Alexandru Ioan Cuza

Domnitor of Romania

20 March 1820 Bârlad, Moldavia

15 May 1873(1873-05-15) (53) Heidelberg, Baden, Germany

Incumbent

First ruler of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia For other uses, see Alexandru Ioan Cuza (disambiguation). This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Romanian. (February 2021) Click for important translation instructions. Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 274 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary Content in this edit is translated from the existing Romanian Wikipedia article at ]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated page}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation. Alexandru Ioan CuzaAlexandru Ioan Cuza, lithography by Josef Kriehuber, 1861Domnitor of RomaniaReign5 February 1862 – 23 February 1866PredecessorHimself as Prince of Moldavia and WallachiaSuccessorCarol IPrince of MoldaviaReign5 January 1859 – 5 February 1862PredecessorGrigore Alexandru GhicaSuccessorHimself as Domnitor of RomaniaPrince of WallachiaReign24 January 1859 – 5 February 1862PredecessorBarbu ȘtirbeiSuccessorHimself as Domnitor of RomaniaBorn(1820-03-20 ) 20 March 1820 Bârlad, MoldaviaDied15 May 1873(1873-05-15) (aged 53) Heidelberg, Baden, GermanyBurialThree Holy Hierarchs Church, IașiSpouseElena RosettiIssueSașa Cuza Dimitrie CuzaHouseCuzaFatherIoan CuzaMotherSultana CozadiniReligionEastern OrthodoxySignature Alexandru Ioan Cuza (pronounced  ( listen ) , or Alexandru Ioan I, also anglicised as Alexander John Cuza; 20 March 1820 – 15 May 1873) was the first domnitor (Ruler) of the Romanian Principalities through his double election as prince of Moldavia on 5 January 1859 and prince of Wallachia on 24 January 1859. He was a prominent figure of the Revolution of 1848 in Moldavia. Following his double election, he initiated a series of reforms that contributed to the modernization of Romanian society and of state structures. As ruler of the Romanian Principalities, he supported a political and diplomatic activity for the recognition of the union of Moldavia and Wallachia by the suzerain Ottoman Empire and achieved constitutional and administrative unity between Moldavia and Wallachia in 1862, when the Romanian Principalities officially adopted the name Romanian United Principalities with a single capital at Bucharest, a single national assembly and a single government. Alexandru's reform policies alienated a large coalition of conservatives and radical liberals, for the most part landowners and business owners. On 22 February 1866, he was forced to abdicate and leave the country.