The parliament proclaims Romania a kingdom in…

The parliament proclaims Romania a kingdom in 1881, and Charles is crowned in Bucharest's cathedral with a crown fashioned from an Ottoman cannon seized at Plevna.

Romania will enjoy relative peace and prosperity for the next three decades, and the policies of successive Conservative and Liberal governments will vary little.

Walachian wells begin pumping oil; a bridge is built across the Danube at Cernavoda (in Dobruja); and new docks arise at Constanta.

Foreign trade will more than triple between 1870 and 1898, and by 1900 the new kingdom will have fourteen thousand kilometers of roadway and thirty-one hundred kilometers of railroad.

Charles equips a respectable army, and peasant children fill newly constructed rural schoolrooms.

Romania borrows heavily to finance development, however, and most of the population continues to live in penury and ignorance.