National awakening of Romania

In the Romantic era, the concept of a national state emerged among the Romanians, as among many other peoples of Europe and a "national awakening" began. Defining their nation against the nearby Slavs, Germans, and Hungarians, the nationalist Romanians looked for models of nationality in the other Latin countries, notably France.

The Romanian upper classes looked for support firstly from the Russian Empire, who they thought would help the Orthodox Romanian people in their struggle against the Islamic Ottoman Empire. However, Russia's expansionist goals after annexing Bessarabia in 1812, made them suspicious that they would just become part of another far-flung empire. Since Austria also had similar goals, as shown by the annexations of Oltenia (1718–1739) and Bukovina (1775), the Romanian elites started looking for allies in Western Europe.

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 Romanian elites' 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 though in Transylvania Romanians constituted an absolute majority.

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