Southern Dobruja

Southern Dobruja or South Dobruja (Bulgarian: Южна Добруджа, romanized: Yuzhna Dobrudzha or simply Добруджа, Dobrudzha; Romanian: Dobrogea de Sud or Dobrogea Nouă, lit.

At the beginning of the modern era, Southern Dobruja had a mixed population of Bulgarians and Turks with several smaller minorities, including Gagauz, Crimean Tatars and Romanians.

In 1914, Romania demanded all landowners prove their property and surrender to the Romanian state one third of the land they claimed or pay an equivalent of its value.

This was similar to the agrarian reforms in Romania which occurred the previous century, in which the landlords had to give up two-thirds of their land, which was then handed over to the peasants.

[2] In Southern Dobruja, many of the peasants who received the land were settlers, including tens of thousands of Aromanians from Macedonia, as well as Megleno-Romanians from the same place and Romanians from Wallachia, which led to claims that the reforms had a nationalist purpose.