SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES ASPECTS OF ROMANI
DEMOGRAPHICS IN THE 19TH CENTURY WALLACHIA,
Published in the printed edition of
Baltic Worlds BW 2-3: 2018, pp 34-50
Published on Balticworlds.Com on
September 6, 2018
In Romani
Studies, the second half of the 19th century witnessed a great migration of the
Roms from the two Rumanian provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia as a result of
the abolition of slavery (also called “Emancipation”, which ushered in the
massive liberation of the Romani slaves in 1856 at the initiative of the Prime
Minister Mihail Kogălniceanu). However, this period is still poorly explored,
particularly from a linguistic and ethnologic point of view.
In Romani
Studies, the second half of the 19th century witnessed a great migration of the
Roms from the two Rumanian provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia as a result of
the abolition of slavery (also called “Emancipation”, which ushered in the
massive liberation of the Romani slaves in 1856 at the initiative of the Prime
Minister Mihail Kogălniceanu). However, this period is still poorly explored,
particularly from a linguistic and ethnologic point of view.
Ethnographic
studies on the Roms in the Rumanian provinces published in that period are
lacking, whereas for the province of Transylvania there is the study of I.H.
Schwicker (1883)1 and the writings of H. Wlislocki,2 and for Bucovina there are
the studies of A. Ficker (1879),3 L.A. Siminiginowicz (1884: 136—149),4 and
R.F. Kaindl (1898, 1899, 1904).5
Academic
interest of Western scholars in the Rumanian Roms has always been high, both in
the past and today, but, unfortunately, some obstacles of that time remain
insurmountable even today, as will be further explained.6
Thus, despite
the number of studies on the Roms from Southeastern Europe in general, and from
Rumania in particular, that have been produced in recent decades, systematic
research on their social history is lacking. However, in regard to the Roms
from Rumania, sociological investigations that included certain Romani groups
were carried by Ioan Chelcea (in 1934, and all the works on the Rudari 1943 and
1944),7 and similar research has been done in the Republic of Moldova (Ion
Duminică on different socio-professional and ethnic groups: Lăeşi — former
nomads; Cătunari ‘tent dwellers’; Ciocanari ‘blacksmiths’; Ciorí ‘horse
thieves’, but also ‘horse traders’; Ciurari ‘sieve makers’; Brăzdeni ‘farmers’;
Ursari ‘bear tamers’; Lingurari ‘spoon makers’; Lăutari ‘musicians’; and
Curteni, who were occasional workers at the boyars’ courts),8 and contextually
in the Banat of Serbia, a historical region inhabited by Rumanians (see
Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković on the Bayash in Serbia and in the Balkans in
general).9
There are
two missing pieces to investigate further: the historical demography of the
Romani people and an atlas of the ethnic groups in Rumania. Five years have
passed since the publication of the seminal study of Marushiakova and Popov10
on the ‘Gypsy’ groups in Eastern Europe (larger in scope than the
groundbreaking work of Gilliat-Smith11 on Romani groups in Northeastern
Bulgaria) showing that the issues of the ethnic groups, and precisely that of
their appellations (ethnonyms and/or professionyms) and their unclear
demarcations, are specific to a greater degree to Southeastern Europe and
adjacent areas, and less to the Romani groups in Western Europe who have,
largely speaking, Romani endonyms (Manuš, Sinti, Kaale, etc.), which delimitate
them more accurately. Marushiakova and Popov12 actually hinted at the core
issue of Romanipen or Romani identity, neamos or vica ‘nationality’, thus
scaffolding a giant construction and showing the research methodology, and one
would only expect now to see emerging monographs and small studies on
particular communities from the local to regional levels.
THE FIRST
DEMOGRAPHIC AND ETHNOLOGIC INVESTIGATION ON THE RUMANIAN ROMS
There has
been an apparent desynchronization of Rumanian scholarship with the rest of
Europe in regard to the interest in Romani issues in the 19th century.
Actually, there is a lot of unpublished and even so far unknown material, such
as the first dictionary of Rumanian-Romani (approximately 1861) by the
well-known intellectual Vasile Pogor,13 several unpublished collections of
Romani folklore (including the first Romani epic ballad of “Masho and
Armanka”),14 and the Romani-Rumanian dictionary by Barbu Constantinescu.15
Among the
manuscripts of Barbu Constantinescu extant at the Romanian Academy Library,
there is ms. no. 3923, which was known and partially used by the researchers in
the field, including Popp-Şerboianu (1930)16, George Potra (1939)17, and Ion
Chelcea (1944).18 The manuscript contains many tables drawn by different hands
with various types of ink and written on papers of different lengths, and this
work represents the first project of a demographic and ethnologic investigation
on the Rumanian Roms.
Constantinescu,
upon the recommendation of the scholar B.P. Haşdeu, who at that time was
General Director of the State Archives and a member of the Commission of the
National Statistical Office19, was employed by the Interior Ministry for the
interpretation and compilation of statistics on the Roms in Wallachia. The
investigation was conducted in 1878 by sending a survey to the deputy prefects
of the Wallachian counties. The responses are preserved in ms. 3923 in tabular
form. There is evidence that this manuscript is incomplete and that
Constantinescu had more material in hand. The manuscript contains responses
sent between March 2 and April 19, 1878, by local authorities from only five
counties. The tables are structured as follows: name and surname of the Roms,
their social status (sedentary or itinerants), the locality where they pay
taxes, their occupation, and their ethnic group (Rumanian, neam ‘nationality’).
Although incomplete, these statistics are at least somewhat representative
because they include data about the Roms from various counties of Wallachia,
including one county that was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Mehedinţi,
from 1718 to 1738) and one county that was part of the Ottoman Empire (Brăila,
until 1828).
In the
summer of 1878, statistics on the Roms in another historical province of
Rumania, Bukovina — a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire — were collected,
which were updated in 1889.20 For the Roms in Transylvania, a historical
Rumanian province that was also a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, similar
statistics were compiled 15 years later.21 In yet another historical Rumanian
province situated between Prut and Dniester, Bessarabia, especially after its
annexation to the Russian Empire in 1812, the statistics rigorously record the
number of each ethnic minority up to 1871.22
The
initiative of this 1878 investigation on the Roms reflects the synchronization
of Rumania with the two similar initiatives in Bukovina (1878) and Transylvania
(1893). Because this kind of research was uncommon among the statistics
compiled by the Interior Ministry, Constantinescu was recruited as a specialist
in the field. Long before 1878, he had consistently travelled in the two
Rumanian provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia in order to gather Romani folk
material. In support of the hypothesis concerning his collaboration, there is
one letter signed by the Minister of the Interior requesting the local
authorities to “render assistance and legal support, when necessary, to Mr.
Barbu Constantinescu, who travels the country in order to collect data on the
history and origins of the Gypsies.”23 Further evidence supporting his official
employment is the fact that, in 1882, the Interior Ministry launched a
large-scale investigation at the village level to gather data for the Great
Geographical Dictionary based on a questionnaire written by Constantinescu.24
One of the
highlights of the 1878 statistics was that, similar to those undertaken in the
same year in Bukovina and 15 years later in Transylvania, they were undertaken
with the specific purpose of collecting demographic data on the Roms, unlike
other statistics in the past when only certain ethnic and professional
categories of the Roms were registered, if at all. Because Rumanian statistics
were carried out for the purpose of establishing the tax levels, the Roms were
either included with other Rumanian taxpayers or, when the statistics
specifically mentioned the “nationality”25 among its entries, certain
categories of Roms that were unimportant for the issue of tax levels were left
out.
This
resulted in a lack of knowledge about the various Rumanian Romani groups,
especially after their “Emancipation”. Thus, in a discussion between the father
of Romani dialectology, Franz Miklosich, and B.P. Hașdeu, by 1878 the official
information provided by M. Kogălniceanu in 1837 in particular about the three
socio-juridical categories of Roms, which were further divided according to
their professions (on which I am going to speak further), had become
unsatisfactory for Western and Rumanian scholars alike.
HISTORY OF
THE QUESTION OF THE RUMANIAN ROMANI GROUPS
In the
Rumanian context, the different ethno-socio-professional Romani categories were
first described in the first Rumanian Constitution26 in the chapter entitled
“Improvement of the status of the Gypsies” drafted by a commission of Rumanian
law experts under direct supervision of the Russian Governor Pavel D. Kiseleff.
Article 9427 describes each Romani group (Rumanian, tagmă< Greek τάγμα
‘socio-professional category’) as follows:
The
Lingurari Gypsies (spoon makers). They live on woodwork, namely crafting tubs,
spindles, spoons, etc., with some of them crafting fences and clubs. They live
in sturdy huts and houses near the woods. […]
The Aurari
Gypsies (goldsmiths). Part of them lives on gold sales, representing the
surplus collected by them from nature, apart from the three drachm that are due
to the State. Others are spoon makers (Lingurari), and the other two parts live
on brick making, ditch and pond digging, etc. Like the above-mentioned Lingurari,
they have stable dwellings. […]
The Ursari
Gypsies (bear tamers). They live on displaying bears in cities and selling
brooms and crafting wax and other small smithery works (such as scale weights,
needles, saws, drills, etc.). They live in unstable tents. […]
The Zavragi
Gypsies. The Zavragi Gypsies, around 300 families, belong to the Ursari guild
but have different customs. They work in construction. They are prone to theft
and to unstable wandering with tents. They regularly practiced smithery, but
due to working in constructions they lost that skill. […]
The Lăeţi
Gypsies. They practice blacksmithing and coppersmithing. […] Some of them are
steadfast people living in houses and huts at the outskirts of villages, their
behavior being safe from unpleasant habits […] But others, over 150 families,
are unstable and wandering with tents, being prone to theft. […]
The Netoti.
