Founding of Moldavia
The founding of Moldavia was an event that traditionally dates to 1346 when a Vlach voivode, Dragoș, departed the Voivodeship of Maramureș in Transylvania and travelled eastwards with his fellow people to further settle the plain lying in between the Eastern Carpathians and the Prut river. This was incentivised by the Kingdom of Hungary, after several military victories in the 1340s drove out the nomadic mongols and tatars in the region - which in turn facilitated expansion and settlement east of the Carpathians. Dragoș established a defensive borderland, protecting the Kingdom's eastern flank. 13 years later, Bogdan I, another Vlach voivode from Maramureș who had fallen out with King Louis of Hungary, crossed the Carpathians in 1359 and took control of Moldavia, wrenching the region from Hungary's vassalage and turning the borderland into a principality. For the next five centuries, the Principality of Moldavia would be an important player in regional affairs until its union with Wallachia in 1859, initiating the establishment of the modern Romanian state.
Cultural dynamics in the future region of Moldavia
Moldavia developed in the lands between the Carpathian Mountains and the Dniester River, which had been dominated by nomadic Turkic peoples—the Pechenegs, Ouzes and Cumans—from around 900. The Golden Horde—a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate—took control of the lands east of the Carpathians in the 1240s. The Mongols promoted international commerce, and an important trade route developed along the Dniester. The circulation of Hungarian and Bohemian coins shows that there were also close economic contacts between the basin of the Moldova and Central Europe in the early. In addition to the Turkic rulers, medieval chronicles and documents mention other peoples who lived between the Carpathians and the Dniester, including the Ulichians and the Tivercians in the, and the Brodnici and the Alans in the.The Vlachs' presence in that territory is well documented from the 1160s. Their local polities were first mentioned in the : the Mongols defeated the Qara-Ulagh, or Black Vlachs in 1241, and the Vlachs invaded Galicia in the late 1270s. Even in the context of dependence on Turkic conquerors, the Vlachs formed unions of territorial communities or agrarian communes, called "țări" throughout Moldavia. Such as the ones in Vrancea, Câmpulung Moldovenesc, Tigheci and Sipenit. The rulers of țări had the responsibility of gathering and paying tribute to the Golden Horde. Several such unions of țări would elect a military leader titled voievod, and the territory governed by him would be called a voievodship. Such as the ones at Onuțu, Hanșca, Suceava and Bârlad. These political formations were older than the voievodship founded by Dragoș and were later integrated into an unified principality of Moldavia.
The Vlachs—the earliest Romanians—and their neighbors
The Moldavian region—the lands between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester River—acquired a territorial identity in the. During the previous millennium, the region had been subject to invasions by nomadic peoples, followed by a peaceful period around 750 during the Khazar Khaganate, which led to growth of the population the region. A new material culture—the "Dridu culture"—spread in the lands along the Lower Danube and in the territory east of the Carpathians. After the arrival of the Magyars to the Pontic steppes north of the Black Sea in the 830s, the local inhabitants fortified their settlements with palisades and deep moats along the Dniester in the. The Ulichians, Tivercians, "Waladj", and "Blaghā" are ethnic groups that have been connected with the Vlachs, or Romanians, of the region of the Carpathians.Victor Spinei wrote that a runestone which was set up around 1050 contains the earliest reference to Romanians living east of the Carpathians. It refers to Blakumen who killed a Varangian merchant at an unspecified place.
A competing group, the Magyars, left the Pontic steppes for the Carpathian Basin after a coalition of the Pechenegs and the Bulgarians defeated them at the end of the. The Pechenegs took control of the territory, but most Dridu settlements survived their arrival. Only the fortifications were destroyed in the 10th or early. New settlements appeared along the lower course of the Prut. The local inhabitants' burial rites radically changed: inhumation replaced cremation and no grave goods can be detected after around 1000.
Soviet historiography, with a few exceptions, denied the presence of a Romanian indigenous element in Moldavia during the 10th to 13th centuries, suggesting that they came to these lands from Transylvania, particularly from Maramureș, following voievode Dragoș. The indigenous population, according to them, was only Slavic, who was forced to leave due to the nomadic invasions. In this historical framework, the migration of the Romanians to areas vacated by the Slavs was seen as a chaotic process. Authors of this theory, such as V. Zelenciuk and L. Polevoi, claim that written sources from the 13th-14th centuries sometimes referred to the territory between the Dniester and Prut rivers as Rosovlahia or Moldoslavia.
Romanian historian Ion Eremia noted however that Byzantine sources do not contain the term 'Moldoslavia', which only appears in Ukrainian folklore, and the term cannot be dated to the 13th-14th centuries. While the term 'Rossovlahia' is considered to be of Byzantine origin and means 'the Wallachia near Russia', suggesting a large Romanian indigenous population.
