The cost of Roma slavery

 Perspective Politice

Ciprian Necula

Abstract

This article is about the voluntary or involuntary contribution of the Roma through the history to the economical and social development in the Romanian space. Over the centuries, Roma have suffered social exclusion, discrimination, slavery and deportations to Nazi and Romanian concentration camps. What is less documented is that they have managed to survive over the centuries as an ethnic group, even becoming privileged in certain fields. The Roma attained a high level of privilege as handicraftsmen in an agrarian cultural space, as army tools providers, as famous musicians and appreciated entertainers; they gained recognition as of being from a different culture and speaking another language. Therefore, this article is part of a series of analyses of Roma contribution to economic and social development of the societies that they live in, focusing on Romania – home of the largest population of Roma in Europe . I have decided to start with Roma slavery for two reasons: first of all, Roma were first mentioned in Romanian history as slaves and second, the role and economic contribution of the slaves in the Romanian Principalities are highly relevant for the current situation of the Romanian Roma. This article makes use of the available literature on slavery of Roma ethnic groups in the Romanian Principalities as well as other materials related to Roma history, including anthropological and sociological research.

Keywords: cost, Roma, romanian principalities, slavery.

The abolition of State Slavery in Wallachia: 

unknown laws and miss-interpreted events

Bogdan Mateescu

The need to study the abolition of Wallachia`s State Slaves can be expressed by simply looking at the dates when different historians or sources placed this event: 1831, 1837, 1838, 1843, 1847. This event is unique in Romanian historiography due to the shallow and imprecise knowledge projected upon it, while lacking any debate over each one of these dates. One can only look at the different moments that historians presented over time and assume the existence of a certain fault in either perceiving the event or in elaborating or applying the law itself. We attempt to shed light on the matter and identify the law that would be rightfully considered the abolition law. This alone should provide an interesting inquiry into how institutions and laws worked (or failed to work) at that time. Secondly, since the event we`re analyzing is the abolition of slavery, it is easy to understand the great potential it had to influence individual and family life of the individuals in question. Our second objective was to focus on and to document this particular impact in order to provide an image of how in this context individuals were affected by institutional failures.