ABSTRACT
For most of their history, the Romanian population like the rest of Southeastern Europe was predominantly a rural peasantry. The rural share of the population exceeded 80 percent through the interwar period, and an urban majority appeared only as late as 1981. The agrarian question – focusing mostly on the issue of land ownership, the relationship between boyar nobles and peasants, the relationship with the emerging industrial sector, and the integration of the peasantry into political life – repeatedly generated heated debates in parliament and society. The origins of the peasant-centered agrarian question can be traced back to the Phanariot Regime, a period of intense exploitation of the peasantry in order to meet the growing taxation and labor obligation toward the Ottoman Sublime Porte. The Central Commission’s agrarian bill divided the parliament into two irreconcilable ideological camps, the Conservatives and the Liberals.
