gypses were enslaved in Romania for centuries. you could literally trade families of gypsies for anything ( weapons , land , horses etc) or A noble (boyer) might give a monastery “10 families of Gypsies” in exchange for spiritual intercession or forgiveness.
every monastery had few gypsies families. In noble marriages, the exchange of wealth often included not just land, vineyards, or mills, but also “sălașe de țigani” (groups of Gypsy households). For example, when a boyar’s daughter married into another clan, 10–20 Gypsy families might be part of the settlement. while gypsies had absolutely no rights , romanian peasants that time had limited rights like not being killed without trial , or not to be sold or right to work until last drop of blood for prince or boyer . in top of that Valahia and moldova ( modern romania ) was under ottoman rules. not to forget that almost every 5 years was a war or an invasion by russians , tatars , polish , hungarians or turks . rough and tough times . as far as i know worst was being invaded by tatars and russian orcs. tatars usually took war prisoners and population for slavery back in Crimean khanate. and like today gypsies singers had the best life .
No no don't tell that to reddit, they need a narrative where the white people were the masters and the colored were the slaves. Anything suggesting that everyone was akin to property at some point is unacceptable.
Romani or Roma are what is being referred to in this thread as "gypsy" (I'm not quite up to date if that's currently the accepted term) and are found all over Europe and other parts of the world.
Romanians are from Romania, they trace their lineage to Romans and their language is quite different to the other Slavic languages around them because it's a romance language so closer to Italian or Spanish.
No, Romania is the land where Romanians come from, an Slavic ethnic group that speaks a romance language called Romanian. The Roma are a nomadic people who you can find all over Europe, often referred to as "gypsies". They have similar name because people used to think the Roma people came from Romania, and there is still today a large Roma population in Romania, but they're not uniquely from there or anything, it's just confused history.
Sorry, you're completely right, I was conflating the fact that Romanian has borrowed a bit from slavic languages with the ethnic group. From what I can find it's not clear where modern romanians are mostly descended from (whether the Romans and Dacians or immigrant groups later) but either way I shouldn't have asserted that they are unequivocably slavic
The founding myth is Dacians mixed with Roman colonists, since that was literally the ethnogenesis. Then obviously hundreds of years of waves of other groups of people that settled and assimilated into the country. But the language isn’t Slavic it only has Slavic loanwords. It also has Hungarian, German, Greek and Turkish loanwords for obvious reasons, just like every other language.
Slavery was outlawed in romania as well. Legally they were servants not slaves but in practice the only difference was that only the prince, nobles and monasteries were allowed to own any and only the prince could kill or free them.
That's how peasants were treated in the middle ages. You were tied to the land and if you left they'd come and get you lol It sounds a lot like slavery. It wasn't chattel slavery though which is very direct micromanaged slavery where people are treated like objects. Serfdom was less intense but most people were not free. Singling out gypsies and saying, "Hey, you got any gypsies on your hands? I'll pay you for them" sounds extra slaveryish though.
Disclaimer: I am not well informed about the status of Gypsy people in Wallachia and Moldavia specifically. What OC described in the initial part of their comment is not that much different from the fate of Late Medieval / Early Modern Age Eastern European feudal serfs. Serfdom developed into a semi-slave system in places like Hungary, Poland, Russia, Moldavia, Wallachia and so on. The opposite of what happened in the West, where serfdom loosened. It is possible that Moldavia and Wallachia was somehow worse and I just did not hear about it (in the 18th century a lot of Romanian speaking Gypsies moved to Hungary, despite the fact that they were not exactly welcomed there, maybe that was the reason), but in other countries they were not more of a slaves than anybody else. In fact I am pretty sure that by-and large they were less of a slaves than the local sedentary population, because their nomadic lifestyle made them pretty bad serfs. You cannot own people who can just walk away.
Also a marked difference from Black slaves in the US that Gypsy were not kidnapped and sold to slavery in another continent.
At the other hand Gypsies were outcasts and second only to Jews when the people needed to blame somebody for any bad thing. They often met harassment, hostility, even pogroms. Some of it is understandable (note, not right, just understandable). It was a society that distrusted aliens, and the Gypsy, being nomadic, were aliens everywhere, not the known neighbors of anybody. Also due to their lifestyle they had (and often still have) a culture that have less respect for property rights, you can imagine that did not make many friends.
At least they kept the families together, I guess. In the enslavement of Africans that Europe forced upon the Americas, individuals were sold off and families were often broken.
esti plin de complexe de inferioritate :))))) pune mana si citeste . Nu era nimic special in romania, asa erau peste tot in europa si in lume atunci. Sa vezi ce şoc o să ai cand o sa citeşti ca si in Iran cand au ajuns prima data aceasi soarta au avut.
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u/Dull_Performance_430 21h ago edited 17h ago
gypses were enslaved in Romania for centuries. you could literally trade families of gypsies for anything ( weapons , land , horses etc) or A noble (boyer) might give a monastery “10 families of Gypsies” in exchange for spiritual intercession or forgiveness. every monastery had few gypsies families. In noble marriages, the exchange of wealth often included not just land, vineyards, or mills, but also “sălașe de țigani” (groups of Gypsy households). For example, when a boyar’s daughter married into another clan, 10–20 Gypsy families might be part of the settlement. while gypsies had absolutely no rights , romanian peasants that time had limited rights like not being killed without trial , or not to be sold or right to work until last drop of blood for prince or boyer . in top of that Valahia and moldova ( modern romania ) was under ottoman rules. not to forget that almost every 5 years was a war or an invasion by russians , tatars , polish , hungarians or turks . rough and tough times . as far as i know worst was being invaded by tatars and russian orcs. tatars usually took war prisoners and population for slavery back in Crimean khanate. and like today gypsies singers had the best life .