They came from the “German Lands” [i.e. Austro-Hungarian Empire, n. J.R.]
around 40 years ago, and include over 50 families. These, although belonging to
the Ursari, due to their improper behaviors, bear the name of “netot”
[‘stupid’, n. J.R.], not having any job, and engaging in many transgressions,
both men and women alike. […]
In a
presentation at the Gypsy Lore Society in Stockholm in September 2016,28 I
showed that “Netot” is a political construction conceived by the Russian
administration and the local politicians in order to solve the “problem” of the
errant groups, in the context of the plague outbreak in 1831—1832, by creating
a political reason to dispatch them to the defeated Ottoman Empire.
Thus, apart
from the last group, all others are mentioned in the first scholarly published
work on the Romani people from Rumania written by M. Kogălniceanu (1837).29 He
drew upon this official information, adding fieldwork data for each historical,
legal, and socio-professional category. First, he divided the groups according
to their juridical status as Gypsies belonging to the State/the prince or as
private Gypsies belonging either to the monasteries or to the boyars. The
princely Gypsies were largely itinerants falling in one of the five
professional categories described above (with slight variation in their
appellations) and paid taxes to the State. The private Gypsies were further divided
into vătrași, who were sedentary and totally assimilated to the extent that
“there was no difference between them and the Wallachians and Moldavians”30,
and lăieţi who were itinerants, practiced their traditional crafts, and paid
taxes to their owners, i.e. the monasteries or boyars.
These data
compiled in Rumanian quarters by M. Kogăl-niceanu would remain the only source
known by the middle of the next century when it was taken over by Western
studies. Thus, in a study published in 1912—1913 in the prominent Journal of
the Gypsy Lore Society, Alex Russel31 referred to those old statistics and
categories of Roms.
Much later
(as already said, this gap is unfortunately underlined by the actual
unawareness of the history of Romani Studies in Rumania), E. Pittard (1920)32
divided them according to the nationalities in the vicinity of where they lived
as Rumanian, Turkish, and Bulgarian Gypsies.
In 1930,
Popp-Şerboianu33 was boasting that there was practically no Romani category in
Rumania that had not been included in his list. He operated with his own
classification, liable on the professions, thus:
I) The Lăeţi
form a number of guilds according to their crafts, as follows: 1. the Ursari
‘bear tamers’, but due to the ban on the dancing, these Lăeţi, like others,
began to fabricate combs, brushes, etc.; 2. the Ciurari are the ones who make
combs, sieves, etc.; 3. the Căldărari, the ones who make cauldrons; 4. the
Fierari ‘blacksmiths’ are settled in the city, but also in the village; 5. the
Costorari ‘coppersmiths’, hailing from Turkey, produce brass kitchen utensils;
6. Rudari or Blidari ‘pot makers’ or Lingurari ‘spoon makers’ manufacture
hayforks, wooden plates, wooden spoons, etc.; 7. the farriers; 8. the
whitewasher women who live in cities and whitewash the houses with lime; 9. the
locksmiths; 10. the Lăutari ‘musicians’; 11. the flower sellers; 12. the
witches (or rather fortune tellers?, n.J.R.); 13. the shoe polishers; and 14.
the day laborers who work in constructions.
II) The
Vătrași are engaged in agriculture, especially since 1923, when they were given
land by the second agrarian reform. Their children go to school and even to the
university. They do not know the language anymore.
III) The
Netoti are the Roms who left for Hungary and Russia, wherefrom they return to
Rumania each year in gangs and camp for 3 days or so.
In 1944,
according to the research of the Romani communities in Ţara Oltului, I.
Chelcea34 distinguished three categories of Roms:
“Rural
Gypsies”: blacksmiths, bricks makers, and musicians, who seldom speak Romani.
Băiaș
Gypsies or Rudari who live on woodworking and speak only Rumanian.
Corturari
‘tent dwellers’ or nomadic Gypsies, who are subdivided into Ciurari ‘sieve
makers’ and Căldărari ‘cauldron makers’. “In other parts, they are called
Lăeţi. The Ursari, Corturari, Netoti, Modorani and Zavragi are also included in
their category. In some regions, these represent small sub-groups, in others
they are special appellations.”35 The Corturari “either are about to settle,
have recently settled, or are wandering from place to place, [and] are distinct
in respect of habits, language, and even clothing.”36
Vasile
Burtea, 37 in the article “The Romani groups and their ways of living” with a
promising introduction and with the expectation of the authenticity of the
insider perspective, rightly states the following two premises: Firstly, “The
neam ‘nationality’ is no longer a living fact of conscience for a large part of
the Romani population. They have a real difficulty in indicating, as accurately
as possible, the group they belong to or to which their parents and ancestors
belonged.” And secondly, “The ethnic groups formed around the occupations,
crafts, professions, practiced by members of the group.”38
After these
premises, the article presents a series of one-to-one equations of the castes
from ancient India with the Romani groups, staking all information on a single
book.
In the cited
article, the divisions of the Romani groups are made according to 1) the
professions as the Cocalari (< Romani, kokkalò ‘bone’), those who produce
objects from bones such as needles, hooks, combs, clips, buttons, small pots,
swords, handles, scribes, etc., the Rudari, the goldsmiths, the spoon makers,
the Băiași, the Caravlahi, etc., who forgot their language through isolation
from the other Roms, and the “domestic Gypsies”, namely writers, scholars,
educators, cooks, acrobats, artists, musicians, etc., and 2) according to their
mobility/stability as vătraşi or nomads.39
“Under the
pressure of industrialization, modernization and the change of structure of the
social needs, many new “specializations” emerged, either within the
professions, in general, within some regions, or generated by other
considerations, resulting in the creation of new subgroups with new names and
new purposes.”40
This
transformation in the sense of “specialization” within the traditional
professions and the “geographic circumscription” is attributed by the author to
the sedentarization imposed in the 1950s and to the aforesaid socio-economic
changes. The author thinks these specializations are visible, for instance, in
the subgroup of the ‘horseshoe makers’, who are simply blacksmiths of less
importance, or to the ‘comb makers’ and the Fulgari (?), who are Cocalari who
produce the specified objects; in the so-called ‘silk Gypsies’ who are,
according to Burtea, the vătrași who used to sell carpets and silk (or at the
level of public perception this appellation is nowadays used to denote
assimilated Roms); in the Tismănari who are those living around Tismana
Monastery (sic!, this appellation is coined with the kaśtalo, i.e. natives who
no longer speak Romani); and in the Răcari who are those from the locality of
Răcari (actually there is more than one with this name!) and who are a
developing ethnic group.
The author
offers two very useful tables with self-appellations of the Roms from Rumania,
including their numbers and their percentages within the studied ethnic group.
The first table contains 28 categories: Roms, Cocalari, Vătraşi, Lăutari,
Teișani, florists, Boldeni, broom makers, sieve makers, Spoitori, silversmiths,
Rudari (glossed as ‘spoon makers’), Ursari, Lăieşi, brick makers, Gabori,
Căldărari/blacksmiths/horseshoe makers, Turks/Tatars, boot makers,
nomads/Corturari, Zlătari, Silk Gypsies, comb makers, Fulgari, coppersmiths,
Tismănari, Răcari, Geambaşi (‘horse dealers’), Rumanisized Roms, and
Maghyarisized Roms.
In the
second table, the author reduces the number to 18 categories, out of which 15
are selected on occupational criteria and three on other criteria
(self-dissimulation within the Turkish, Tatar, or Hungarian minority groups and
geographical circumscription). However, we cannot overlook the fact that
between the two tables the category of Tismănari, for example, was lost,
although this might have been an important group, at least in the 19th century,
because it is largely represented among the respondents of the investigations
carried out by Barbu Constantinescu.
While
collecting the folklore materials, Constantinescu mentioned the name of the
ethnic group, the locality, and the full name of the respondent, and when
available his/her age and occupation, as well as other contextual information
(word families for their professional vocabulary, notes on abjav romano ‘Romani
marriage’, etc.). This information enabled him to have a certain awareness of
the Romani groups; therefore, when he was summoned by the Interior Ministry to
conduct the demographic investigation (called hereafter Statistics-1878) he
provided the local administration with templates using the appellations Inari,
Lăeţi, Netoţi, Rudari, Ursari, Vătraşi, Zavragi, and others.
The
insufficient information we currently have about the Romani
ethno-socio-professional groups in Rumania is one of the main challenges in
Rumanian Romani Studies and is similar to the issue of Indian castes and sub
casts. Thus, any information on Romani professions and ethnic appellations
becomes very significant in this context.
