A Brief History of the Romani People (Romany Gypsies)

Something a little different today: my first post in the steemSTEM tag.

Personal misconceptions about the origins of the Romani people

I started watching a Youtube documentary on "Irish Travelers" late last night, but only got a few minutes in before diving down the Wikipedia rabbit hole and doing a little research about this interesting people and culture.

Gypsies camping. Welsh Romanies near Swansea, 1953

I was instantly amazed to discover that the Romani people, more commonly known by the pejorative term "Gypsies", had actually come from the north-western regions of India. Granted, the vast majority of modern European peoples originated in that region too and speak Indo-European languages, but what's interesting about the Romani, is that they only actually arrived in Europe less than 1000 years ago.

Previously, I'd assumed the Romani were a nomadic Celtic people from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain/Portugal), who had simply continued their nomadic lifestyle, rather than settling down like the Gaels, Gauls and Picts. I'm laying the blame for this misconception firmly at the feet of Goscinny and Uderzo - I used to love the Asterix comics when I was a kid, but it turns out the authors took more than a few liberties when it came to historical accuracy. The Romani did not arrive in Spain til approximately 2000 years after the arrival of the Celts and this largely explains the not-so-pleasant attitudes lots of Europeans still hold towards this comparably less ancient culture.

True origins of the Romani people and migration timeline

The Romani people originated in the modern-day northern Indian states of Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab and Sindh. The latter is interesting as the Romani people of Germany and Northern Italy refer to themselves as Sinti rather than Roma (though their language is called Romanes). The Romani are closely related to the Dom people of Iran, Egypt and Turkey. The two peoples likely left India around the 6th century CE and diverged - the tribes who continued on to Europe are known as Rom, Roma or Romani and those who stayed behind in Persia, Turkey and Egypt are known as Dom.

The migration of the Romanies through the Middle East and Northern Africa to Europe

The trek from India to the reaches of southern Europe appears to have taken approximately 600 years, with the Romani/Dom arriving in Anatolia (Turkey) and the Balkans in the early 12th century. The Romani don't appear in German historical records til the 1400s and don't arrive in Sweden and the Britannic Isles til the 16th century. A separate group appears to have travelled through Egypt and along the North African coast, crossing into the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century. These two distinct groups seem to have converged in France around the 16th century.

Reception in Europe

Persecution of Romani people appears to have started almost immediately, with expulsions from Germany, Milan, Catalonia, Sweden, England and Denmark recorded throughout the 15th and 16th centuries. Switzerland went as far as ordering the execution of all Romani in 1510, with England and Denmark passing similar laws in 1554 and 1589 respectively. Portugal began deporting Romani people to its colonies in 1538 - there is a large Romani population in Brazil to this day.

An 1852 Wallachian poster advertising an auction of Romani slaves in Bucharest.

The Romani were often subject to imprisonment, forced labour, slavery , ethnic cleansing and a host of other atrocities. In France they would be branded and have their heads shaven and in Bohemia and Moravia, Romani women would have their ears cut off. Poland and Russia were more tolerant in comparison and lots of Romani moved east to these relative safe-havens.

What I find so interesting about all this, is genetically, European peoples and the Romani are extremely similar. The vast majority of European peoples originated in Iran/India too and that region had been home to Greek peoples since the time of Alexander and the Successor States (Bactrian Kingdom). This was largely a clash of culture, rather than race.

Origins of the term "Gypsy"

The term "Gypsy" is derived from Egypt/Egyptian, in fact, the law expelling the Romani from England in 1530 was the "Egyptians Act 1530". In modern times, some groups of Romani refer to themselves as Gypsies, where as others consider it a racial slur. At the very least the term is inaccurate, as though the Iberian branch of the Romani travelled through Egypt, the people were never native to this region.

WWII and the period that followed

Romani who manged to survive the troubles of the 15th and 16th centuries (though the persecution never really stopped) were eventually targeted by Hitler and the Nazis in the 20th century - between 220 000 and 1.5 million Romani were executed in the genocide that followed. In Croatia, the Ustatsa militia and political police massacred around 25 000 Roma - almost the entire population. Following the war, authorities In Czechoslovakia sterilised Romani women in an attempt to reduce their population. There are cases of coercive sterilisation in the Czech Republic as late as 2004 and histories of this tactic in Germany, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.

Conclusion

The Romani people are an itinerant Indian-Aryan people who left north-west India around the 6th century CE. From there they travelled across the expanses of the western world, reaching Europe in the 15th century and the Americas by the 16th. Despite sharing common origins with European peoples, the Romani people have been persecuted and shunned since the very moment they arrived in Europe and negative attitudes towards the Romani persist to this day.

Disclaimer

I am a history buff, not a historian - I only began researching this topic yesterday, but found it interesting enough to inspire my first post in the steemSTEEM tag. Though history is technically a social science, genetics is clearly science in the strictest sense. More importantly, the steemSTEEM tag is a hub of intelligent discussion on Steem and I feel this post is warranted in the tag - if you believe this is tag spam, please let me know in the comments below and I will consider removing it.

Sources

Most of the information has been sourced today and yesterday from Wikipedia, though I have previously done extensive research into the history of the Celtic peoples and Indo-European languages. If I have made any mistakes, please inform me in the comments below and I will seek to rectify them. I hope you have enjoyed this post, as I personally found the research and construction of it extremely interesting, though very time consuming.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people - all images and most info
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dom_people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtiberians