Chattel slavery existed on the territory of present-day Romania from the founding of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia in 13th–14th century, until it was abolished in stages during the 1840s and 1850s before the Romanian War of Independence and the formation of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia in 1859, and also until 1783 in Transylvania and Bucovina (parts of the Habsburg monarchy). Most of the slaves were of Romani ethnicity. Particularly in Moldavia there were also slaves of Tatar ethnicity, probably prisoners captured from the wars with the Nogai and Crimean Tatars. During the invasion of Poland by Stephen the Great, Moldavians took 100,000 Polish slaves.
Romani slaves belonged to boyars (aristocrats), Orthodox monasteries, or the state. They were used as blacksmiths, goldsmiths and agricultural workers, but when the principalities were urbanized, they also served as servants.
The abolition of slavery was achieved at the end of a campaign by young revolutionaries influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment. Mihail Kogălniceanu, who drafted the legislation on the abolition of slavery in Moldova, remains the name associated with the abolition. In 1843, the Wallachian state freed its slaves, and in 1856, in both principalities, slaves of all classes were freed. Many formerly enslaved Romani people in Romania went to the United States and became the Romani Americans.
After the abolition, there were attempts (both by the state and by private individuals) to settle the nomads and to integrate the Roma into Romanian society, but their success was limited.
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 through the Crimean–Nogai slave raids in Eastern Europe, 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 founding of Wallachia. By then, the institution of slavery was already established in Moldavia, at the time enslaving the ,; but the arrival of the Roma made slavery a widespread practice. The Tatar slaves, smaller in numbers, were eventually merged into the Roma population.
Roma historian Viorel Achim also explained that "slavery was not a phenomenon characteristic only of Wallachia and Moldavia. In the Middle Ages there were slaves in neighboring countries: the Byzantine Empire, and in the Ottoman Empire, and in the Slavic countries south of the Danube. Moreover, slavery in our country is older than the arrival of gypsies. It is known about Tatar slaves, for example, who are older than Gypsy slaves, and for a time there were two well-defined categories even from a legal point of view: Tatar slaves, Gypsy slaves. But there were also Romanians who had the status of slaves."Historia.ro
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 that of the serfs.
From the late middle ages and during the early modern period, Christians from Eastern Europe were enslaved by the Nogai Horde, the Crimean Tatar Khanate and the Ottoman Empire for slavery in the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic Middle East.
There is some debate over whether the Romani people came to Wallachia and Moldavia as slaves or not. In the Byzantine Empire, they were slaves of the state 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 alternative 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 charter was ever found.
Historian Djuvara argues forward hypotheses concerning the origin of the Romanians, such as advancing the theory that the vast majority of the nobility in the medieval states that made up the territory of modern-day Romania was of Cuman origin and not Romanian: "Romanians were called the black cumans".
The very first document attesting the presence of Roma people in Wallachia dates back to 1385, and refers to the group as (from , a Greek-language word for "heretics", and the origin of the Romanian term , which is synonymous with "Gypsy").; The document, signed by Prince Dan I, assigned 40 (hamlets or dwellings) of 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 Mongol 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. In 1471, the Moldavian army of Stephen the Great defeated the army of Radu III and plundered Wallachia, including taking 17,000 Romani slaves with them.
Condition of the slaves
General characteristics and slave categories The Danubian Principalities were for most of their history the only territory in Eastern and Central Europe where Roma slavery was legislated, and the place where this was most extended. As a consequence of this, British sociologist Will Guy describes Romania as a "unique case", and one of the fort main "patterns of development" in what concerns the Roma groups of the region (alongside those present in countries that have in the recent past belonged to the Ottomans, Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire).
Traditionally, Roma slaves were divided into three categories. The smallest was owned by the , and went by the Romanian-language name of ("Gypsies belonging to the lord"). The two other categories comprised ("Gypsies belonging to the monasteries"), who were the property of Romanian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox monasteries, and ("Gypsies belonging to the boyars"), who were enslaved by landowners.; The status of the was better than that of the slaves held by boyars or the monasteries and many slaves given by the Prince to private owners or to monasteries ran away and joined the communities of the Prince's slaves.Marushiakova and Vesselin, p. 103
Each of the slave categories was divided into two groups: and ; the former was a sedentary category, while the latter was allowed to preserve its nomadism.; The category comprised several occupational subgroups: alongside the or "copper workers"), ("string instrument players"), ( or "spoon makers") and ("bear handlers"), all of which developed as distinct ethnic subgroups, they comprised the ("smiths").; For a long period of time, the Roma were the only smiths and ironmongers in Wallachia and Moldavia.Marushiakova and Vesselin, p. 105 Among the , the more valued were the specialized ("farriers"). Women owned by the boyars were often employed as housemaids in service to the boyaresses, and both them and some of the enslaved men could be assigned administrative tasks within the manor. From early on in the history of slavery in Romania, many other slaves were made to work in the salt mines.
Another category was the or (gold miners), who were slaves of the Prince who panned for gold during the warm season in the mountain rivers of the Carpathians, while staying in the plains during the winter, carving wooden utensils. The gold miners, through their yield of gold, brought much more income to the treasury than the other types of slaves and initially they were in large numbers, but as the deposits became exhausted, their number dropped. By 1810, there were only 400 Aurari panning for gold in Wallachia.Marushiakova and Vesselin, p. 107
During the 14th and 15th centuries very few slaves were found in the cities. Only since the beginning of the 16th century, monasteries began opening in the cities and they brought with them the Roma slaves and soon boyars and even townfolks began to use them for various tasks. The of Roma slaves were settled in the outskirts, and soon, almost all cities had such a district, with the largest being in the largest cities, including Târgoviște, Râmnic or Bucharest.
Medieval society allowed a certain degree of social mobility, as attested by the career of Ștefan Răzvan, a Wallachian Roma slave who was able to rise to the rank of boyar, was sent on official duty to the Ottoman Empire, and, after allying himself with the Poles and Cossack groups, became Moldavian Prince (April–August 1595).
Status and obligations The Roma were considered personal property of the boyar,; ; ; who was allowed to put them to work, selling them or exchanging them for other goods and the possessions of the slaves were also at the discretion of the master, this form of slavery distinguishing itself from the rumâni, who could only be sold together with the land. The boyar was allowed to punish his slaves physically, through beatings or imprisonment, but he or she did not have power of life and death over them, the only obligation of the master being to clothe and feed the slaves who worked at his manor.; ;
The social prestige of a slave master was often proportional to the number and kinds of skilled slaves in his possession, outstanding cooks and embroiderers being used to symbolically demonstrate the high status of the boyar families.; Good musicians, embroiderers or cooks were prized and fetched higher prices: for instance, in the first half of the 18th century, a regular slave was valued at around 20–30 lei, a cook would be 40 lei.
However, Djuvara, who bases his argument on a number of contemporary sources, also notes that the slaves were exceptionally cheap by any standard: in 1832, a contract involving the dowry of a boyaress shows that thirty Roma slaves were exchanged for one carriage, while the British diplomat William Wilkinson noted that the slave trade was a semi-clandestine matter, and that slaves could fetch the modest sum of five or six hundred Turkish kuruş. According to Djuvara's estimate, could be worth only half the sum attested by Wilkinson.