Principalities and provinces, 1526-1859

What you are looking at

Twelve territorial phases across six polities, covering the three hundred years between Mohács and the union of the principalities. Habsburg Oltenia, Bukovina and Russian Bessarabia appear when they existed and not before.

How to read this layer

The point of the phasing is that there is no single “Wallachia” shape. A principality that changed overlord, lost a province and regained it is drawn as several dated features, and the year slider shows you which arrangement was in force.

sovereignty records what kind of authority held the ground; suzerain names the overlord where there was one. Tributary autonomy under the Porte is not the same as direct rule, and the layer keeps them apart rather than colouring both as “belonging to”.

Historical scope

1526 to 1859, as dated phases. Each feature carries its own validity range.

Sources and evidence

Territorial phases after Hertslet, The Map of Europe by Treaty, with the standard regional literature behind the internal arrangements. The instruments that moved these boundaries after 1829 are documented in the treaty frontier ledger.

Reconstruction and uncertainty

These rings are envelopes, not delimitations. They show roughly what was held, at a scale where the answer is meaningful, and they are not survey boundaries. Mountain and steppe margins are the least reliable parts of any of them - authority there was a function of routes, seasons and tribute rather than of a line.

The geometry is editorial throughout. See the shared Dacia GIS method for the rule the whole family is built on.

Data fields

polity_id, sovereignty, suzerain, confidence and review_status are filterable. Their meanings are in the Dacia data fields.

Data and downloads

GeoJSON under CC BY 4.0. Attribution: Terra Chartarum; territorial phases after Hertslet, The Map of Europe by Treaty.