Anthropologist Henry H. Stahl, by examining medieval documents up until 1449, found that they mention a total of 755 Moldavian settlements, out of which 607 predate the establishment of the principality of Moldavia by Dragoș, suggesting there was a large indigenous Romanian population. Russian historian L.L. Polevoi concluded based on rural toponyms that by the middle of the 14th century, 73.8% of the names of villages in Moldavia were of Eastern Roman origin and 24.5% of Slavic origin, while the ethnic groups in Moldavia were as follows: Romanians 48.7%, Eastern Slavs 39.5%, Southern Slavs 3.3%, others 8.5%. However, Russian historian G.G. Litavrin, studying the Vlach communities in the Balkans, concluded that Polevoi's study is unconvincing as the Vlachs used to adopt personal and place names from other people, including the slavs. And that this is not a phenomenon exclusive to the Vlachs, for example, many Bulgarians personal names and villages names from the same period were Greek, which does not conclude to an assimilation of the Bulgarians by the Greeks, but rather the adoption of Greek personal and place names by the Bulgarians, as such, toponymical data cannot be used as reliable arguments for presenting an ethnic situation.
Romanian historian Ion Eremia further criticizes the Polevoi's method, considering his calculations to estimate the number of villages in Moldavia dubious, and the forming of exact data out of personal estimations erroneous. He argues that the migration of slavs from Galicia to Bukovina in the 14th-16th centuries is well known and accepted even among Soviet historians such as T.V. Kosmina and V.V. Grabovetski, where the slavs founded new settlements. As a result, a large number of new villages appeared in the region, thus, they cannot be used as evidence of slavic presence before the founding of Moldavia and proves L.L. Polevoi's estimations about the ethnic groups inaccurate. Furthermore, his estimation about the number of villages in Moldova is very liberal. Polevoi estimates about 800 villages in the 14th century and 1000 villages at the end, with a very large margin of error, of about 200 villages. By Polevoi's own calculations with each village having 15 houses with families made of 5 people, that margin of error is 15.000 people or 19,1% of the total population according to his own population estimations of 78.480 people. One cannot create such specific estimations of 48.7% Romanians and 39.5% Eastern Slavs with such a large margin of error.
According to Polevoi's study, 596 Moldavian villages had 41.720 inhabitants or 48,5% of the total population, but 322 East Slavic villages had 31.020 inhabitants or 39,5%, justifying it by saying that villages in East Slavic regions were larger. Had he have followed his own pattern, he would have ended up with a population of 44,700 Molodvans and 24,150 Slavs instead. Polevoi does not explain how he made the calculations for each particular village, but they do not follow the author's own formula, which indicates that numbers are entirely arbitrary, adjusted to a preconceived idea. And finally, one aspect left out by Polevoi was the slavicization of place names in the 14th-16th centuries by the Moldavian chancery, caused by the use of Old Church Slavonic. Historian N.A. Demcenco found out that the villages Goluboi, Potok, Sredne Vodeanoe, Dibrovo, Krasnoilsk, Mejdurece and
Dubovka were inhabited by Romanians, had N.A. Demcenco relied exclusively on toponymical data he would have concluded that the villages are inhabited by slavs. According to Ukrainian historian N. Kotlear, the borders of Principality of Halicz did not extend southward beyond the cities and castles of Vasilev, Onut, Bakota, Ușița, Kalius, Kucelmin, located on the upper course of the Dniester River.
Mongol invasion and occupation
According to the Persian historian, Rashid-al-Din Hamadani, a Mongol army "proceeded by way of the Qara-Ulagh, crossing the and defeating the Ulagh peoples" during the Mongol invasion of 1241. His narrative shows that the "Quara-Ulagh," or Black Vlachs, lived in the Eastern or Southern Carpathians. Giovanni di Plano Carpini, a papal envoy to the Great Khan of the Mongols, met a "Duke Olaha" who "was leaving with" his retinue to the Mongols in 1247. Victor Spinei, Vlad Georgescu and other historians identify the duke as a Vlach ruler, because his name is similar to the Hungarian word for Vlach, but the name may have also been a version of Oleg. Friar William of Rubruck, who visited the court of the Great Khan in the 1250s, listed "the Blac", or Vlachs, among the peoples who paid tribute to the Mongols, but the Vlachs' territory is uncertain. Rubruck described "Blakia" as "Assan's territory" south of the Lower Danube, showing that he identified it with the northern regions of the Second Bulgarian Empire.Archaeological finds—kilns to produce pottery and furnaces to puddle iron ore—identify towns that were important economic centers of the Golden Horde. At Orheiul Vechi, the ruins of a mosque and a bath were also excavated. The local inhabitants used high quality ceramics, similar to those found in other parts of the Golden Horde. The Mongols supported international commerce, which led to the formation of a "Mongol road" from Kraków along the Dniester. Almost 5000 Mongol coins from the first half of the have been excavated in the same region. At the mouth of the Dniester, Cetatea Albă developed into an important emporium. It was established by Genoese merchants in the late.
Weapons and harness pieces from the 13th and that have been found together with agricultural tools at Vatra Moldoviței, Coșna and Cozănești shows the existence of either local elites or armed peasant groups between the Carpathians and the upper courses of the Siret. Hungarian and Bohemian coins were in circulation in the same territory during the first half of the. The local inhabitants used pottery of lower quality than those used in the lands directly controlled by the Mongols.