The "Nicolae Iorga" Institute of History was founded on April 1, 1937 as the Institute for the Study of Universal History. The scientific mission of the Institute is to edit the fundamental sources of medieval, modern and contemporary history and, especially, to capitalize on these sources in individual or collective research papers. The fundamental research topics are: the history of the Old Regime; the history of the Black Sea; the history of trade and merchants; the stories of foreign travelers from the medieval and modern periods; the problem of modernizing the Romanian society in the 19th century; family history; the history of minorities; the history of the first world war; the history of Romanian communism; history of historiography.