Gypsies

An Interdisciplinary Reader

Diane Tong

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781135636371
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This book of interdisciplinary readings on Gypsies is sensitive to the Romani point of view and avoids exoticizing or patronizing the Gypsies and their culture. Recurrent themes in the readings include: the historical oppression of the Gypsies including contemporary xenophobia and violence; the nonstatic, heterogeneous nature of Gypsy cultures; the persistence of racist stereotypes; and personal and institutional Gypsy/non-Gypsy relationships. Nearly all of the classic essays updated for this volume tell stories of the persistance of the Roma in the face of savage atrocities and appalling living conditions.

POLITICS, SOCIAL CHANGE, AND HISTORY

Ways of Looking at Roma¹: The Case of Czechoslovakia (1975)

Will Guy

THE IMPORTANCE OF A HISTORICAL APPROACH

The Relevance of Historical Experience

Class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from and usually opposed to theirs…. Class-consciousness is the way in which these experiences are handled in cultural terms: embodied in traditions, value-systems, ideas, and institutional forms.²

What Thompson writes about class is equally relevant to minority communities if the positions of being a minority and also a dominated stratum or class coincide, as they so often do. If anything, historical experience can often play an even more crucial role for such minorities in helping them understand their present situation.

The situation of Roma in what is now Czechoslovakia has long been that of a dominated minority. Being a Rom meant for many centuries seeing the world as hostile; as a place where gaining a livelihood was a precarious business, where you were always liable to be beaten up and driven away, where perhaps you and your family might even be drowned, hanged at the crossroads, or burned alive in your hut. It didn’t happen all the time, of course, but it had happened in the not too distant past and might happen again—perhaps quite soon—who could know?

Even in “good times,” being a Rom meant seeing perhaps half of your children die young, of hunger and disease. To spare a weak child the prolonged agony of an inevitable death, nomadic Roma in Czechoslovakia used to plunge their newborn babies into icy water. If they could survive that, they had a chance on the road.

All this must have given these people a rather special way of looking at the world.

Nomadism and Persecution

When writing about Roma in general, two central problems always arise and are, of course, linked—nomadism and persecution.

Despite presenting a wealth of comparative historical data, Jean-Paul Clébert is still able to write that “the Gypsy is primarily and above all else a nomad. His dispersion throughout the world is due less to historical or political necessities than to his own nature.”³

Where settling has occurred, it is explained as being due to degeneration.

The sedentary Gypsies are generally “excluded” people, groups or families or couples who have founded a family and who have been banned from the clans or made “marimé,” that is, “unclean,” because of serious violations of the Tradition.⁴

When you realize that the countries with the largest numbers of Roma are in Eastern Europe and that the majority there are “sedentary” and therefore that Clébert’s “groups or families or couples” in fact number hundreds of thousands of people, you begin to feel a little uneasy with this explanation. Was it really like that? Who is excluding who? Perhaps Clébert is more a self-appointed custodian of the “authentic Gypsy culture” as he conceives of it rather than a chronicler of choices actually made by Roma in concrete historical situations?

In his careful assessment of the problems facing Europe’s Roma today, Grattan Puxon writes of anti-Romani prejudice as “a Europe-wide phenomenon which permeates all strata of society, regardless of political, ethical or religious systems.”⁵ As a way of stressing the extent and continuity of anti-Romani hostility this is excellent, but it also carries the suggestion that persecution of Roma is somehow undifferentiated and consequently inexplicable in historical terms. If no matter what the conditions, the situation, it was always there, how can you start trying to understand it? And what would be the point anyway, for perhaps it will always be there?

A more fruitful approach to both these problems would seem to be to probe rather the variety of Romani experience in specific historical situations rather than stressing its universal nature. For example: Under what conditions did Roma settle? In what circumstances were Roma persecuted in certain ways?

General answers are difficult to provide but even particular answers are not easy to give, largely because of the way in which much previous data have been presented. Writers on history almost invariably, and understandably, ignore Roma. Writers on Roma frequently, and unforgivably, ignored history. They wrote myopically about these people almost as if the Roma were the sole arbiters of their fate whereas, as a small and vulnerable minority, it was far more likely that their history would be more a tale of what was done to them than of what they themselves had done. Even the tale of what was done to them must be seen in a broad context, for most authorities had far more pressing problems to deal with than complaints against a few Roma, so when they did act against the Roma perhaps they were playing a deeper game. The possibility is worth bearing in mind.

In an important sense the study of Roma is worthwhile not so much for its own sake but for what it reveals about the nature of the societies in which they lived and still live.

To take just one example, the romantic stereotype of the Gypsy, as an exotic and noble primitive, wandering unconstrained as the mood takes her or him, tells us very little about the ways Roma managed to exist in England during the nineteenth century. Yet it comes as a shock to realize that this stereotype was cherished by members of a class which collectively owed its comfortable existence (including the leisure to fantasize about “Gypsy freedom”) to the systematic imposition of long hours of daily, repetitive, soul-destroying factory labor on other human beings. This was not perceived as a contradiction.

