Who ruled Romania, year by year: 657 BC to 1918

Interactive map of every power that held territory in present-day Romania, from 657 BC to the union of 1918: Dacians, Rome, Goths, Huns, Avars, Slavs, Hungary, the Ottomans, the Habsburgs.

Years covered

657 BC to 1918 — 2,576 years

Powers

35

Holdings recorded

53

Marked contested

9

Regions

9

Every holding

One line for each of the 53 holdings the map draws, with who held it, when, where, on what terms, how sure the record is, and where it comes from. 9 of them are marked contested; what is disputed about each is written out in place.

Who these powers were

Every power named in the table above, in the order it first appears: where it came from, what it spoke, and how it arrived. The language family is linguistic and not ethnic — what a power spoke is what it could leave behind in a place name.

Greek colonies (Milesian, Dorian) — Greek

Traders out of Miletus on the Ionian coast, and later Dorians from Heraclea Pontica, founding ports around the Black Sea from the 7th century BC. They came for grain, fish and slaves rather than territory: Histria, Tomis and Callatis were self-governing cities tied to their mother cities, and the Getic interior a few kilometres inland was never theirs. Histria (ancient city)

Scythians and Sarmatians — Iranian

Iranian-speaking horse nomads pushed west across the pontic steppe in successive waves — Scythians from the 7th century BC, then the Sarmatian groups: Iazyges on the plain between the Danube and the Tisza, Roxolani on the lowlands east and south of the Carpathians. They held the open ground and taxed what crossed it, without ever administering it. Sarmatians

Celts (La Tène) — Celtic

The eastern edge of the Celtic expansion that spilled out of central Europe in the 4th century BC and reached Delphi in 279. Those who turned north-east settled the Transylvanian plateau and the Banat among the Dacians already there, and the two cultures visibly mix in the archaeology before Celtic material disappears around 150 BC. Celts in Transylvania

Dacian Kingdom — Thraco-Dacian

The native population of the Carpathian arc, Thraco-Dacian speaking, gathered into a kingdom when Rubobostes broke Celtic power before 168 BC. Burebista welded the tribes into a real state between 82 and 44 BC; Decebalus rebuilt it and lost it to Trajan in 106. Dacia

Rome — Latin

Arrived from the south in two entirely separate movements. The Greek coastal cities were attached to Moesia in AD 46 and stayed Roman, then East Roman, for over five centuries. Trajan then took the Dacian heartland north of the Danube between 101 and 106, for its gold and to end a frontier threat — and held it for only 165 years. Roman Dacia

Goths (Thervingi and Greuthungi) — East Germanic

East Germanic peoples who came down from the Vistula basin in the 2nd and 3rd centuries towards the north pontic steppe, reaching the lower Danube exactly as Rome was giving up Dacia. They ruled a mixed population as a warrior aristocracy until the Huns shattered them in 376 and pushed the survivors across the Danube into the empire. Thervingi

Huns — Turkic or unknown

Steppe nomads out of central Asia who crossed the Volga around 370 and set off the chain of migrations that ended the western empire. They centred themselves on the Pannonian plain and squeezed tribute out of everything within reach, Constantinople included, but built no administration; the confederation came apart after Attila’s death and lost at Nedao in 454. Huns

Gepid Kingdom — East Germanic

East Germanic kin of the Goths, subject to the Huns until they led the revolt that destroyed Attila’s heirs at Nedao in 454. They took the Tisza plain and Transylvania as their reward and held them for over a century as a settled kingdom, until the Avars and the Lombards divided them between themselves in 567. Gepids

Sclaveni (Prague-Korchak) — Slavic

The western wing of the Slavic expansion that set out from the Pripet marshes and the upper Dniester in the 6th century, came down the eastern flank of the Carpathians and crossed the Danube into the Balkans. They arrived as farmers taking land, not as an army — which is why their trace is pottery and place names rather than a state. Prague-Korchak culture

Antes (Penkovka) — Slavic

The eastern wing of the same expansion, distinguished from the Sclaveni by Jordanes himself and settled between the Dniester and the lower Danube. They were Byzantine allies for a time, then destroyed as a political formation by the Avar general Apsich in 602; the name vanishes from the sources, though their material culture continues for another century. Antes (people)

