Romania Clasa a VIII-a History

1. Introduction

Setting and periods

Coming soon

2. Prehistory in the Romanian area

Stone and metal ages

• Early Humans and the Beginning of Civilisation – Modern humans (Homo sapiens) first appeared in Africa about 3 lakh years ago and slowly spread across the world, reaching India tens of thousands of years ago. Historians split this long past into ages by the tools people used: Palaeolithic (old stone), Mesolithic (middle stone, tiny tools), Neolithic (new stone, farming), then copper, bronze and iron. When people learned farming, they settled in villages, stored grain and made pots. Some villages grew into planned cities, like the Harappan cities on the Indus and Ghaggar rivers. At about the same time, river-valley civilisations rose in Mesopotamia, Egypt and China.

3. The Geto-Dacians

Geto-Dacians and Roman conquest

Coming soon

4. Romanian ethnogenesis

Formation of the Romanian people

Coming soon

5. The Romanian Middle Ages

Medieval states

• Medieval States: How Kingdoms Formed, Split and United – Between about 900 and 1600 CE, many European states took shape in a similar way. A ruling family united tribes, accepted Christianity and won a royal crown. Dividing land among heirs often caused fragmentation; later a strong king reunited the land and built castles, towns and laws. States also joined through marriage (personal and real unions), and nobles gained power through parliaments.

6. Early modernity

Early modern Romanian lands

• The Enlightenment – The Enlightenment (about 1680–1800) was a movement in Europe that said people should use reason and evidence, not only tradition, to understand the world and to run society. It grew out of the Scientific Revolution. Thinkers such as Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant and Mary Wollstonecraft argued for natural rights, separation of powers, freedom of speech and religion, and government by consent. Ideas spread through books, newspapers, salons and the Encyclopédie. Some monarchs tried reforms (enlightened absolutism); the ideas also fed the American (1776) and French (1789) revolutions and later movements everywhere, including reformers in India.

7. Romanian world to mid-19th century

Between East and West

Coming soon

8. Modern Romania

Building the modern state

• The Rise of Nationalism in Europe – Before 1789, Europe was split into many kingdoms and people were loyal to a king. The French Revolution said power belongs to the people, who form one nation. Napoleon spread equal laws. After 1815 kings came back, but liberals, romantic writers and hungry common people pushed for nation-states in 1830 and 1848. Germany (1871) and Italy (1861) were built by joining many small states. Nations were shown as women figures like Marianne and Germania. By 1914, nationalism mixed with imperial rivalry, and the Balkans tension led to the First World War.

9. Romania in the 20th–21st centuries

World War I and the Great Union · Interwar Romania · World War II · Communist Romania · Democracy and integration

• World War I (1914–1918): Causes, Course and Consequences – World War I was fought from 1914 to 1918 between the Allies (France, Britain, Russia, later Italy, the USA and others) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria). Four long-term causes built tension: militarism, alliances, imperialism and nationalism (MAIN). The spark was the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. On the Western Front the war became a stalemate of trenches; new weapons made it very deadly. It was a total war: whole economies, women workers and colonies were mobilised, including about 1.3 million Indians. Russia left after its 1917 revolution, the USA joined in 1917, and fighting stopped with the armistice of 11 November 1918. The peace treaties of 1919–1920, including Versailles, redrew Europe, ended four empires, created the League of Nations and left anger that helped cause World War II.
• The Interwar Period (1918–1939) – Between the end of the First World War (1918) and the start of the Second (1939), four empires collapsed and many new states appeared in Central and Eastern Europe. The Versailles–Washington peace system and the League of Nations tried to keep order. After unrest in the early 1920s came a short period of stability, but the 1929 crash started the Great Depression. Mass unemployment weakened democracies; most new states turned authoritarian, while fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and the Stalinist USSR became totalitarian. Governments began to manage the economy, the League failed to stop aggression, and the Spanish Civil War and appeasement led towards war in 1939.
• The Holocaust – The Holocaust (in Hebrew, the Shoah) was the planned, state-organised persecution and murder of about six million European Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies and helpers between 1933 and 1945. It grew out of old antisemitism and Nazi racist ideology. It went step by step: exclusion and laws (1933–38), ghettos and mass shootings (1939–41), and death camps (1942–45). Roma and Sinti, disabled people, Polish and Soviet civilians, Soviet prisoners of war and others were also persecuted and murdered. Jews resisted in many ways, and some people risked their lives as rescuers, while many others looked away. After the war came trials, the 1948 Genocide Convention and remembrance, so that such a crime is never repeated.
• The Cold War (1945–1991) – The Cold War was a long contest (1945–1991) between two superpowers: the USA with its Western allies (capitalism, multi-party elections) and the USSR with its Eastern allies (communism, one-party rule). They never fought each other directly. Instead they formed rival alliances (NATO, Warsaw Pact), raced to build nuclear weapons and reach space, backed opposite sides in proxy wars (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan) and came close to nuclear war in Cuba in 1962. Many new nations, led by India and others, stayed non-aligned. Détente eased tension in the 1970s. Reforms in the USSR, the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the break-up of the USSR (1991) ended it.