Citizenship, nation- and state-building: The integration of Northern Dobrogea into Romania, 1878-1913

Situated in the northeastern extremity of the Balkan Peninsula, between the lower Danube and the Black Sea, the historical province of Dobrogea has a highly individualized geographical character. The arid steppes in the middle of the province are surrounded by an extensive seacoast in the east, the vast Danube delta in the north, the fertile shores of the Danube in the west, and by the Bulgarian mainland in the south, making up a broad ribbon of land, a kind of "irregular oblong with a waist" (see Map I, page ll).This advantageous geopolitical and commercial location accounts for Dobrogea's tumultuous history. From fifteenth century, Dobrogea functioned as a borderland of the Ottoman Empire and one of the most advanced Muslim military bastions in Southeastern Europe.