Avar Khaganate — Turkic or Mongolic

A steppe confederation fleeing the Göktürks, arrived in the Carpathian basin between 558 and 567; it destroyed the Gepids and made the plain its centre for nearly 250 years. It ruled Slavic and other populations, besieged Constantinople in 626, and was broken by Charlemagne’s campaigns between 791 and 803. Pannonian Avars

South Slavs (Bulgarian) — South Slavic

The Slavs who crossed the Danube and populated the Balkans, absorbed into the Bulgarian state after 681 and Christianised in Slavonic. They are by far the largest source of loanwords in Romanian, present here both as a settled population north of the Danube and — for eight centuries afterwards — as the language of the church and the chancellery. South Slavs

First Bulgarian Empire — Turkic elite over a Slavic population

Founded when Asparuh’s Bulgars, a Turkic group from the pontic steppe, crossed the Danube and imposed themselves on the Slavs already settled there, wringing recognition out of Byzantium in 681. The ruling elite was Slavicised within two centuries. Dobruja was core territory; the extent north of the Danube remains disputed. First Bulgarian Empire

Rusyns (Ruthenians) — East Slavic

The descendants of the Tivertsi and Ulichi, placed on the Dniester and the Prut by the Primary Chronicle, reinforced by later medieval movements out of Galicia and Podolia along the Carpathians. They remained an unbroken rural population in Maramureș and Bukovina and are the only old Slavic group here whose language has survived to the present. Rusyns

Pechenegs — Turkic

Turkic nomads pushed west off the Volga steppe by the Oghuz around 890, who displaced the Magyars and took the pastures from the Don to the lower Danube. Constantine Porphyrogenitus treats them as the pivot of pontic diplomacy. Byzantium destroyed their army at Levounion in 1091. Pechenegs

Byzantine Empire — Greek

The eastern Roman empire, back at a frontier it had abandoned in 602. John Tzimiskes destroyed the Rus army at Dorostolon and took eastern Bulgaria in 971, and Constantinople held the lower Danube as the theme of Paristrion until the Vlach-Bulgar rising of 1185 drove it out again. Paristrion

Kingdom of Hungary — Uralic elite, Latin state

The Magyars, a Uralic-speaking confederation out of the middle Volga, took the Pannonian plain between 895 and 900 and became a Latin Christian kingdom under Stephen I. The advance eastwards was gradual: Gyula of Transylvania falls in 1003 and Ajtony in the Banat around 1028, but eastern Transylvania is secured only around 1150–1200, and Maramureș organised as a county in 1303. Kingdom of Hungary

Cumans — Turkic

A Turkic confederation, the Polovtsians of the Rus chronicles, who followed the Pechenegs west across the steppe in the mid-11th century and dominated the lowlands north of the Danube. A Catholic bishopric was founded for them in 1227; the Mongols shattered them in 1241 and the survivors fled into Hungary. Cumans

Transylvanian Saxons — West Germanic

German-speaking colonists, mostly from the Moselle and the Rhineland rather than Saxony, invited by Géza II from around 1150 to hold and work the southern frontier of Transylvania. The Andreanum of 1224 gave them their law, their land and their towns, and for seven centuries they governed themselves without ruling anyone else. Transylvanian Saxons

Second Bulgarian Empire — South Slavic

Restored when the brothers Peter and Asen, Vlach and Bulgarian nobles, revolted against Byzantine taxation in 1185 and took the lower Danube. It held Dobruja until the mid-14th century, when the local boyars broke away and formed the principality of Karvuna. Second Bulgarian Empire

Teutonic Order — West Germanic

A crusading order, barely out of the Holy Land, given the Burzenland by Andrew II in 1211 to defend the Carpathian passes. They built stone castles, minted coin and tried to move the territory directly under the pope — at which point Andrew expelled them, in 1225. Burzenland

Mongols / Golden Horde — Mongolic

The western wing of the Mongol empire, which crushed the Cumans and shattered Hungary at Mohi in 1241 before withdrawing to the steppe. The Horde then held the lands east and south of the Carpathians at a distance, taking its tribute; both Wallachia and Moldavia appear in the 14th century as the grip loosens. Golden Horde

Wallachia — Romanian

The first Romanian state, formed south of the Carpathians as Mongol power receded, under Basarab I, who secured it by defeating the king of Hungary at Posada in 1330. It kept its prince, its church and its language throughout, and from 1417 paid the Ottomans for the privilege. Wallachia