Fanon (a Black) commented aptly on a comparable romanticizing of Blacks:

To us, the man who adores the Negro is as “sick” as the man who abominates him. … In the absolute, the black is no more to be loved than the Czech, and truly what is to be done is to set man free.⁶

The Important Case of Czechoslovakia

The territory now known as Czechoslovakia should be significant for those interested in Romani history for at least four main reasons. First, it straddles the frontiers of what might be termed the “Western” and “Eastern” areas of Romani development in Europe.

In the Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia, the development pattern is similar to those of Germany, France, and England, where Roma were more usually seen as useless pests by the authorities, who ignored them or legislated savagely to expel them and deter new immigration. In these areas the Roma remained largely nomadic.

In Slovakia, however, which until 1918 was part of the Hungarian lands, the pattern resembles those of the Danube lands and the Balkans, where Roma were often seen as useful and from their first appearance were permitted, encouraged, and even forced to settle. They were also taxed by local authorities or the state. It is these countries that have the larger Romani populations.

It is not suggested of course that all Roma or all authorities always conformed to these patterns, but that as a model these rough generalizations prove helpful in understanding the varied trends of Romani history in Europe, including developments in particular countries since the Second World War. For this reason a fairly detailed account is given of Romani history in Czech lands and especially Slovakia, the homeland of virtually all of contemporary Czechoslovakia’s adult Roma.

Probably the general differences between “Western” and “Eastern” development are related to more fundamental modes of economic development (capitalist industrialization/feudal ruralism) and related methods of state formation (nation-states/multinational states), but this would need careful demonstration.

Second, on this territory were made probably two of the most widespread and systematic attempts to assimilate Roma—by the Hapsburg monarchs Maria Theresa and Joseph II in the second half of the eighteenth century, and by the government of socialist Czechoslovakia from 1958 onward.

Third, we are fortunate in having fairly full documentation of both these attempts as well as having a number of general studies of Romani history in Czechoslovakia. At present the most outstanding work is Emilia Horváthová’s excellent and painstaking Cigáni na Slovensku,⁷ to which the following section is greatly indebted.

Finally, Roma are relatively well integrated into Czechoslovak society, especially in comparison with the capitalist countries of Western Europe. For those interested in speculating on possible future developments of Romani communities, the situation in Czechoslovakia, where the majority of Roma participate in the labor market and where there is a small but growing Romani intelligentsia who still see themselves as Roma, should prove stimulating.

THE HISTORY OF ROMA ON CZECHOSLOVAK TERRITORY UNTIL 1945

Roma in the Czech Lands Before 1918

Shortly after the first undisputed reference to Roma in the Czech lands (1399), a large group arrived from the east in 1417 who were later to arouse the attention of Western Europe partly because of their numbers, novelty, and apparent nobility of their leaders but also since they had been granted impressive letters of safe-conduct. After passing through Bohemia⁸ they divided and various subgroups traveled to north Germany, Bavaria, Rome, Paris, and Barcelona. They were magicians, fortune-tellers, horse dealers, and apparently petty thieves—occupations compatible with, or even requiring, nomadism.

Their obvious difference from Roma previously settled in Eastern Europe has usually prompted the explanation that they were simply a different tribe of Roma. Štampach, a noted Czech Gypsiologist, believed that they had not come from the Balkans but directly from Asia Minor with the Turks. However, a straightforward account of their appearance as the unplanned intrusion of a primitive nomadic tribe practicing their traditional occupations is inadequate, as Horváthová has convincingly argued, because the newcomers seem more, rather than less, sophisticated than most Roma in the Balkans at that time.

It almost appears as if they made a careful market survey before their arrival, for they knew Western European languages and soon possessed accurate maps and almanacs indicating fairs⁹ and they included craftsmen who could make seals and write official letters. Even more remarkable was their initial success in obtaining powerful letters from such rulers as the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund¹⁰ and Pope Martin V by means of an explanation of their origin and nomadism which was not only plausible but even meritorious in terms of current European values: they claimed to be religious penitents.

Poissonier¹¹ even suggested that the apparent great difference in wealth between Romani leaders and followers was not so much a reflection of internal social divisions but a collective tactic to give these groups a better negotiating position. Although highly speculative, this view is partially supported by the fact that in France at least Roma imitated aspects of the beggars’ guilds, which were, in turn, a parody of feudal society, having their own courts, kings, social divisions, and systems of justice.

Whatever the origin of these Roma, it is important to recognize that in any case contemporary conditions in Western Europe probably would not have permitted them to follow the pattern of Roma in Eastern Europe. In particular the more developed craft industries were better organized to resist penetration by intruders. Likewise, prospects for settling would have been bleak during a period when hordes of beggars, discharged soldiers, and peddlers often wandered the roads.¹²

Although legislation expelling Roma as alleged Turkish spies had been enacted at the end of the fifteenth century in neighboring German lands, it was not until the mid-sixteenth century that similar measures were taken in the Czech lands, when Roma were accused of aiding the Turks by starting the fires which broke out in Prague in 1541. Official lethargy in implementing such laws is evident from their frequent renewal and d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Gypsy Studies
• Politics, Social Change, and History
• Language
• Educational Perspectives
• Performing Arts
• Social Organization
• Images of Gypsies
• The Contributors
• Permissions Acknowledgments