In the next
section, which constitutes the main contribution of the article, I have
exemplified with seven case studies aspects of Romani demographics in
19th-century Wallachia based on two demographic sources (from 1838 and 1878,
respectively) and other synchronic ethnographic works. These sources refer to
the Romani people either with the collective “Gypsy” appellation or, as is more
often the case, with the specific ethno-socio-professional denominations as
presented in the discussion above.
ASPECTS OF
ROMANI DEMOGRAPHICS IN 19TH CENTURY WALLACHIA
In this
section I will illustrate with a few case studies the complexity of Romani
society from 1838 to 1878, that is, for a period of one generation spanning 20
years before and 20 years after the “Emancipation” in 1856. The investigation
draws upon my upcoming volume Contribuţii la istoria romilor din Ţara
Românească în secolul al XIX-lea [Contributions to the history of the
Wallachian Roms of the 19th century], Bucharest: Publishing House of the
Romanian Academy (to be published).
In the
upcoming volume, I have edited ms. 3923 as a part of the reconstitution of
Barbu Constantinescu’s projected work, “Gypsies in Romania”. As already said,
the manuscript is not complete, containing data from only five counties,
whereas we learn from mss. 3924 and 3925 that Constantinescu travelled in 17
Wallachian counties in his search for Romani lore. Hence, I have reconstructed
the map of Constantinescu’s itinerary in the years 1877—87, and I have also
documented localities that are not in the extant Statistics-1878 but were
mentioned in the other two manuscripts. I have corroborated this information
with data from the unpublished statistics of 1838 (called hereafter
Census-1838),41 which is the second modern census of the entire population, in
Cyrillic, preserved at the Romanian State Archive, wherein many times I have
found the ancestors of the Roms recorded in the Statistics-1878. The first
modern census of the population was made 7 years earlier, by the Russian
administration, but unfortunately was lost during the Second World War.
However, the centralized data of the first census has been worked on by modern
historians and published, and I have relied on that information as well
(hereafter called Census-1831). For historical information on the localities as
well as for the onomastics, I have used all of the volumes available from the
ongoing project of the Romanian Academy, Documenta Historiae Romaniae42, serie
B, for Wallachia (henceforth DRH B). I have also added data regarding realia on
the Roms and the ethnic attitudes of the Rumanians towards the Roms from the
two acknowledged Questionnaires43 undertaken by B.P. Hașdeu in 1878 and 1882,
respectively, which are also unpublished (i.e. Juridical Questionnaire, cca.
1,200 pages, called hereafter JQ, and Linguistic Questionnaire, 20,000 pages,
called hereafter LQ), as well as data about the respective localities in which
Roms were living from the Great Geographical Dictionary44 (called hereafter
GGD), which was completed and sent to print in 1895 (a dictionary that was
designed as a project worked on by Constantinescu), and from the Russian
Military Map45 (first edition in 1835, but reflecting the demographic data for
1821—1828,46 and the second revised edition in 1853, called hereafter RMM).
All of these
various sources aim to recompose the image of the Roms living in the 19th
century in Rumania, and they contribute significantly to the historical
demography as well as the history of the ethnic groups and sub groups.
Case study
1: Beleți village, Muscel county, Podgoria district. The Rudari community
continued to live in the mixed village after the “Emancipation”.
Beleţi is
referred to in a document issued in 1623 by the ruler Mihnea Vodă, in which
“the vineyard from Ţigăneşti”47 is also mentioned, pointing to a settlement
inhabited by the Roms.
In 1878, the
mayor recorded separately the vătrași ‘domestic Gypsies’ and the “Rudari
Gypsies”. Only the head of the family is referred to nominally, along with
his/her marital status and the number of children. There were 12 families of
vătrași, all born in Beleţi. Only the family of the widower Sandu Baraca, with
two girls, was granted land by the 1864 agrarian reform. There were 23 men and
20 women, and all adults were married with one exception. The families had up
to five children — four families had one child, two families had two children,
two families had three children, and one family had five children. They
practiced different crafts, and four were musicians (lăutari), four were
blacksmiths, one was a bricklayer, one was a servant, the widow Safta Uţa,
having three boys and two girls, was a day laborer, and the widow Safta
Ursăreasa, having two boys and one girl, was a beggar. At the general level of
the JQ, the village beggars were individuals with physical disabilities that prevented them from working
and gaining an income, and they were looked after by the community. Only one
answer in the LQ differs in this respect, the one from Muscel District, and
possibly from near Beleţi village. Thus, we quote a situation that could have been
the case in Beleţi in 1878:
“There are
Rumanian beggars who are infirmed or deaf-mute, while the others are Gypsies,
Germans and Hungarians, who are shunned because people see that they are able
to work.” (JQ, Muscel County, Podgoria district)
Regarding
their onomastics, all of the surnames have old attestations, i.e. they are
recorded in our reference collection of documents, DRH B, since the 14th
century. The family names are frequent names used by Rumanians as well, but
their usage by the Roms is not attested until the 16th century. There are also
family names restricted to Roms, including three ethnic names, — Ţiganu,
Ursaru, and Ursăreasa — and one occupational name, Daragiu (archaism) ‘drum
player’.
It is very
interesting that all these vătrași are easily identified by name in the
Census-1838 even though it omitted to mention they were Roms. The house numbers
show that they were living in adjoining houses with Rumanians. This is a case
of hidden minority (in the terminology of Christian Promitzer48) that occurred
at the moment of the Census-1838 in a community of assimilated Roms, but which
recollected their ethnic identity after one generation, at the time of a
specific demographic investigation, the Statistics-1878.
In the
village, 17 families of Rudari coexisted, similarly born in Beleţi, only one
being rudar by profession, three others being day laborers, and the remaining
13 being wheelwrights. The 17 families (a total of 34 men and 32 women) had 17
boys and 15 girls. None had land except for Stan Geamănu, who was married and
had one child.
As for the
names, the old ones (Bălan, Cala, Dobre, Vasile, and Beldiman, which until the
18th century are not recorded for the Roms) coexist with the newer names. There
is one ethnic name, Rudaru, borne by a day laborer; one name derived from the
civil status, Geamănu ‘twin’; several nicknames, including Căcăilă ‘poop’,
Prună ‘plum’, etc.; and one Romani name, Barale, cf. barvalo ‘rich’. (As a
matter of fact, there are very few Romani names in the referred documents, such
as Bacrică (< bakri ‘sheep’), Başno (< bašno ‘cock’), Buzner (< buzni
‘goat’), Ciriclui (sic! Ciricliu, < čiricli ‘sparrow’), Parnica (< parno
‘white’), Rupa (< rup ‘silver’), Şoşoi/Șoșolea (< šošoi ‘rabbit’), etc.)
All of the surnames have old attestations.
To draw some
conclusions from this case study, in 1838, the entire Romani community was
allegedly made of Rudari who were practicing their crafts. As it is generally
accepted, the Rudari were the ancient gold panners (called also Aurari,
Zlatari, or Boyash) who changed their profession to woodworking and were living
near the forests that provided them with the raw material for producing tubs,
spoons, spindles, etc. The Rudari of Beleţi did not cultivate land and did not
rear animals, except for some cattle that supplied their dairy products and the
mandatory two oxen necessary to pull the cart for selling their products. They
all had two oxen, except for Stan, the son of Dumitru Agapie, who probably used
the ox cart together with his father.
In 1878, 29
Romani families lived here, 12 vătrași and 17 Rudari. None were landowners, and
the former practiced various crafts and the latter, with four notable
exceptions, were wheelwrights. This information is supported by the GGD, which
precisely mentions that the crafts practiced in the village were “agriculture,
wheelwright, wood turner, and making of carts, which are sold in Vlaşca county.
There are woods of beech, oak, hornbeam, etc., around”. Only one Rudar was a
rudar by profession (sic!). It stands to reason that the 17 Rudar families
listed in 1878 were made of those 37 children listed in 1838 only with their
names (Ion, Marin, Sandu, Stan, Tudor, Ioana, etc.). For instance, the brothers
Ion and Marin Căcăilă are the same listed in 1838 as Ion and Marin, the sons of
Mihai and Dumitra Agapie, and they continued to live in adjoining houses. The
old patronym Agapie was replaced by the scornful name Căcăilă. As seen above,
the vătrași had frequent Rumanian family names used for Roms since the 16th
century, whereas the Rudari had family names used for Roms since the 18th
century, which is very telling about their various levels of acculturation. The
Rudari had scornful names, speaking about their societal position, and Romani
names, speaking about their linguistic heritage. It is very possible that they
were bilingual, as the majority of the Roms were by 1888 according to the
information in the LQ. “Rudaru” is used as a family name only to avoid
confusion with another ethnic subgroup, for an individual who did not practice
the traditional craft and was merely a day laborer. This is a common situation
of resistance to assimilation to another ethnic or professional subgroup. For
instance, the Statistics-1878 records show that in Ţigănești village, Podgoria
district, Muscel county, in a community of eight vătrași families, all were
musicians (lăutari and kobza players), and some of them practiced other
lucrative jobs, such as smithery and making bricks, except for one, who was
merely a locksmith and had the family name “Lăutaru”.
In general,
the Rudari of Beleţi, a village near the woods of beech, oak, and hornbeam,
continued the old crafts after the “Emancipation”.
