Abstract

The defeat of the Ottoman Empire by the Tsarist Empire in the 1877–1878 war created an opportunity for the emergence of new nation states located next to the River Danube, including Bulgaria and Romania. The aim of this paper is to consider the period during which the Danubian landscape was transformed by means of the modest technologies available to the two new nation states. On the one hand, the two nation states appeared to reach a tacit agreement that they would resolve their disputes without the intervention of external European powers. On the other hand, through the rise of its technocratic elite and the adoption of an aggressive policy towards developing the Danubian environment, Romania became the dominant partner in the two nations’ co-management of the Danube.