. An interesting conclusion, resulting from a contextual analysis of the transformations of the period, without benefiting from too many explicit documentary references. Nevertheless, previous proposals concerning the establishment of a principality or kingdom of Dacia have been intensively discussed by Romanian and foreign historians, but, in our opinion, insufficient clarification has been provided regarding the extent to which these proposals belong or not to the history of the modern Romanian national project. In order to be able to make some reasoned conclusions we propose to conduct a comparative study. On the one hand, the ""Dacia project"" promoted by Russia in the years following the Treaty of Kuciuk Kainardji and the Ainalî Kavak Convention, subsequently associated with some Russian plans for the reorganization of the Balkans promoted especially by Ioannis Kapodistrias, deserves special attention. On the other hand, after 1821, in a historical context influenced by the outbreak of the Greek revolution and the efforts of the Great Powers to find solutions for the organisation of a Greek Christian principality, the first Romanian proposals for the Union of Moldavia with Wallachia into a national state were to appear, the most important being the proposal of January-February 1830 to achieve the union with a foreign prince, in the person of Gustav of Vasa, former Crown Prince of Sweden."