Romania

why do we call it Romania ? a country designed to UNITE Europe

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• published: 01 Jan 2015
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Western Europeans were not the only despoilers of the Romaion Empire to refer to it by the name of Rome. In the eleventh century, a branch of the Seljuk Turks established a Sultanate in Asia Minor carved out of land in Asia Minor. The Sultanate's territory had been severed from the Empire after the Battle of Manzikert [1071] in which Emperor Romanus IV [reigned 1067-1071] fell into the hands of the Turks as a prisoner. This Turkish state was called "Rum." from Rome. The Sultanate of Rum continued until after 1300 with its capital at Konya [Iconium]. The later Ottoman Turks adopted the term "Rumelia" to designate the portions of the Balkan Peninsula that they acquired from the Romaioi in the fourteenth century. "Rumelia" was a dimunitive word. If Anatolia was Rome [Rum], than the European territories were Lesser Rome [Rumelia]. The name "Rumelia" survived into the nineteenth century. After a Turkish defeat at the hands of Russia, the two combatant governments signed the Treaty of San Stefano [1877]. The Treaty included a provision to create a "Principality of Eastern Rumelia" under Russian "protection" on land now in Bulgaria. The attempt to create Eastern Rumelia never came to fruition. After diplomatic pressure from other powers, the Treaty of San Stefano underwent significant modification at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Eastern Rumelia vanished before it came into proper existence. One might wonder why the name "Romania" became applied to the present nation called Romania. The association of the name "Romania" with the present nation "Romania"stems from the nineteenth century. In their first appearances in the historical record of the Middle Ages, the Romanians were called "Vlachs" by chroniclers from Hungary and Constantinople. A principality called "Wallachia" emerged among the Vlachs before 1300. Separate Vlach principalities of Moldavia and Transylvania followed. Later, scholars realized that the Vlach language derived from Latin; Vlach was a sister language to Italian, French and Spanish. How did Latin speakers find their way to this remote part of Europe north of the Danube River? Scholars developed the theory that the Vlachs were descended from Roman colonists and Latinized natives who lived in the area north of the Danube River during the second and third centuries AD. In the period, the region constituted the Roman province of Dacia. Whether the theory is right or not, it became the basis of Romanian nationalist feeling in the nineteenth century. The idea of a Roman descent gave Vlachs new pride in themselves. After Wallachia and Moldavia coalesced into a single entity in 1859, the name "Romania" was selected in 1862 to describe the combined state. At the time, Romanian unity and independence required the support of France under Emperor Napoleon III [1852-1870]. The "Latin connection" with France aided the Romanian cause by inspiring French interest in their "sister nation" of Romania. In light of the late date at which modern Romania acquired its name, it appears clear that earlier, the term "Romania" referred to the territory where the Greek speaking "Romaioi" lived. For more than a millennium, the state that we call, inaccurately, the Byzantine Empire was "Romania." After the end of the Empire, Greek speaking inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire continued to call themselves "Romaioi." Modern Greeks call themselves "Hellenes," like the ancient Greeks did. The switch from "Romaioi" back to "Hellene," like the switch from "Vlach" to "Romanian," came from the politics of nationalism in modern times. Greeks needed Western European help to become independent in the early nineteenth century. The Greeks were not likely to attract assistance if the Western peoples thought of Greeks as Byzantines. However, if the Greeks were imagined as the children of Plato and Pericles, then the sympathies of educated Westerners, steeped in the Classical tradition, would be with Greece. In the Greek Revolution of 1832, the "Philhellenic"[Greek loving] sympathies of Britain and other European governments were deeply engaged. Intervention on behalf of Greek independence proved decisive. The name of "Hellene" was revived in order to create a national image which rejected the "Byzantine" past.