Principality of Moldavia — Romanian

Formed east of the Carpathians out of a Hungarian frontier march: Dragoș was installed there, and Bogdan I then broke it away, independence from Hungary won by 1359. Like Wallachia it survived by paying tribute rather than fighting, and lost Bukovina to Austria in 1775 and Bessarabia to Russia in 1812. Moldavia

Despotate of Dobruja — South Slavic

A splinter of the Second Bulgarian Empire on the Black Sea coast, under Balik and then Dobrotitsa, governed from Kavarna and Kaliakra and with a fleet of its own. The region takes its present name from Dobrotitsa. It was crushed between Wallachia and the Ottomans by the early 15th century. Despotate of Dobruja

Serbs — South Slavic

Refugees moving north ahead of the Ottoman advance from the second half of the 14th century, and then in one huge, well-documented wave: the Great Migration of 1690, when Patriarch Arsenije III led tens of thousands out of Kosovo into Habsburg territory. Vienna settled them along the military frontier in the Banat as a population of soldiers. Great Migrations of the Serbs

Ottoman Empire — Turkish

A Turkish state out of north-western Anatolia, across into Europe in 1354 and at the Danube within two generations. It treated the ground here in three different ways: Dobruja and the Banat were annexed and administered as provinces, while Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania remained tributaries with their own princes, churches and laws. Ottoman Empire

Eastern Hungarian Kingdom — Uralic elite, Latin state

What was left of Hungary east of the Ottoman conquest. After Mohács in 1526 two kings were crowned, and John Zápolya held the east with Ottoman backing against the Habsburg Ferdinand, swearing vassalage to Suleiman in 1529. His son gave up the royal title at Speyer in 1570 — which is where the Principality of Transylvania begins. Eastern Hungarian Kingdom

Principality of Transylvania — Uralic and Latin elite, mixed population

What the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom became at Speyer in 1570: an Ottoman tributary with its own diet, elected princes and three recognised political nations. It was at its height under Gábor Bethlen during the Thirty Years’ War, and passed to the Habsburgs between 1699 and 1711. Principality of Transylvania (1570–1711)

Habsburg Monarchy — German elite, multi-ethnic state

The Austrian dynastic state, which pushed the Ottomans back out of Hungary after the failed siege of Vienna in 1683 and took this ground piece by piece over ninety years: Transylvania at Karlowitz in 1699, the Banat and Oltenia at Passarowitz in 1718, Bukovina by cession in 1775. It then colonised what it had conquered, bringing in Germans, Serbs, Slovaks and Poles. Habsburg monarchy

Russians (Lipovans and later settlers) — East Slavic

Old Believers who refused Nikon’s reforms of the Russian church in the 1650s and fled the persecution that followed, reaching the Danube delta and northern Dobruja from the 1720s onwards under Ottoman protection. They are a population of religious refugees, unconnected to the old Slavic settlement despite the shared label. Lipovans

Slovaks — West Slavic

West Slavic colonists brought in from Upper Hungary from the second half of the 18th century, partly through Habsburg resettlement policy and partly by Hungarian landowners looking for hands to work emptied estates. They took the Arad and Banat plains and the wooded hills of Bihor and Sălaj; their villages here are barely two centuries old. Slovaks in Romania

Poles — West Slavic

Habsburg-era colonists in Bukovina from the 1780s, after Vienna took the province from the Ottomans and began to populate it: officials and craftsmen from Galicia, plus salt miners brought from Bochnia to Cacica in 1792. A deliberate imperial colonisation, not a migration. Poles in Romania

Russian Empire — East Slavic

It never annexed the principalities, but occupied them four times between 1806 and 1854 during its wars with the Ottomans, governing directly for the length of each occupation. The occupation of 1828–1834, under Kiselyov, left the deepest mark: the Regulamentul Organic, the first constitutional framework either principality had. Regulamentul Organic

Romania — Romanian

Born when Moldavia and Wallachia elected the same prince in 1859; it won independence in 1877–78 and became a kingdom in 1881. Dobruja was added at Berlin in 1878 in exchange for southern Bessarabia; Transylvania, the Banat, Crișana, Maramureș and Bukovina united in 1918 and were confirmed at Trianon in 1920. Kingdom of Romania

First Bulgarian Empire — Dobruja — Turkic elite over a Slavic population

Founded when Asparuh’s Bulgars, a Turkic group from the pontic steppe, crossed the Danube and imposed themselves on the Slavs already settled there, wringing recognition out of Byzantium in 681. The ruling elite was Slavicised within two centuries. Dobruja was core territory; the extent north of the Danube remains disputed. First Bulgarian Empire

Where the sources disagree

9 holdings are marked contested, which means the sources do not agree about them. Each has a page of its own: what the map shows, who argues what, on what evidence, and what would have to be found for the question to close. None of them picks a winner.

