The main reasons for the building of the canal were to circumvent the Danube Delta which is difficult to navigate, shorten the distance to the Black Sea and several issues related to the loading and unloading of ships.

At the time when the decision to build the canal was taken, it was officially announced that these works would also serve a secondary purpose, that of land reclamation, with the drainage of marshes in the area.

The 1829 Treaty of Adrianople canceled the trade monopoly of the Ottoman Empire in the Danubian Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, allowing these countries to build their own fleets by 1834.

Both countries welcomed the Austrian Empire's 1834 decision, endorsed by Count István Széchenyi, to extend the steamboat navigation to the maritime Danube.

The Austrian initiative was badly received by the Russians, who considered their trade through Odesa and ports in the Crimea threatened by the development of Brăila and Galați.

Without resolving to direct measures, the Russian Empire, who controlled the Sulina branch, started to show rigidity, instituting on February 7, 1836, a compulsory quarantine on the island of Letea, collecting taxes to cover the Russian financial deficit, and by not performing maintenance for the navigation on the Sulina branch to remove the continuous deposits of sand.

[8] This prompted the Austrians to conceive the idea of building a canal to connect the Danube with the Black Sea at the shortest point before the Delta, between Rasova or Cernavodă (Bogaz Köi) and Constanța (Küstendjie), and a parallel railway.

Western diplomats and newspapers accused the Russian government that through bribing and intimidation, it determined the Ottoman officials to reject the proposal of Szechenyi's company.

The enterprise was scrapped after 4 years due to non-profitability because of a low number of passengers, high cost of transport, and poor conditions of cargo handling in the unfit roadstead of the port of Constanța.

The Austrian government made a new attempt to cut a canal, sending the military engineer Colonel Baron Karl von Bigaro to prospect the land.

The British and French allies landed at Varna in the summer of 1854, followed by the withdrawal of Russian troops from Wallachia and Moldavia and the advancement of Ottoman and Austrian ones.

In 1855, the French government put forward an initiative, and the Ottomans approved it, for the cheapest solution: build a strategic road between Cernavodă and Constanța.

According to Gazeta de Transilvania in July 1855, Baron Karl Ludwig von Bruck, the Austrian Finance Minister, founded a stock company to build the desired canal.

According to the newspaper Steaua Dunării from January 24, 1856, the Sultan issued a firman to the Anglo-French–Austrian consortium Wilson–Morny–Breda, represented by Forbes Campbell, authorizing it to build the canal which was to be called Abdul Medjid.

Russia ceded the Danube mouths to the Ottomans and southern Bessarabia (lately organised as the Cahul, Bolgrad and Ismail counties) to their vassal, Moldavia.

[11] On May 25, 1949, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Romanian Workers' Party was presented a report by Gheorghiu-Dej on the projected construction of a canal linking the Danube and the Black Sea and on the economic and cultural development of the neighboring area.

Its first head was Gheorghe Hossu a former mechanic and tractor driver who had been promoted to the position of first-secretary of the Romanian Worker's party in Tulcea County and administrator of the State Fisheries.

British historian and New York University professor Tony Judt assessed in his book, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, that, overall, one million Romanians had been imprisoned in various prisons and labor camps, including those on the path of the canal.

Food rations were kept to a minimum, and prisoners would often resort to hunting mice and other small animals, or even consuming grass in an attempt to supplement their diet.

[28] Other security officers who used often cruel and deadly methods with the prisoners were senior lieutenant Liviu Borcea, at the Midia Camp; captain Petre Burghișan, at the Galeș and Peninsula camps; lieutenant Chirion at Peninsula; captain Nicolae Doicaru [ro], director of the Securitate's Regional Directorate Constanța; and sergeant Grigore Ion Iliescu.

[2][5][11][17][30] The canal was referred to as the "graveyard of the Romanian bourgeoisie" by the Communist authorities,[31] and the physical elimination of undesirable social classes was one of its most significant goals.

[5][17][32] According to Marius Oprea, the death rate among political prisoners at the canal was extremely high; for instance, in the winter of 1951–52, there were one to three detainees dying every day at the Poarta Albă camp, near Galeșu village.

[21] Journalist Anne Applebaum had previously claimed that over 200,000 had died in its construction,[33][dubious – discuss] as a result of exposure, unsafe equipment, malnutrition, accidents, tuberculosis and other diseases, over-work, etc.,[34] while political analyst Vladimir Socor had estimated the number of deaths to be "considerably in excess of 10,000".

[36] In parallel, authorities left aside sectors of employment for skilled workers, kept in strict isolation from all others,[17] they were attracted to the site with exceptional salaries (over 5,000 lei per month), as well as for young people drafted into the Romanian Army and whose files indicated "unhealthy origins" (a middle-class family background).

[17] Blame for the debilitating and unsuccessful works was eventually placed on a group of alleged conspirators, who were indicted in a show trial in late 1952 on trumped-up charges of espionage, fraud, and sabotage.

During the 1980s, the song "Magistrala Albastră" ("The Blue Freeway"), performed by Dan Spătaru and Mirabela Dauer and using the Canal as its setting, was frequently broadcast in official and semi-official contexts.

Examples include Marin Preda's Cel mai iubit dintre pământeni[5] and, most likely, Eugen Barbu's Principele (by means of an allegory, set during the 18th century Phanariote rules).

[40] In 1973–1974, Ion Cârja, a former prisoner, wrote a book titled Canalul morții ("The Death Canal") detailing his sufferings during incarceration; it was first published in Romania in 1993, after the Revolution of 1989.

In György Dragomán's 2005 novel, The White King, set in 1980s Romania, the main protagonist 11-year-old boy's father is deported to a labor camp to work on the Danube–Black Sea Canal.