Dobruja

Dobruja, a region of the Balkan Peninsula, situated between the lower Danube River and the Black Sea. The larger, northern part belongs to Romania, the smaller, southern part to Bulgaria. It is a tableland of some 8,970 square miles (23,000 square km) in area, resembling a steppe with maximum elevations of 1,532 feet (467 m) in the north and 853 feet (260 m) in the south, where the surface is creased by ravines. The continental climate is moderated by the Black Sea, and average temperatures range between 25° F (−4° C) in January and 73° F (23° C) in July.

Owing to its openness to the sea and its position as a zone of passage between the Balkans and the steppe north of the Black Sea, the population of the Dobruja has been diverse. The majority in the north are Romanian and in the south Bulgarian, but, despite assimilation and emigration, significant minorities, notably Turks and Tatars, remain. The inhabitants are engaged primarily in agriculture, especially in the raising of grains and cattle and in viticulture. Under the communists, from the 1940s, industrialization made rapid progress. Besides food processing and fishing, major industries—notably metallurgy and chemicals—developed around Constanƫa, the largest city and Romania’s main seaport.

The earliest inhabitants of the Dobruja were the Getae, or Getians, a Thracian people whom Greek colonists encountered when they established trading cities on the Black Sea coast in the 6th century bc. Between the 1st century bc and the 3rd century ad, Rome dominated the region, which was known as Scythia Minor, and from the 5th to the 11th centuries Byzantine rule was contested by successive waves of nomadic peoples, including Huns, Avars, Slavs, Bulgars, Pechenegs, and Cumans. In the 14th century a despotate headed by a Bulgarian named Dobrotitsa encompassed the region (Dobruja may mean “Land of Dobrotitsa”). Mircea, Prince of Walachia (1386–1418), also claimed the region, but by 1419 the Ottoman Turks had incorporated it into their empire. During the next 450 years significant demographic changes occurred through the large-scale settlement of Anatolian Turks and Crimean Tatars. The Treaty of Berlin (1878) brought Ottoman rule to an end by awarding Romania most of the Dobruja and attaching the southern portion (the so-called Quadrilateral) to the principality of Bulgaria. Romania obtained the Quadrilateral after the Second Balkan War in 1913, but in 1940 it was forced to return that portion to Bulgaria and to accept an exchange of population. A new frontier was established by the Peace Treaty of Paris (1947).