• Was Histria founded in 657 BC or 630?

  Two ancient writers give two dates for the oldest town on the Romanian coast. They are twenty-seven years apart, and the archaeology cannot tell them apart either.

  Greek colonies (Milesian, Dorian) · 657 BC to 46

• Rome held Dobruja for 550 years, and almost nobody counts them

  Everyone knows about Roman Dacia, which lasted 165 years. Almost nobody mentions the stretch of Romanian coast Rome held for more than three times as long.

  Rome — Moesia Inferior / Scythia Minor · 46 to 602

• When Rome left Dacia, and who was left behind

  The textbooks say 271. The coins say the province had already stopped working ten years earlier. And what happened to the people is the most bitterly argued question in the region's history.

  Rome — the province of Dacia · 106 to 271

• The Antes end twice, a century apart

  In 602 an Avar general was sent to destroy them, and the name never appears again. But the villages carry on for another hundred years. Which ending belongs on a map?

  Antes (Penkovka) · 500 to 700

• The Slavs north of the Danube, and when they stopped being Slavs

  A fifth of the Romanian language is Slavic. One layer of those words can be dated to before the ninth century by a single sound change — and that is the sharpest evidence anyone has.

  South Slavs (Bulgarian) · 680 to 1400

• How far north did the First Bulgarian Empire actually reach?

  Bulgarian scholarship puts Krum in Transylvania. A Romanian historian said flatly that no Bulgarian ruler was ever master of Wallachia. The strange part is which Romanians took the Bulgarian side.

  First Bulgarian Empire · 681 to 1018

• When was Paristrion made a province, and who lived in it?

  Two historians dated the same Byzantine province eighty years apart. Behind that argument sits a stranger one, about whether three names in a princess's memoir are the first Romanian states.

  Byzantine Empire — the theme of Paristrion · 971 to 1185

• When and how Hungary took Transylvania

  The map says 1000. The conquest actually took three centuries — and the only source describing who lived there first was written 300 years afterwards by a man inventing people to explain place names.

  Kingdom of Hungary · 1000 to 1526

• Why 1918 is not one date

  Three votes in three places over nine months, a war fought after the last of them, three treaties — and one that never came into force because Japan never signed it off.

  Romania — the Great Union · 1918 to 1919

The four kinds of hold

A power can be present on the ground in four different ways, and this record keeps them apart. Reading them as one thing is what turns a map into a claim nobody made.

administered

run as part of the state — its officials, its law

suzerainty

a tributary keeping its own ruler and institutions

hegemony

dominance without administration — tribute, raiding, control of movement

settlement

a population present without holding the state

How sure each holding is

attested, probable, contested — in that order of confidence. A holding marked contested is one where the sources disagree, and the disagreement itself is written out beside it rather than resolved.

Common questions

Who ruled the territory of present-day Romania?

In order, from 657 BC to 1918: the Greek colonies on the Black Sea coast, Celts, Scythians and Sarmatians, the Dacian Kingdom, Rome, the Goths, the Huns, the Gepids, the Avar Khaganate, Slavic settlement, the First Bulgarian Empire, Byzantium, the Pechenegs, the Cumans, the Kingdom of Hungary, the Mongols and the Golden Horde, Wallachia and Moldavia, the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg Monarchy, the Russian Empire during four occupations, and Romania. Each appears with the terms it held on, because "Ottoman" in Dobruja and "Ottoman" in Wallachia were not the same arrangement at all.

How long was Romania under Ottoman rule?

It depends on which ground and which arrangement, which is exactly the point. Wallachia was an Ottoman tributary from 1417 and Moldavia from the 1450s until independence in 1878 — but that was suzerainty: tribute, foreign policy and confirmation of the prince, with no Ottoman administration, no Ottoman law and no colonisation inside the country. Dobruja is a different story: annexed between 1417 and 1420 and administered directly as Ottoman provincial territory for four and a half centuries. The Banat was a directly administered province from 1552 to 1716.