One of the
expected conclusions is that vătraș was a denomination applied to all Roms who
were not nomads, semi-nomads, or itinerants, regardless of their own ethnic
endonyms. The settled Roms, as well as those coming from mixed marriages with
the majority population and henceforth assimilated, lived in the center of the
village and were called vatră (it is such vătrași who over time formed the
exclusively Romani villages called Ţigănia, but this is a subject for future
examinations). This is confirmed in the investigation by Ion Duminică49 on one
group that he calls Curteni, which speaks about their assimilation into the
majority population. They call themselves with a descriptive appellation,
ţigani moldoveni ‘Moldavian Gypsies’, and in addition they had accepted two
other exonyms very telling about their acculturation — Vlahâi, which was given
by others Roms (especially by the Lăieși and Ursari) because they were
assimilated and had lost their language and traditions, and corcituri ‘metises’
or ţigani pârâţi ‘fake Gypsies’ given by the majority population. Ion Duminică
specifies that there were moments in their recent history when the members of
the community recollected their Romani belonging, as in the case of the vătrași
in 1878.
Case study
2: Tițești village, Dezrobiți ‘Emancipated ones’ hamlet, Muscel county,
Podgoria district. Neighboring Romani communities consolidating a settlement on
a former estate after the “Emancipation”.
In the old
village of Tiţeşti (attested with this name since 1623, continuing a more
ancient settlement), 28 Romani families are recorded in 1878. They were all
living in Dezrobiţi hamlet, previously called Valea Mănăstirii ‘Monastery
Valley’, from the eponymous river and the monastery Valea (built in 1534).
Tiţeşti village is recorded since 1831 to have had three hamlets — Tiţeşti,
owned by the Valea Monastery with 95 families, out of which 17 men were
laborers on the monastery’s estate; Hârtiești, owned by Vieroș Monastery, with
76 families, out of which 24 men were laborers on the monastery’s estate; and
Valea Mănăstirii, later Dezrobiţi, with 94 families, out of which 13 men were
laborers on the estate of Valea Monastery. In the Census-1831, there is no
owner recorded for Valea Mănăstirii hamlet. This situation is explained by the
fact that the settlement is a very old one and belonged to the ruler, similar to
all the land in the Rumanian provinces. In this hamlet, there exists the Valea
Monastery, founded by Ion Radu Voivode Paisie in 1534, and painted by Mircea
Voivode Ciobanul in 1548 (GGD, III). A document from 162950 mentions one Romani
woman called Fruma together with her daughters, who were taken by the priest
Nicodemus from the chancellor Stanciu of Câlceşti and donated to the monastery.
Thus, there was a Romani community living since the 17th century in the
‘Monastery Valley’ village. After the abolition of slavery in 1856, the Roms
continued to live there, and the hamlet changed its name to Dezrobiţi (the
Emanicipated ones) and most probably received other emancipated Roms from
Tiţeşti, as per the information in the GGD.
In 1878,
there were 28 families, 51 men and 53 women, mostly vătrași ‘domestic Gypsies’
and three lăieși ‘nomads’, the former being the old inhabitants on the estate.
However, they were all landowners per the law of 1864. Most of the ‘domestic
Gypsies’ were farmers, and five were blacksmiths. In 1878, the schoolteacher
Nicolăescu learned from them the names of the smithery tools: “the anvil, the
big hammer (baros, derived from Romani baro (adj.) ‘big’), the hammers, the
tongs, the scissors and the pair of bellows”. Two of the three so-called lăieși
families were neighbors and, besides tilling their land, played the violin. One
family was composed only of a husband and wife who were both playing the
violin, and the other family was made of the parents and five children, of whom
two discontinued the tradition and were merely farmers. The third lăieși family
was assimilated as ‘domestic Gypsies’ and was living in their quarters,
practicing agriculture. Ten families had one child, six families (two of the
lăieși) had two children, three families had three children, one family had
five children, and two families had six children. There were also six families
without children (including one lăieș family).
Hence, there
were no differences between the lăieși and vătrași families in terms of size.
Per the house numbers, the two groups lived together. Fourteen years after
having been granted land, having started to till their own property, and having
been assimilated into the vătrași community, the lăieși were still identified
with this ethnonym.
Case study
3: Leurdeni village, Muscel county, Podgoria district The rapid mobility of the
Roms between 1838 and 1878 in an ancient Romani settlement.
In a
document from 1632,51 Leurdeni village is mentioned as having a few Romani
settlements. Between 1821 and 1828, Leurdeni had 189 families consisting of
approximately 945 individuals (RMM). In 1831 the village along with the
eponymous estate was owned by the governor Iordache Golescu, the two Leurdeanu
brothers, and six other boyars of inferior rank, all related to the Leurdeanu
family. The village is recorded to have been inhabited by 222 families, out of
which 55 individuals were day laborers on the estate (Census-1831).
In 1838, out
of 187 families, only seven families were Roms, living in a compact group at
the outskirts of the village. Apart from the aged couple Oprea and Floarea — 58
and 45 years old, respectively — all of them belonged to the boyar Toma
Leurdeanu. They had no property or goods, except for one couple who had been
married for 15 years, Luca and Ilinca, who had one cow. None of these families
would remain in the village after the “Emancipation”. In fact, only two Romani
families with children are recorded, the other houses being represented by two
widowers of 40 and 50 years, respectively; two aged widows, the 50-year-old
Ioana, who was blind, and the 55-year-old Mira, who was deaf and mute; and two
25-year-old bachelors, Stan and Gligore, who lived in the same houses with
their spinster sisters, Bălașa, aged 45, and Ana, aged 30. The age of the
youngest mother at the birth of the first child, Niţa, was 17, and the youngest
father, Tănase, was 25. Niţa and Tănase had seven children during their 18 years
of marriage, the youngest being one year old at the time of recording. The age
difference between spouses was 5 years for both of the families with children
and 13 years for the aged couple Oprea and Floarea. All seven families, slaves
of boyar Leurdeanu, discontinued living on the estate soon after 1838.
In 1878, 40
Romani families were recorded as living in the village, out of which six were
vătrași working the land or having jobs such as blacksmiths and musicians and
had been living in the village for 1, 2, 5, 6, and 30 years. The other 34
families were Rudari and had been temporary residents for the previous 6
months, except for Dincă Osman, who had been living there for 7 years with his
mother, Sanda. The occupation of the 34 families is not specified, but it can
be inferred that they were rudari, regardless what that might mean at the level
of the 1878 documents.
It is very
interesting to look at the resettlement of the Roms in Leurdeni since 1848. The
oldest in the village was Ioniţă Ţurlea, who was 42 years old (if we assume 21
years as the minimum age for a man at the birth of the first child) and who
came to Leurdeni when he was 12, then he married, had a child, and by 1878 was
a farmer. After 13 years, in 1861, the Rudar Dincă Osman arrived in the village
with his mother. The next year the blacksmith Ion Zabalagiu, aged 38, and his
17-year-old son Gligore Zabalagiu moved in. It is hard to assume that Gligore
was married at that age, but after 6 years, in 1878, we find him married to
Rada. Ion Zabalagiu was the oldest of all the vătrași (he was 44 years old in
1878). After another year, in 1863, Ilie Mihai arrived in Leurdeni, at the age
of 29, together with his wife, his 8-year-old daughter, and his 20-year-old
unmarried brother, Anghel Ilie, and both men were farmers. Three years later,
in 1866, Onţă Preda, when he was 40 years old, settled in Leurdeni with his
wife and four children and began to practice agriculture. The next year, in
1867, Soare Marin moved in, at the age of 36, with his 17-year-old sister, his
wife, and a 15-year-old boy, and he worked as a blacksmith and musician. In the
same year, his wife gave birth to another baby. Except for Anghel Ilie, all
other vătrași moved to the village with their families at quite a ripe age — 29
(Ilie Mihai), 36 (Soare Marin), 38 (Ion Zabalagiu), and 40 years old (Onţă
Preda). After 11 years, in 1878, a group of 33 Rudari families is recorded as
having camped in Leurdeni for 6 months. Except for four families, all others
had children, and the family heads were on average 27 years old.
Thus, there
was a small Romani community living in Leurdeni in the 17th century. In 1838,
seven families are recorded who probably continued to live there as the slaves
of the boyar Leurdeanu. After 40 years, in 1878, six families of vătrași are
recorded, but they were not the descendants of the same Leurdeanu slaves, who
either fled the estate or were moved by the owner to another estate or sold
out. The village received the first Romani family in 1848, probably brought by
Leurdeanu. After 13 years, one Rudar came with his mother, followed by five
other emancipated vătrași families who started to move in individually in
consecutive years, from 1861 till 1867. The village received the biggest
migration after a decade, in 1878, with the encamping of 34 semi-nomad Rudari
families consisting of 128 individuals.
Case study
4: Topoloveni village, Muscel county, Podgoria district. The conservative
Romani community discontinued living there within one generation. Marriage of
minors was attested.
In a
document issued on October 1, 1559,52 the Roms are mentioned along with the
subservient Rumanian peasants in the context of the vineyards from Topoloveni.
