Founding of Moldavia

The founding of Moldavia (Romanian: Descălecatul Moldovei) 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.

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 14th century. 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 9th century, and the Brodnici and the Alans in the 13th century.

The Vlachs' presence in that territory is well documented from the 1160s. Their local polities were first mentioned in the 13th century: 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" (from the Latin terra – land) 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 (near Hotin), Hanșca (in the Lăpușna region), 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 Moldavian region—the lands between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester River—acquired a territorial identity in the 14th century. 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 (in both present-day Bulgaria and Romania) 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 9th century. 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 9th century. The Pechenegs took control of the territory, but most Dridu settlements survived their arrival. Only the fortifications were destroyed in the 10th or early 11th centuries. 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.