In July the same year, a new constitution came into effect, giving the country the name of Romania; internationally, this name was used only after 1877, since at the time it shared a common foreign policy with the Ottoman Empire.

For its triple symbolic meaning, the date of May 10 was celebrated as Romania's National Day until 1948, when the Communist regime installed the republic on 30 December 1947.

While the Moldavia-Wallachia unionist campaign, which had come to dominate political demands, was accepted with sympathy by the French, Russians, Prussians and Sardinians, it was rejected by the Austrian Empire, and looked upon with suspicion by Great Britain and the Ottomans.

[6] Negotiations amounted to an agreement on a minimal formal union; however, elections for the ad-hoc divans in 1859 profited from an ambiguity in the text of the final agreement, which, while specifying two thrones, did not prevent the same person from occupying both thrones simultaneously and ultimately ushered in the ruling of Alexandru Ioan Cuza as Domnitor (Ruling Prince) over the United Romanian Principalities from 1862 onwards, uniting both principalities.

In addition, the circumstances of his deposition in 1866, together with the rapid election of Prussian prince Carol of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (who was backed by the increasingly important Prussia) and the Austro-Prussian War in the same time, made applying measures against the Union actually impossible.

[citation needed] Following the Romanian War of Independence in 1877–78, Romania shook off formal Ottoman rule, but eventually clashed with its Russian ally over its demand for the Southern Bessarabia region.

He subsequently instituted authoritarian rule but his popular support, strong at the time of the coup, gradually waned as the land reform failed to bring prosperity to the peasant majority.

[citation needed] The new governing coalition appointed Carol of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen as the new Ruling Prince of Romania, in a move initially rejected by the European powers, but later on accepted.

Carol was not unanimously accepted, and a rise in republican sentiment culminated with an uprising in Ploiești in 1870 and a revolt in Bucharest in 1871, both of which were quelled by the army.

[citation needed] In April 1877, in the wake of a new Russo-Turkish war, Romania signed a convention by which Russian troops were allowed to pass through Romanian territory, in their advance towards the Ottoman Empire.