In 1838, out
of 105 families, seven were Roms who lived at the outskirts of the village in
extended families but in different houses, as indicated by the consecutive
house numbers. They were all boyar slaves and had no property or goods, except
for Niţu Lăutaru’s family and the families of the blacksmiths Ion and Dina
Ţigan and Ion and Maria Ţigan who had one ox each. Only one had no specific
profession, being a day laborer, and four were blacksmiths, one was a musician,
and another was a coachman. The age of the youngest Romani mother in Topoloveni
at the birth of the first child was 13, and the youngest father was 18, whereas
that of the eldest mother was 39 and the oldest father was 55. The age
differences between spouses were 5 years (two cases), 10 years (four cases),
and 20 years (one case). Thus, in this community, women married early and in
most cases with men older than them by 10 years, and couples had children up to
an older age: 40 and 30 years, respectively, for Barbu and Ioana Ţigan, 55 and
35 years, respectively, for Ion Ţigan Gușea and Maria, and 48 and 39 years, respectively,
for Niţu and Anca Lăutar. Because of these early marriages, individual families
had only up to three children living with them, and there were three families
with one child, two families with two children, and one family with three
children.
After one
generation, in 1878, only two Romani families are recorded to still be living
in Topoloveni — N. Marin, an emancipated vătraș with his wife Ileana, a
Rumanian, “[both being] blacksmiths [and] day laborers and [he being] a tax
payer in this village”, and the emancipated vătraș Dicu Cuca with his wife
Dumitra, “both good day laborers, [and in addition he being] daragiu ‘drum
player’ and living here provisionally, being a former villager of Brăteşti
Village, Furdueşti, Gălăşeşti district, Argeş county”. Thus, Dicu and Dumitra
Cuca were not settled there; they lived from their workday income, and in
addition to that, Dicu Cuca was occasionally called to beat the drum for the
dancing bear of Ursari, hence he and his wife had a semi-nomadic life. So, only
N. Marin could have originated from Topoloveni. He was the head of the family,
and that is why he is the only one mentioned as a taxpayer.
Thus,
nothing remained here from the old conservative Romani community of boyar
slaves after one generation, except for one vătraș who had married a Rumanian.
At the level of this region, the answers to the JQ mention that “there are
marriages between Gypsies and Rumanians, but these are shunned upon.” (JQ, §
179, Muscel County, Podgoria District)
Case study
5: Suțești village, Brăila county. A newly established village with former
slaves, and the case of a Tatar family assimilated into the Romani community.
In 1878,
there were 138 Romani families (134 men and 142 women) in the village, five
widows (one having one child, three having three children, and one having four
children), and one widower having one child. Forty-nine families had one child,
26 families had two children, 16 families had three children, eight families
had four children, and three families had five children. All were living in
Suţești, except for the blacksmith Ion Oaie ‘John Sheep’, who lived together
with his wife Sanda and her two daughters at the sheepfold called Friguroasele
‘Cold ones’. There were 11 other blacksmiths in the village, alongside other
craftsmen, including 13 musicians, one mason, one sieve maker, two cobblers,
and two shoemakers.
From these
blacksmiths, the schoolteacher C.D. Păsculescu recorded the following terms of
smithery: “hammer, anvil, drill, chuck” (JQ, §109, Brăila, Pl. Vădeni,
Suţești). At the church dedicated to the “Saints Emperors Constantin and
Elena”, built by the estate’s owner, Constantin Suţu, who is buried there,
there served two priests, a deacon, and two singers. One of the singers was
Rom, Ion M. Băluţu, the son of Matache and Dragnea Băluţu, married to Cristina
and having two girls, Tinca and Alecsandra. As a minister of the church, Băluţu
was exempt from taxes. There were also seven kobza players in the village. The
teacher Păsculescu noted that the violin and kobza were the only known
instruments in the village (JQ, § 132, Brăila, Pl. Vădeni, Suţești), which
confirms the data in the table that records 13 musicians along with the kobza
players. One of the kobza players is registered by the mayor as a “vătraș kobza
player”.
In fact, the
statistics record differently the “day laborers” (61 families) and the “vătraș
day laborers” (36 families) and the “kobza players” (6 families) and the
“vătraș kobza player” (1 family). As already seen, vătraș here means a sedentary
and assimilated Rom (contrasted to lăieș, considered nomadic or rather
itinerant).
To Suţești,
a village newly established in 1865 on the estate of the chancellor Suţu around
the time of the “Emancipation”, probably came the day laborers who were vătrași
on Suţu’s other estates, along with other Roms who practiced their old crafts,
namely all the blacksmiths, all the musicians, almost all the kobza players,
and all of the above-listed craftsmen, as well as other day laborers. This
situation can be assumed by analyzing the case of the Ceamă family, with such a
rare name that one can infer that all Ceamăs in Suţești were cognates. The word
ceam, pl. ceámuri, is of Tatar origin and means ‘big boat’ or ‘barge’. In 1878,
the day laborer Drăguţu M. Ceamă, a former vătraș on Suţu’s estate, lived in
the village and was married to Rada and had three children, Ancuţa, Dumitru,
and Costache. To the same family and, implicitly, ethnic group, belonged other
Ceamăs who were not vătraș, including three day laborers — Puciosu B. Ceamă, a
widow with three children, Tudorache, Rada, and Toader; Stoica N. Ceamă,
married to Stana and having four children, Neagu, Costache, Stanca, and
Mariuţa; and Radu N. Ceamă, married to Paraschiva and having one child, Dumitru
— the ciurar ‘sieve maker’ Ion Ceamă, married to Maria and having two boys,
Gheorghe and Dumitru; and the musician Badui Ceamă, married to Tiţa and having
one child, Gheorghe. As said, only one Ceamă was vătraș, namely Drăguţu M.
Ceamă, a Tatar living on Suţu’s estate, whereas the other Ceamăs were also
Tatars probably of the same estate, but semi-nomads. They all came together
after “Emancipation” and became assimilated in the Romani community established
in the newly formed village, and some of their descendants continue to live
there today (see the interview with Corina Ceamă in this volume).
All of these
Romani people were by 1878 sedentary, but the village was occasionally visited
by the traveling Roms, as one learns from a record in the JQ gathered from
Suţești:
“The
Paparuda is a custom practiced by the nomadic Gypsies during times of drought.
They dress up a virgin with daneweeds stitched on a cloth and worn around the
waist. She thus dressed up goes from house to house dancing in the yard and
singing a song whose lyrics she actually doesn’t know, and women and children
pour water on her.” 53
The lyrics
of the Paparuda song are in Rumanian, and many times the JQ records that the
young women dancing and singing failed to produce a comprehensible song,
whereas an old woman accompanying and singing for them would truly perform the
song. This is very telling about the role of the Roms as interpreters and
transmitters of Rumanian folklore, which has been discussed in Rumanian
folkloristics and should perhaps be revisited in the light of the unexploited
data from the two Questionnaires.
Case study
6: Stâlpu village, Buzău county, Sărata
district. A quarter of the Romani community continued living in the village
after one generation.
In 1838, out
of 184 families, 14 were Roms, all boyar slaves with no fortunes, except for
the large family of a blacksmith who had a horse. They lived at the outskirts
of the village in neighboring houses. Five were blacksmiths, one was a butcher,
and one was a tailor. A family head who stuttered is recorded as “serving in
the yard” with his family. A 40-year-old head of the family and his 20-year-old
wife “served in the yard” and had the status of rob ‘slave’. Also to this
class, ‘slave maidservants’, belong the widow Neacșa of Badea and her daughter,
Dragomira. Four of the families had one child, two families had two children,
and two families had four children. There were five families without children,
including the young couple Ioniţă and Rada, of 20 and 18 years, respectively,
and three couples of 40 and 20, 31 and 20, and 30 and 20 years, respectively.
The older couples Lupu Ion and Maria and Gheorghe and Maria probably had
children among the listed ones, but unfortunately only the first name is
mentioned in the table, leaving no space for identification. Age differences
between spouses were as follows: 2 years (one case), 3 years (one case), 6
years (three cases), 9 years (three cases), 10 years (two cases), 13 years (one
case), and 17 years (one case). In one case, the wife was the elder, and
33-year-old Maria was five years older than her husband, Iancea. The age of the
youngest Romani mother in Stâlpu at the birth of the first child was 17, and
the youngest father was 29, whereas that of the eldest mother was 45 (Badea’s
Neacșa) and that of the eldest father was 54 (Manea Fomacu). Age at marriage
for women was 17, 18, 23 (in two cases), 24, and 26 years and for men was 20,
29 (two cases), 30 (two cases), and 43 years.
In 1878,
there were 46 families of vătrași, 81 men and 68 women, practicing the
following professions: three blacksmiths, five kobza players, three violin
players, and one panpipe player. The rest were day laborers. The crafts that
were practiced in the village were “plowing, weaving, wool spinning, tending
the vineyard” (JQ, §107, Buzău county, Sărata district, Stâlpu village).
Sixteen families had one child, 11 families had two children, three families
had three children, and five families had four children. The mayor noted 10
families with no children. As shown above, such cases must be carefully
analyzed before drawing any conclusion. Usually, the marriage was done
liberorum querendorum causa, and with few exceptions all such cases in fact
record families of elderly persons whose children are listed in the same table.
