The Moldavian Revolution of 1848 is the name used for the unsuccessful Romanian liberal and Romantic nationalist movement inspired by the Revolutions of 1848 in the principality of Moldavia. Initially seeking accommodation within the political framework defined by the Regulamentul Organic, it eventually rejected it as imposed by foreign powers and called for more thorough political reforms. Led by a group of young intellectuals, the movement was mostly limited to petitioning and constitutional projects, unlike the successful uprising taking place later that year in neighbouring Wallachia, and it was quickly suppressed. This was despite the fact that the Moldavian revolutionaries were more moderate and willing to compromise in their demands for reforms than their Wallachian counterparts, as Moldavian political and social life continued to be dominated by a landed, conservative aristocracy, with the middle class still embryonic.

Mihail Kogălniceanu was a Romanian liberal statesman, lawyer, historian and publicist; he became Prime Minister of Romania on October 11, 1863, after the 1859 union of the Danubian Principalities under Domnitor Alexandru Ioan Cuza, and later served as Foreign Minister under Carol I. He was several times Interior Minister under Cuza and Carol. A polymath, Kogălniceanu was one of the most influential Romanian intellectuals of his generation. Siding with the moderate liberal current for most of his lifetime, he began his political career as a collaborator of Prince Mihail Sturdza, while serving as head of the Iași Theater and issuing several publications together with the poet Vasile Alecsandri and the activist Ion Ghica. After editing the highly influential magazine Dacia Literară and serving as a professor at Academia Mihăileană, Kogălniceanu came into conflict with the authorities over his Romantic nationalist inaugural speech of 1843. He was the ideologue of the abortive 1848 Moldavian revolution, authoring its main document, Dorințele partidei naționale din Moldova.