Was Transylvania part of Hungary or of Romania?

Both, at different times, and for a long stretch neither. It was in the Kingdom of Hungary from about the year 1000 — though the conquest took three centuries to reach Maramureș — then part of the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom after Mohács in 1526, then a self-governing principality and Ottoman tributary from 1570, then Habsburg from 1699 and under Hungarian administration from 1867, and it united with Romania in 1918. When and how the Magyars arrived is one half of the continuity dispute, which is why the map marks those years contested rather than settled.

How long did Rome hold Dacia?

North of the Danube, 165 years: Trajan took the Dacian heartland between 101 and 106 and Aurelian withdrew in 271 or 275, depending on which source you follow. On the Black Sea coast it was far longer — the Greek cities were attached to Moesia in AD 46 and stayed Roman, then East Roman, until the Danube frontier broke in 602. That second span is more than three times the first and is routinely left out of summaries of Roman rule here.

What do direct rule, suzerainty, hegemony and settlement mean on this map?

They are the four ways a power can hold ground, and the outline of each region says which one applies. Direct rule means administered as part of the state, with its officials and its law. Suzerainty means a tributary that kept its own ruler and institutions. Hegemony means dominance without administration — tribute, raiding, control of movement. Settlement means a population was present without holding the state, which is how the Saxons, the Rusyns, the Serbs and the Lipovans appear. Drawing these as one band would be the most misleading thing this map could do.

When did Romania become a single country?

In stages. Moldavia and Wallachia elected the same prince in 1859, independence came in 1877–78, and the kingdom was proclaimed in 1881. Dobruja was added at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 in exchange for southern Bessarabia. Transylvania, the Banat, Crișana, Maramureș and Bukovina united in 1918 — voted at Alba Iulia on 1 December — but recognition came with the treaties of Saint-Germain in 1919 and Trianon in 1920, and effective control of Transylvania settled only during 1919. 1918 is where this map stops, because from there on the answer is a single state.

Why are the borders drawn as modern counties?

Because those are the only lines that can be drawn honestly. Historical frontiers did not follow them and frequently were not lines at all — the Roman limes, the Ottoman frontier and the partition of 1541 all ran across administrative units rather than between them, and a frontier could move every campaign season. Colouring today’s counties by who held the region is clear about that. Drawing a crisp historical border would look more precise and be less true.

Where do the dates come from, and what happens when historians disagree?

Every entry names its source and carries one citation you can check, drawn deliberately from more than one national tradition — Romanian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Turkish, Austrian, Russian, Byzantine and Anglophone scholarship all describe this ground and do not always agree. Where they disagree, the map says what is disputed instead of picking a winner, and marks the entry contested. Nine of the fifty-three holdings on this map are marked that way.

The rest of the site

• Historic borders, year by year — Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia, Ukraine and Moldova on one zoomable map: every power that held each region, from 700 BC to 1918, each country researched separately and read against the others.
• Who ruled Hungary, year by year: 550 BC to 1920 — Interactive map of every power that held territory in present-day Hungary, from 550 BC to Trianon: Celts, Rome, Huns, Avars, Magyars, Ottomans, Habsburgs.
• Who ruled Bulgaria, year by year: 700 BC to 1919 — Interactive map of every power that held territory in present-day Bulgaria, from 700 BC to Neuilly: Thracians, Persia, Rome, Byzantium, the Bulgarian empires, the Ottomans.
• Who ruled Serbia, year by year: 500 BC to 1920 — Interactive map of every power that held territory in present-day Serbia, from 500 BC to Trianon: Celts, Rome, Byzantium, the Nemanjić state, the Ottomans, the Habsburgs.
• Who ruled Ukraine, year by year: 700 BC to 1921 — Interactive map of every power that held territory in present-day Ukraine, from 700 BC to the Peace of Riga: Scythians, Rus, Lithuania, Poland, the Cossacks, the khanate.
• Who ruled Moldova, year by year: 600 BC to 1920 — Interactive map of every power that held territory in present-day Moldova, from 600 BC to 1920: Getae, Goths, the Horde, Moldavia, the Ottoman rayas, Poland, Russia.