Two families
recorded in 1838 were still living in the village in 1878. One was the family
of Manea Fomacu, a 58-year-old butcher, with no land and no animals in his
yard, who was married to the 41-year-old Rada and had four children, namely the
15-year-old Gheorghe, 12-year-old Matei, 6-year-old Ion, and 4-year-old Șărban.
After 40 years we find two of the boys still living in the village, Io(a)n
Fomacu, married, having four boys, and Șărban Fomacu, married, having three
boys, and one, possibly the son of I(o)an Fomacu, namely Ioan Ene Fomacu,
married, having one child. The vătraș widow Marta Şărbănoae recorded in 1878 is
Marta, the 20-year younger wife of Șerban Ţiganul, who was 40 in 1838 and was registered as a boyar’s servant.
Thus, a
quarter of the ancient community of sedentary Romani slaves continued to live
in the village, and some were even found on the nominal lists after 40 years.
Case study
7: Grecești village, Mehedinți county,
Dumbrava district. The Roms were serving in the army.
In 1878,
there were five vătrași families living in the village, including one
blacksmith, one day laborer, and three tinsmiths who also worked as day
laborers. The blacksmith Dumitrache Marcu, married, had a child who was taken
into the army in the War of Independence (1877). The presence of the Roms in
the country’s military service is confirmed by a song collected by Barbu
Constantinescu in 1878 from Tismana village in the neighboring county, from
Ioan Radu Buznearu, in which the aravleriţa (a rare Romani word for ‘soldier’)
nostalgically evokes missed or revisited native places. Similar is the soldier’s
lyrical song collected from Ștefan, a blacksmith and goldsmith from Călărași
city, Ilfov county. 54
CONCLUSIONS
These case
studies are part of a pilot project that capitalizes on the results of an
unpublished Romani demographic investigation, Statistics-1878, which is only
partially preserved. I have completed the information from this fragmentary
work with data from synchronic sources, such as the Questionnaires and the GGD,
and I have contextualized the information in its diachronic perspective by analyzing
the same Romani communities with the help of Census-1831 and Census-1838.55
Statistics-1878
was a project of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to record the Romani
population and was undertaken with the help of the first Rumanian scholar of
the Romani language, B. Constantinescu. This project was undertaken in 1878,
the year of the international recognition of Rumanian independence after the
Russian-Rumanian-Turkish war of 1877 and the beginning of the inclusion of
Rumania in the circle of international relations.56This new international
political context was the backdrop of two scientific projects, Statistics-1878
and the two Questionnaires, which would become milestones in the construction
of the national identity and, implicitly, of the ethnic co-inhabiting
minorities.
The answers
to the Questionnaires fill the void in ethnologic and ethnographic works on the
Roms from the two provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia in the 19th century. The conclusion of the investigations
highlights the model of pluralist coexistence of the Roms with the majority
population, but with more favorable indicators as compared with nowadays,57
although at the semantic level the discourse is full of stereotypes due to the
lack of awareness of the Romani realities, which is mostly due to the
precarious education of the Rumanian population, with more than 90% illiteracy.
The historic
coexistence of the Roms with the majority population had as a premise as well
as a result the former’s identification, to a greater or lesser degree, with
the latter from acculturation/integration/biculturalism to assimilation, or
from separation/dissociation to marginalization (see Jean Phinney58 for these
terms in his seminal review of the studies on cultural identities of minority
groups over a period of 30 years). Thus, the names that the Roms had in
different historical periods (recorded in DRH, Census-1838, Statistics-1878,
etc.) speak about their coexistence with the Rumanian population, about their
provenance and the places from which they came to Rumania, about their
occupations, etc.
The sources
presented in this article represent unedited documentary material that is
mostly unknown to researchers. It offers the possibility to investigate and
analyze the size and the configuration of the Romani family structure and
household in the 19th century, the marriageable age, the age differences
between spouses, the mother’s age at the birth of the first live-born child,
the geographic location of the Roms within the villages and cities, the size of
the Romani population, the geographic distribution of the Roms in the two
provinces, information on their occupations, and the names of their
ethnic-socio-professional groups. It can be further analyzed whether there are
major differences between the different professional groups of day laborers, farmers,
musicians, blacksmiths, Rudari, Ursari, Laieti, etc. It might also be studied
if the abolition of slavery, or “Emancipation”, in 1856 affected the
socio-demographic profile of the Roms.
A
preliminary demographic analysis and an investigation into the organization of
the Romani family from 1838 to 1878, as illustrated in case studies 1 to 6,
shows the existence of the extended type of family, living in separated, yet
adjoining houses. Inside, the family was mono-nuclear, made up of the father,
mother, and an average of two or three children. A similar demographic analysis
of the family structure inside the Romani settlements in the 17th century59
comes to similar conclusions, notwithstanding the nature of the documentation
materials under consideration in that work, including documents of the
chancellery and acts of property that only accidentally mention the Romani
individuals (for a critique of the sources, see also Florina-Manuela
Constantin).60 It is of some relevance to note that both of these authors
record the existence of Romani families without children, an enterprise of no
little hazard, rationalizing from the premise ducere oxorem liberorum
querendorum causa, and informed by such situations as occurring in our case
study 2, for instance, where the mature childless couples might in fact be the
parents and grandparents of the other listed couples.
The
marriageable age for the Romani people as per the statistics is the same as
that of the Rumanian population, as confirmed by the Questionnaires, and for
women this was 17 to 22 years and for men this was from 21 to 22 years. Cases
of marriage between minors were rare, a situation confirmed by the
Questionnaires. The statistical record shows cases of mixed marriages, mostly
between a Rom and a Rumanian woman, and this was confirmed by the
Questionnaires.
Regarding
social status, at the beginning of the 19th century the Roms lived in extreme
poverty, and they were assimilated within the category of subservient peasants.
They could receive land, as much as they could till together with their family,
which was approximately half a hectare up to two hectares. Those who practiced
their crafts, especially the blacksmiths and the musicians, are very seldom
recorded in the subservient peasants’ category. From the total number of 14
rubrics on the goods and property available in the Census-1838, the majority is
empty. Most of the Roms had nothing except for a cow or more commonly a goat,
also called “the cow of the poor”, and extremely rarely had an orchard. By 1878,
with very few exceptions, the Roms who settled in the surveyed villages were
landowners, notwithstanding their professions (day laborers, blacksmiths,
musicians, shoemakers, sieve makers, etc.), and they paid taxes in the
localities. Begging was not practiced exclusively by the Roms, but mostly by
individuals with physical disabilities who were therefore assisted by the
community, as per the answers to the Questionnaires. Nonetheless, in 1905 a
state investigation on the health and social status of the rural population61
found that most of the beggars were Roms, revealing the pauperization of this
community after one generation.
These are
the common demographic aspects underlining all of the case studies presented in
this article. However, the seven case studies reflect in a more palpable way a
multitude of other aspects:
Case study
1)This was a case of hidden minority of a Romani group living in a mixed
community along with another Romani group, the Rudari, and the majority
population in 1838 and who recollected their ethnic identity after one
generation, in 1878.
Case study
2)
This was a
case of a 17th century Romani community living on a monastery estate and
continuing to live there after “Emancipation”, changing the name of the
locality to Dezrobiţi (the Emanicipated ones) and receiving other emancipated
Roms from neighboring villages and forming an exclusively Romani settlement. By
1878 there were two Romani groups there, ‘domestic Gypsies’ and lăieși (in
accepted terminology, as shown in section 4, they are regarded as itinerants),
both of which were settled landowners and were living together and without
differences in terms of family size, etc., but preserving their exonyms
referring to their previous social status as slaves serving in the boyar’s
court and as itinerant slaves, respectively. Such case studies might lead to a
reconsideration of the general understanding of the names vătrași and lăieși.
Case study
3)
This was a
case study showing the rapid mobility of the Romani population in a mixed
village inhabited by the Roms since the 17th century. By 1838, however, the
village had 180 Rumanian and only 7 Romani families. The latter soon
discontinued living there long before “Emancipation”, but other Roms moved in
individually in 1848, 1861, 1863, etc., and in 1878 in an organized group with
the encamping of 128 semi-nomadic Rudari. Such case studies might further
indicate migration, as I underlined in case study 3. The migrants did not move
in alone, but together with their families and at a quite ripe age (29, 36, and
40 years). The families moved in individually, about one family every 2 years,
and not in groups, although a large group of itinerant Rudari moved in in 1878
and lived in improvised dwellings, as per the records. Further research might
look into whether this Rudari community subsequently settled in Leurdeni, a
locality that still exists today.
Case study
4)
In this case
study, I have shown a peculiar community wherein minor girls married men older
than them by around 10 years and had children at an older age. At the level of
my research, such situations are not very common. This community discontinued
living there, and after one generation only one Rom remained there and was
married to a Rumanian.
Case study
5)
Like in case
study 2, in this case I have analyzed the formation of an exclusively Romani
settlement on a boyar’s estate made up of emancipated Roms from the neighboring
villages. A large Tatar family was assimilated into the Romani community and
practiced the traditional Romani professions (sieve makers and musicians). All
of the Roms in the village were settled and practiced various professions and
were visited by traveling Roms at times of popular festivities. They were
Christians and attended the large church in the village that was established by
the boyar who is buried there with his family. One of the two church singers
was a Rom. I only rarely came across a Rom who was a church minister, thus I
have chosen this case study to show the complexity of the intercommunity
relations in the time frame studied here.
