Slavery in Romania - Origins

Origins

The exact origins of slavery in the Danubian Principalities are not known. Historian Nicolae Iorga associated the Roma people's arrival with the 1241 Mongol invasion of Europe and considered their slavery as a vestige of that era, the Romanians taking the Roma from the Mongols as slaves and preserving their status. Other historians consider that they were enslaved while captured during the battles with the Tatars. The practice of enslaving prisoners may also have been taken from the Mongols. The ethnic identity of the "Tatar slaves" is unknown, they could have been captured Tatars of the Golden Horde, Cumans, or the slaves of Tatars and Cumans.

While it is possible that some Romani people were slaves or auxiliary troops of the Mongols or Tatars, the bulk of them came from south of the Danube at the end of the 14th century, some time after the foundation of Wallachia. By then, the institution of slavery was already established in Moldavia and possibly in both principalities, but the arrival of the Roma made slavery a widespread practice. The Tatar slaves, smaller in numbers, were eventually merged into the Roma population.

Slavery was a common practice in Eastern Europe at the time (see Slavery in medieval Europe). Non-Christians in particular were taken as slaves in Christian Europe: in the Kingdom of Hungary, Saracens (Muslims) and Jewish Khazars were held as slaves until they were forced to convert to Christianity in the 13th century; Russians enslaved the prisoners captured from the Tatars (see Kholop), but their status eventually merged with the one of the serfs.

There is some debate over whether the Romani people came to Wallachia and Moldavia as free men or as slaves. In the Byzantine Empire, they were slaves of the state and it seems the situation was the same in Bulgaria and Serbia until their social organization was destroyed by the Ottoman conquest, which would suggest that they came as slaves who had a change of "ownership". The alternate explanation, proposed by Romanian scholar P. P. Panaitescu, was that following the Crusades, an important East-West trade route passed through the Romanian states and the local feudal lords enslaved the Roma for economic gain for lack of other craftsmen. However, this theory is undermined by the fact that slavery was present before the trade route gained importance.

A legend tells that the Roma came to the Romanian Principalities at the invitation of Moldavian ruler Alexander the Good, who granted in a 1417 charter "land and air to live, and fire and iron to work", but the earliest reference to it is found in Mihail Kogălniceanu's writings and no such charter was ever found and it is generally considered a forgery.

Historian Neagu Djuvara also supposes that Roma groups came into the two countries as free individuals and were enslaved by the hospodars and the landowning boyar elite.

The very first document attesting the presence of Roma people in Wallachia dates back to 1385, and refers to the group as aţigani (from, athiganoi a Greek-language word for "heretics", and the origin of the Romanian term ţigani, which is synonymous with "Gypsy"). The document, signed by Prince Dan I, assigned 40 sălaşe (hamlets or dwellings) of aţigani to Tismana Monastery, the first of such grants to be recorded. In Moldavia, the institution of slavery was attested to for the first time in a 1470 Moldavian document, through which Moldavian Prince Stephan the Great frees Oană, a Tatar slave who had fled to Jagiellon Poland.

Anthropologist Sam Beck argues that the origins of Roma slavery can be most easily explained in the practice of taking prisoners of war as slaves, a practice with a long history in the region, and that, initially, free and enslaved Roma coexisted on what became Romanian territory.

There are some accounts according to which some of the Roma slaves had been captured during wars. For instance, in 1445, Vlad Dracul took by force from Bulgaria to Wallachia around 11,000-12,000 people "who looked like Egyptians", presumably Roma. A German-language Moldavian chronicle recorded that, in 1471, when Stephen confronted and defeated a Wallachian force led by Prince Radu cel Frumos at Soci, "he took with him into slavery 17,000 Gypsies." The numbers were most likely exaggerated.