Romania as a major European power.

Could it be realistically possible? I'm thinking of creating a timeline which diverges off OTL somewhere in the 1800's, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars which would involve a greater Romanian state. One PoD I've thought of is 1848, one where the liberal Romanian revolutionaries would have had significantly greater success, but the looming Russian threat next door ruled it out in my mind. Are there any other events which could make it a plausible prospect?
 
The problem of Vlachs and Romanians was to be continually stuck as a buffer region between great eastern states : Russians, Austrians and Ottomans for that matter XIXth century.
Except some major screw of at least two of them, you won't have an important and independent enough state to go trough an economical and industrial program (admitting it would work) that would be the very base of being an european power.

You'd need a far earlier PoD to make it possible, possibly in the XIVth/XVth centuries, where a Romanian state could appear in case of a Ottoman screw (and in face of Russian absence in the region). It would butterfly a lot of History as we know it, of course, but you may end with it being on Poland scale, devellopment-wise.
 
The problem of Vlachs and Romanians was to be continually stuck as a buffer region between great eastern states : Russians, Austrians and Ottomans for that matter XIXth century.
Except some major screw of at least two of them, you won't have an important and independent enough state to go trough an economical and industrial program (admitting it would work) that would be the very base of being an european power.

You'd need a far earlier PoD to make it possible, possibly in the XIVth/XVth centuries, where a Romanian state could appear in case of a Ottoman screw (and in face of Russian absence in the region). It would butterfly a lot of History as we know it, of course, but you may end with it being on Poland scale, devellopment-wise.

In that case, then would a 1600 PoD work? Historically, Michael the Brave briefly ruled over Walachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania at the same time. Perhaps a victory over the invading Ottomans? The Austrians and Hungarians were interested in the region at the time, but Michael the Brave was allied with Emperor Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor at the time, a Habsburg. The Russians had no significant interest in the Carpathian-Danubian-Pontic space.
 
I think it may be a good PoD. Now, to say it would make Romania more than a regional power and that it would work for making Romania a continental power...
You'd need someone more knowledgable than I about the modern history of the region. Poland-Lithuania scale doesn't seem impossible to me, but that's a general impression.
 
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