Case study
6)
Here I have
shown the possibility of identifying the Romani families in the nominal lists
from 1838 and their descendants in the nominal lists from 1878. Such a case
study might usher in genealogical and genogram studies of Romani communities,
which is a subject unaddressed so far in Romani Studies.
Case study
7)
I chose this
case study to show that the Roms served in the country’s army, which is very
telling about the coexistence of the Roms with the majority population and
their rapport with state institutions.
In this
article, I have presented a variety of cases of Romani communities in the 19th
century, with the caveat that the chosen examples are not exhaustive and/or
paradigmatic examples. The article draws upon a pilot study, which will be
further developed in the project “Mapping the Roma communities in 19th century
Wallachia”, conducted by the Centre of Baltic and Eastern European Studies,
Södertörn University, and funded by the Foundation for Baltic and East European
Studies (2018—2021).≈
REFERENCES
1 Johann
Heinrich Schwicker, Die Zigeuner in Ungaren und Sibenbürgen (Wien und Teschen,
1883). Available also at: https://archive.org/details/diezigeunerinun00schwgoog
2 Heinrich
von Wlislocki was a polymath. For a survey of his writings, see the critical
edition of his most important works in the field of Romani Studies, Joachim S.
Hohmann, ed., Zur Ethnographie der Zigeuner in Südosteuropa: Tsiganologische
Aufsätze und Briefe aus dem Zeitraum 1880—1905 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang,
Studien zur Tsiganologie und Folkloristik 12, 1994).
3 Adolf
Ficker, “Die Zigeuner in der Bukowina: ein Beitrag zur Ethnographie
internationale,” Statistiche Monatschrift V (Wien: Verlag von Alfred Hölder,
1879): 249—265.
4 Ludwig
Adolf Siminiginowicz-Staufe, Die Völkergruppen der Bukowina.
Ethnographisch-culturhistorische Shizzen (Czernowik: Drud und Verlag von Czopp,
1884).
5 Raimund
Friedrich Kaindl, “Ethnographische Streifzüge in der Ostkarpaten,” Mitteilungen
der anthropologischen Gesellschaft 28 (Wien: Anthropologische Gesellschaft,
1898): 225—249; Raimund Friedrich Kaindl, Das Unterthanswesen in der Bukowina.
Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Bauernstände und seiner Befreiung (Wien: Archive
für Österreichische Geschichte, 84 (2), 1899); Raimund Friedrich Kaindl,
Geschichte der Bukowina von den ältesten Zeiten bis zur Gegenwart: unter
besonderer Berücksichtung der Kulturverhältnisse I, 34 f. (Czernowik: H.
Pardini, 1904).
6 In the
absence of a history of Romani Studies in Rumania, it is difficult to elaborate
on this question, which will usher into an equation with more than one unknown.
However, to highlight some aspects, it is worth mentioning here that the first
monograph on the Rumanian Roms was written by M. Kogalniceanu in 1837 upon the
request of Alexander von Humboldt, father of modern geography. For instance, in
1868, the French author of a few works on the Roms, Paul Bataillard, asked B.P.
Haşdeu, a prominent cultural personality, scholar, and polymath of 19th century
Rumania, to provide him with the references on the Roms from Dimitrie
Cantemir’s Descriptio Moldaviae because the book was not available in the
Imperial Library of France. Similarly, in 1874, Franz Miklosich asked B.P.
Haşdeu if he knew of any Rumanian linguist who could provide him with samples
of Romani language from Rumania. And the quoted examples could be more.
7 Ion
Chelcea, “Câteva observaţiuni etnografice asupra rudarilor din Muscel,” [Some
ethnographic notes on the Rudari from Muscel] Natura 5 (Bucureşti: Tipografia
Bucovina, 1934): 3—9; “Ţiganii aurari,” [The Aurari ‘Goldsmiths’ Gypsies]
Natura 4 (Bucureşti: Tipografia şi Legătoria Soc. Coop. „Oficiul de Librărie”,
1943 (1942)): 3—8; Ţiganii din România, Monografie etnografică [Gypsies from
Rumania. Ethnographic monograph] (Biblioteca Statistică 8, Bucureşti : Editura
Institutului Central de Statistică, 1944).
8 Ion
Duminică, “Romii Curteni din satul Ciocâlteni (raionul Orhei),” [The Curteni
Roms from Ciocâlteni village (Orhei district)] Buletin Știinţific. Revista de Etnografie, Știinţele Naturii
și Muzeologie 7(20) (Chișinău: Muzeul Naţional de Etnografie și Istorie
Naturală, 2007): 195—207; “Romii Lingurari din satul Părcani (comuna Raciula,
raionul Călărași). Aspecte istorico-etnologice,” [The Lingurari Roms from
Părcani village (Raciula commune, Călărași district). Historical-ethnographic
aspects] in Diversitatea expresiilor culturale ale habitatului tradiţional din
Republica Moldova (Chișinău: Cartdidact, 2007), 294—304; “Romii Cătunari din
oraşul Hincești. Identitate etnică– opus– integrare educaţională,” [The
Cătunari Roms from Hincești town. Ethnic identity versus educational
integration] Revista de Etnologie și Culturologie IV (Chișinău: Centrul de
Etnologie, IPC al Academiei de Știinţe al Republicii Moldova, 2008): 115—123;
“Romii Ciocănari din orașul Rășcani. Aspecte socio-etno-politice,” [The
Ciocănari Roms from Rășcani town. Socio-ethno-political aspects] Buletin
Știinţific. Revista de Etnografie, Știinţele
Naturii și Muzeologie 9 (22) (Chișinău: Muzeul Naţional de Etnografie și
Istorie Naturală, 2008): 159—170; “Comunitatea romilor Ursari din satul Ursari.
Aspecte socio-etnologice,” [The Ursari community from Ursari village.
Socio-ethnological aspects] in Păstrarea patrimoniului cultural în Ţările
Europene (Chișinău: Business-Elita, 2009): 259—263; “Leutary iz Durlesht’v
«prostranstve istorii»,” [Lautari from Durlesht in the ‘space of history’],
(Kiïv: Institut Ukraïns’koï Arkheografiï ta Dzhereloznavstva im. M.S.
Grushevs’kogo Natsional’noï Akademiï Nauk Ukraïni, 19, Kniga ÍÍ/Chastina 2
(2010)): 612—620. “Romii Lăieși-Ciorí din municipiul Bălţi,” [The Lăieși-Ciorí
from Bălţi city] Revista de Etnologie și Culturologie VIII (Chișinău: Centrul
de Etnologie, IPC al Academiei de Știinţe al Republicii Moldova, 2010): 90—92;
“Romii Ciurari din satul Chetrosu, raionul Drochia. Aspecte social-spirituale
în constituirea identităţii etnice a copiilor romi,” [The Ciurari Roms from
Chetrosu village, Drochia district. Socio-spiritual aspects for the
construction of the ethnic identity of the Romani children] Revista de
Etnologie și Culturologie V (Chișinău: Centrul de Etnologie, IPC al Academiei
de Știinţe al Republicii Moldova): 30—35; “Istorie şi strategii de adaptare a
comunităţii rome din Republica Moldova. Studiu de caz: Lăieșii Brăzdeni din
satul Cania, raionul Cantemir,” [History and adaptation strategies of the
Romani community from Republic of Moldova. Case study: the Lăieși Brăzdeni from
Cania village, Cantemir district] Interstitio. East European Review of
Historical and Cultural Anthropology II/ 3(4) (Chișinău: Rethinking History
Center, 2010): 102—116; “Roma Layesh-Cheache from Comrat Town. Ethno-social
Aspects,” Revista de Etnologie și Culturologie IX—X (Chișinău: Centrul de
Etnologie, IPC al Academiei de Știinţe al Republicii Moldova, 2011): 13—19.
9 See, among
other articles by the author, “The court of the Bayash: revising a theory,”
Romani Studies 23 (1) 2013: 1—27, in which she critically examines the Rumanian
ethnographic data of the last century while evaluating the communalities
resulting from her ethnologic and anthropologic fieldwork.
10 Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov,
“‘Gypsy’ groups in Eastern Europe: Ethnonyms vs. professionyms,” Romani Studies
23, 1 (2013): 61—82.
11 Bernard Gilliat-Smith, “Report of the
Gypsy tribes of north-east Bulgaria,” Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society 9
(1915—1916): 1—54, 65—109.
12 Marushiakova and Popov, “‘Gypsy’
groups in Eastern Europe”.
13 See Julieta Rotaru and Kimmo
Granqvist, “The critical edition of the first Rumanian-Romani dictionary.”
Newsletter of the Gypsy Lore Society 40, 2 (2017): 5—6.
14 Julieta Rotaru, ed., trans., Barbu
Constantinescu. Cântece ţigănești. Romané ghilea. Gypsy Songs (București:
Editura Muzeul Literaturii Române, 2016), 3, fn , and 294, fn. 2109.
15 Rotaru, ed., trans., Barbu
Constantinescu, XL and LXVI.
