Dobrogea

Dobrogea has one of the most diverse populations within entire Romania; the majority in the north is Romanian while in the south, aside Romanians there are important minorities of Bulgarians, Turks and Tatars. The inhabitants are engaged primarily in agriculture, especially in the raising of grains and cattle and in viticulture. Under the communists industrialization made rapid progress; besides food processing and fishing, major industries—notably metallurgy and chemicals—developed around Constanţa, the largest city and Romania’s main seaport. The earliest inhabitants of the Dobruja were the 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 this region 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, Pechenegs, and Cumans. Mircea, Prince of Walachia (1386–1418), also claimed the region, but by 1419 the Ottoman 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 region 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. The actual frontier was established by the Peace Treaty of Paris in 1947.