Regulamentul Organic

[10] Thus, Russia intervened to preserve reigns of hospodars who had lost Ottoman approval in the context of the Napoleonic Wars (the casus belli for the 1806–12 conflict),[11] and remained present in the Danubian states, vying for influence with the Austrian Empire, well into the 19th century and annexing Moldavia's Bessarabia in 1812.

[13] In the last decades of the 18th century, the growing strategic importance of the region brought about the establishment of consulates representing European powers directly interested in observing local developments (Russia, the Austrian Empire, and France; later, British and Prussian ones were opened as well).

A mere takeover of the government in Moldavia, the Eterist expedition met a more complex situation in Wallachia, where a regency of high boyars attempted to have the anti-Ottoman Greek nationalists confirm both their rule and the rejection of Phanariote institutions.

The proponent, Ionică Tăutu,[24] was defeated in the Divan after the Russian consul sided with the conservatives (expressing the official view that the aristocratic-republican and liberal aims of the document could have threatened international conventions in place).

[21][25] On October 7, 1826, the Ottoman Empire—anxious to prevent Russia's intervention in the Greek Independence War—negotiated with it a new status for the region in Akkerman, one which conceded to several requests of the inhabitants: the resulting Akkerman Convention was the first official document to nullify the principle of Phanariote reigns, instituting seven-year terms for new princes elected by the respective Divans, and awarding the two countries the right to engage in unrestricted international trade (as opposed to the tradition of limitations and Ottoman protectionism, it only allowed Istanbul to impose its priorities in the grain trade).

[26] The campaign, prolonged for the following year and coinciding with devastating bubonic plague and cholera epidemics (which together killed around 1.6% of the population in both countries),[29] soon became a drain on local economy:[30] according to British observers, the Wallachian state was required to indebt itself to European creditors for a total sum of ten million piastres, in order to provide for the Russian army's needs.

Emperor Nicholas I assigned Fyodor Pahlen as governor over the two countries before the actual peace, as the first in a succession of three Plenipotentiary Presidents of the Divans in Moldavia and Wallachia,[21][29] and official supervisor of the two commissions charged with drafting the Statutes.

The bodies, having for secretaries Gheorghe Asachi in Moldavia and Barbu Dimitrie Știrbei in Wallachia, had resumed their work while the cholera epidemic was still raging, and continued it after Pahlen had been replaced with Pyotr Zheltukhin in February 1829.

[70] Several laws of the period display a particular concern in limiting the right of peasants to evade corvées by paying their equivalent in currency, thus granting the boyars a workforce to match a steady growth in grain demands on foreign markets.

For the very first time, food supplies were no longer abundant in front of a population growth ensured by, among other causes, the effective measures taken against epidemics; rural–urban migration became a noticeable phenomenon, as did the relative increase in urbanization of traditional rural areas, with an explosion of settlements around established fairs.

[58][70] In parallel, hostility between agricultural workers and landowners mounted: after an increase in lawsuits involving leaseholders and the decrease in quality of corvée outputs, resistance, hardened by the examples of Tudor Vladimirescu and various hajduks, turned to sabotage and occasional violence.

As a trans-border notion, Dacia also indicated a growth in Pan-Romanian sentiment—the latter had first been present in several boyar requests of the late 18th century, which had called for the union of the two Danubian Principalities under the protection of European powers (and, in some cases, under the rule of a foreign prince).

[80] To these was added the circulation of fake documents which were supposed to reflect the text of Capitulations awarded by the Ottoman Empire to its Wallachian and Moldavian vassals in the Middle Ages, claiming to stand out as proof of rights and privileges which had been long neglected (see also Islam in Romania).

[21][85] The Regulament brought about the creation of new schools, which were dominated by the figures of Transylvanian Romanians who had taken exile after expressing their dissatisfaction with Austrian rule in their homeland—these teachers, who usually rejected the adoption of French cultural models in the otherwise conservative society (viewing the process as an unnatural one), counted among them Ioan Maiorescu and August Treboniu Laurian.

[87] According to Ion Ghica, the prestige of military careers had a relevant tradition: "Only the arrival of the Muscovites [sic] in 1828 ended [the] young boyars' sons flighty way of life, as it made use of them as commissioners (mehmendari) in the service of Russian generals, in order to assist in providing the troops with [supplies].

[98] In 1834, despite the founding documents' requirements, Russia and the Ottoman Empire agreed to appoint jointly the first two hospodars (instead of providing for their election), as a means to ensure both the monarchs' support for a moderate pace in reforms and their allegiance in front of conservative boyar opposition.

[53][100] Immediately after the confirmation of the Regulament, Russia had begun demanding that the two local Assemblies each vote an Additional Article (Articol adițional)—one preventing any modification of the texts without the common approval of the courts in Istanbul and Saint Petersburg.

[53][101][102] In Wallachia, the issue turned into scandal after the pressure for adoption mounted in 1834, and led to a four-year-long standstill, during which a nationalist group in the legislative body began working on its own project for a constitution, proclaiming the Russian protectorate and Ottoman suzerainty to be over, and self-determination with guarantees from all European Powers of the time.

[101] From that point on, opposition to Ghica's rule took the form of Freemason and carbonari-inspired conspiracies, formed around young politicians such as Mitică Filipescu, Nicolae Bălcescu, Eftimie Murgu, Ion Ghica, Christian Tell, Dimitrie Macedonski, and Cezar Bolliac (all of whom held Câmpineanu's ideology in esteem)[104]—in 1840, Filipescu and most of his group (who had tried in vain to profit from the Ottoman crisis engendered by Muhammad Ali's rebellion)[105] were placed under arrest and imprisoned in various locations.

[106][107] Noted abuses against the rule of law and the consequent threat of rebellion made the Ottoman Empire and Russia withdraw their support for Ghica in 1842,[21][53][99][108] and his successor, Gheorghe Bibescu, reigned as the first and only prince to have been elected by any one of the two Assemblies.

[78][110] Wallachia's revolt was successful: after the Proclamation of Islaz on June 21 sketched a new legal framework and land reform with an end to all corvées (a program acclaimed by the crowds), the conspirators managed to topple Bibescu, who had by then dissolved the Assembly,[108] without notable violence, and established a Provisoral Government in Bucharest.

[21][78][114][115] A Russian occupation over Wallachia soon joined the Ottoman one (begun on September 18), and both lasted until April 1851; in 1849, the two powers signed the Convention of Balta Liman, which asserted the right of the Porte to nominate hospodars for seven-year terms.

In Moldavia, Romas were liberated, without a period of transition, on December 22, 1855; the change was more gradual in Wallachia, where measures to curb trade had been taken earlier, and where the decision to ban the ownership of slaves was taken by Știrbei on February 20, 1856.

[121] This was the moment when the call for union of the two Principalities began to be voiced with confidence, and the two monarchs showed more or less approval for the designs of the unionist Partida Națională (created by 1848 revolutionaries who had returned from exile).

The protector states had to decide on a compromise formula for the projected union; the Ottomans demanded and obtained, in contradiction with the Regulament, the removal of both hospodars from their thrones, pending elections for the ad hoc Divans.