Assisted by his councilor Mihail Kogălniceanu, an intellectual leader of the 1848 revolution, Cuza

initiated a series of reforms that contributed to the modernization of Romanian society and of state
structures.

1865 stamp

Cuza in the 1860s; portrait by August Strixner

His first measure addressed a need for increasing the land resources and revenues available to the
state, by "secularizing" (confiscating) monastic assets in 1863.[2] Probably more than a quarter of
Romania's farmland was controlled by untaxed Eastern Orthodox "Dedicated Monasteries", which
supported Greek and other foreign monks in shrines such as Mount Athos and Jerusalem (a
substantial drain on state revenues). Cuza got his parliament's backing to expropriate these lands.
He offered compensation to the Greek Orthodox Church, but Sophronius III, the Patriarch of
Constantinople, refused to negotiate; after several years, the Romanian government withdrew its
offer and no compensation was ever paid. State revenues thereby increased without adding any
domestic tax burden. The land reform, liberating peasants from the last corvées, freeing their
movements and redistributing some land (1864), was less successful.[2] In attempting to create a
solid support base among the peasants, Cuza soon found himself in conflict with the group
of Conservatives. A liberal bill granting peasants title to the land they worked was defeated. Then the
Conservatives responded with a bill that ended all peasant dues and responsibilities, but gave
landlords title to all the land. Cuza vetoed it, then held a plebiscite to alter the Paris Convention (the
virtual constitution), in the manner of Napoleon III.

The Al.I. Cuza family residence in Ruginoasa

His plan to establish universal manhood suffrage, together with the power of the Domnitor to rule by
decree, passed by a vote of 682,621 to 1,307. He consequently governed the country under the
provisions of Statutul dezvoltător al Convenției de la Paris ("Statute expanding the Paris
Convention"), an organic law adopted on 15 July 1864. With his new plenary powers, Cuza then
promulgated the Agrarian Law of 1863. Peasants received title to the land they worked, while
landlords retained ownership of one third. Where there was not enough land available to create
workable farms under this formula, state lands (from the confiscated monasteries) would be used to
give the landowners compensation.
Despite the attempts by Lascăr Catargiu's cabinet to force a transition in which some corvées were
to be maintained, Cuza's reform marked the disappearance of the boyar class as a privileged group,
and led to a channeling of energies into capitalism and industrialization; at the same time, however,
land distributed was still below necessities, and the problem became stringent over the following
decades – as peasants reduced to destitution sold off their land or found that it was insufficient for
the needs of their growing families.
Cuza's reforms also included the adoption of the Criminal Code and the Civil Code based on
the Napoleonic code (1864), a Law on Education, establishing tuition-free, compulsory public
education for primary schools[2] (1864; the system, nonetheless, suffered from drastic shortages in
allocated funds; illiteracy was eradicated about 100 years later, during the communist regime). He
founded the University of Iași (1860) and the University of Bucharest (1864), and helped develop a
modern, European-style Romanian Army, under a working relationship with France. He is the
founder of the Romanian Naval Forces.