16 C.J. Popp-Şerboianu, Les Tsiganes.
Histoire. Ethnographie. Linguistique. Grammaire. Dictionnaire. (Bibliotheque
scientifique, Paris: Payot, 1930).
17 George Potra, Contribuţiuni la
istoricul ţiganilor din România [Contributions to the history of the Gypsies in
Rumania] (București: Fundaţia Carol I, 1939).
18 Ion Chelcea, Ţiganii din România,
Monografie etnografică [Gypsies from Rumania. Ethnographic monograph]
(Biblioteca Statistică. 8, Bucureşti: Editura Institutului Central de
Statistică, 1944).
19 I have come across this unknown
information on B.P. Haşdeu’s biography in an accounting record at the Romanian
State Archive (ANIC, fond Ministerul de Interne, Dir. Contabilitate, inv. 3132,
dos. 114/1876).
20 Ficker, “Die Zigeuner in der
Bukowina,”: 249—265, and Benno Karpeles “Beiträge zur Statistik der Zigeuner in
Österreich”, Mittheilungen der Antropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien XXI (Wien:
F. Berger & Söhne, 1891): 31—33.
21 A Magyarországban 1893. január
31-én végrehajtott czigányösszeirás eredményei. Magyar Statisztikai
Közlemények, Országos Magyar kir. Statisztikai Hivatal, Új Folyam 9
(Budapest: Athenaeum, 1895). Available also in EUROPEANA:
http://www.europeana.eu/portal/record/9200386/BibliographicResource_3000045502801.html
22 Zamfir C. Arbure, Basarabia în secolul
XIX [Bessarabia in the 19th century] (Bucureşti: Institutul de Arte Grafice
Carol Göbl, 1899), 117.
23 Manuscript, Library of the Romanian
Academy, Ms.rom, 3923, folio 6r.
24 See among others “Chestionar Comunal”
[Village level questionnaire] Buletinul Societăţii Geografice Române III, 1
(1882): 36—39.
25 Such were the quite modern statistics
undertaken by the Russian occupation administration in 1831 and in 1838. The
last one clearly registers the Roms as a distinct ethnic category.
26 The Constitution called the Organic
Statute (“Regulamentul Organic/Reglement Organique”), rendered bilingually, in
Rumanian and French, was issued in 1831 for Wallachia and in 1832 for Moldavia
by the Russian administration.
27 Paul Negulescu, and George Alexianu,
eds., Regulamentele Organice ale Valahiei şi Moldovei [The Organic Regulations
of Wallachia and Moldavia] (Bucureşti: Întreprinderile „Eminescu” S.A, 1944),
vol. I, 109—112.
28 Julieta Rotaru, “Caught between the
Eastern Europe Empires: the case of the alleged “Netot” Roms” (paper presented
at the Gypsy Lore Society Annual Conference, Stockholm, September 14—16, 2016.
29 Michail Kogălniceanu, Esquisee sur
l’histoire, les moeurs et la langue des cigains, conus en France sous le nom de
Bohémiens, suivie d’un recueil de sept cents mots cigains (Berlin: B. Behr,
1837).
30 Kogălniceanu, Esquisee, 15.
31 Alex. Russel, “Classification and
Number of Wallachian Gypsies in 1837,” Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society VI
(1912/1913): 1—150, and “Roumanian Gypsies,” Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society
VI (1912/1913): 153—5.
32 Eugene Pittard, Les Peuples des
Balkanas. Esquisses anthropologiques (Paris: Attinger, 1920), 413.
33 Popp-Şerboianu, Les Tsiganes.
34 Chelcea, Ţiganii din Romania [Gypsies
from Rumania].
35 Chelcea, Ţiganii din România [Gypsies
from Rumania], 39, fn. 50.
36 Chelcea, Ţiganii din România [Gypsies
from Rumania], 41.
37 Vasile Burtea, “Neamurile de romi şi
modul lor de viaţă,” [The Romani groups and their ways of living], Sociologie
românească 2—3 (Bucureşti: Editura Academiei Române, 1994): 257—274.
38 Burtea, “Neamurile de romi” [The
Romani groups], 258—259.
39 Burtea, “Neamurile de romi” [The
Romani groups], 262.
40 Burtea, “Neamurile de romi” [The
Romani groups], 263.
41 For the current paper, we have used
the following manuscripts of this Census, from the National Historical Archive,
Bucharest: ANIC, Catagrafii, Partea I, inv. 501, dos. 6/1838, Jud. Brăila, Pl.
Vădeni; ANIC, Catagrafii, Partea I, inv. 501, dos. 53/1838, Jud. Muscel, Pl.
Podgoria, vol. I and II; and ANIC, Catagrafii, Partea I, inv. 501, dos.
55/1838, Jud. Muscel, Pl. Râuri.
42 Documenta Romaniae Historica. B, Ţara
Românească. Academia Română. Institutul de Istorie „N. Iorga” (București:
Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, 1965—<2013>).
43 The manuscripts from the Library of
the Romanian Academy and the National Historical Archives, Răspunsuri la
Chestionarul lingvistic al lui B.P. Hașdeu. 1884 [Answers to the Linguistic
Questionnaire of B.P. Hașdeu. 1884], 15 volumes, and Răspunsuri la
chestionariul juridic al lui B.P. Haşdeu. 1878. [Answers to the Juridical
Questionnaire of B.P. Hașdeu. 1878], 3 vols., Mss. Rom. 3437, Mss. Rom. 3438
and ANIC, fond Manuscrise, inv. 1492.
44 Marele Dicţionar Geografic [Great
Geographic Dictionary] G.I. Lahovari, C.I. Brătianu and Grigore G. Tocilescu
(eds.) Vol. I—V. <Societatea Geografică Română> (Bucureşti:
Socec,1898—1902).
45 Constantin C. Giurescu, Principatele
române la începutul secolului al XIX-lea. Constatări istorice, geografice,
economice şi statistice pe temeiul hărţii ruse din 1835 [The Rumanian
Principalities at the beginning of the 19th century. Historical, geographical,
economic and statistical notes on the basis of the Russian Map from 1835]
(Bucureşti: Editura Ştiinţifică, 1957).
46 Comparing the topographic and
demographic statistics recorded for the period 1821—1828 in Russian Map
published in 1835 with information from the Great Geographical Dictionary, a
project started in 1888, Giurescu, “Principatele române” [The Rumanian
Principalities], 98, concludes that between 1821 and 1888 no major migrations
of populations are recorded.
47 B.P. Haşdeu Columna lui Traian (1877):
357 sqv.
48 Christian Promitzer, “Small is
Beautiful: the issue of Hidden Minority in Central Europe and the Balkans,” in
(Hidden Minorities), Language and Ethnic Identity Between Central Europe and
the Balkans, Christian Promitzer and al. (eds.) (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2009),
75—109.
49 Duminică, “Romii Curteni,” [The
Curteni Roms], 195.
50 DRH, B, XXII, 347/1629.
51 DRH, B, 354/1632.
52 DRH, B, V/1559.
53 JQ, § 155, Brăila county, Suţesti
village.
54 Rotaru, ed., trans., Barbu
Constantinescu, 123, 240.
55 Rotaru, Contribuţii [Contributions],
to be published.
56 For the accession of Rumania to
international diplomacy after 1877, see among others Corneliu Mihail Lungu,
“Introduction” in Independenţa României în conștiinţa europeană. Corneliu
Mihail Lungu, et al. (eds.) (București: Arhivele Naţionale ale României, 1997),
12.
57 Ilie Bădescu and Dorel Abraham,
“Conlocuirea etnică în România. Rezultate ale cercetărilor de teren,” [Ethnic
co-inhabitation in Rumania. Fieldwork results.] Sociologie românească
(Bucureşti: Editura Aceademiei Române 2—3 (1994)) : 185—186.
58 Jean Phinney, “Ethnic Identity in
Adolescents and Adults: Review of Research,” Psychological Bulletin 108, 3
(1991): 499—514.
59 Cristina, Codarcea, Societé et pouvoir
en Valacie (1601—1654). Entre la coutume et la loi (Bucarest: Editura
Enciclopedică, 2002), 244—245.
60 Florina-Manuela Constantin, “Legături
de sânge și legături sociale : structuri de rudenie la robii ţigani din ţara
Românească (1601—1650),”[Blood relations and social relations: kin relations
among the Gypsy slaves in Wallachia
(1601—1650)] in De la comunitate la societate. Studii de istoria familiei în
Ţara Românească (sec. XVI—XIX) [From community to society. Studies on the
history of the family in Wallachia (16—19 c.)] Violeta Barbu et al. (eds.)
(Bucureşti: Institutul Cultural Român, 2007), 122.
61 G. D. Scraba, Starea socială a
săteanului. După ancheta privitoare anului 1905, îndeplinită cu ocaziunea
expoziţiunii generale române din 1906 de către Secţiunea de Economie Socială,
cu 34 tabele statistice şi 24 tabele grafice. [The social status of the
peasant. Based on the 1905 investigation, on the occasion of the 1906 general
Rumanian exhibition, by the Social Economy Section, with 34 statistical tables
and 24 graphical tables] (Bucureşti: Carol Göbl, 1907).
Julieta Rotaru
http://balticworlds.com/aspects-of-romani-demographics-in-the-19th-century-wallachia/
SDM
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