Since the enslavement of Romani people is so unknown yet so vast, I wanted to compile a little timeline to put it in to perspective on the anniversary of Romanian emancipation. This doesn't include everything because there is just far too much and also a word limit here.
1100s: King Muhmud of Ghazni used slave warriors to destroy all the Sindh and Punjab peoples in India. These warriors would be some of the earliest beginnings of the Romani people.
Romanian Slavery (1385-1864): This is some of the most severe slavery Roma have gone through. It was generational slavery (as it did last 500 years), so children of slaves were slaves. It became a familial line which is important later on. Extreme physical punishment was commonly given out. Women were often involved in sex slavery by being raped by their owners and any visitors — as many masters considered it polite to offer these sexual favours to guests. Many Romanian Roma nowadays are more lighterskinned, and this can be traced back to this. The Catholic Orthodox Church was also a large slaveholder.
1498: Columbus brings Romani slaves to American colonies.
1500-1700: Spain sent Roma to be enslaved in Louisiana colonies
1500-1700: France sent Roma to be enslaved in the modern day Caribbean.
1500-1700: Dutch sent Roma to be enslaved in modern day Delaware, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and more.
1500s: Beginning in the 1500s, Portugal mass deports Roma slaves to Brazil, Africa, and India
1514: All Roma in England were branded with a “V” and forced into two years of slave labor. Attempted escapes were punished by being branded again and now being enslaved for life.
1560: All Roma in Spain eventually sent to galley slavery
1561: France previously banned Roma from the country, so if you were found in the country, you were sentenced to slavery.
1650-1775: Scotland sent Roma to be enslaved in Panama, Novascotia, New Jersey, and Georgia.
1658-1700s: England sends Roma slaves to many Southern state plantations and Caribbean. Mass arrest and deportations occur.
1672-1678: France and Dutch Republic both force Roma to fight for them. Afterwards, the Dutch slaughtered all Roma, even those who fought for them. This was known as the “heathen hunt.”
1700s: Scotland has Roma slaves work in coal mines.
1700s: In Jamaica, Roma woman were almost all sex slaves. Freed Black slaves were given Roma slaves.
1733: Russia’s Empress declares Roma to be slaves to the crown
1749: Great Gypsy Round-up occurs in Spain. All Roma arrested and forced into slave labor, including very young children. The operation was funded by confiscated goods and homes of the Roma.
1839: There were up to a quarter of a million Roma slaves in Romania.
1864: Romania abolishes slavery. Many remained fully dependent on local landowners and authorities after. A lot of Romanian Roma ‘tribes’ can be traced back specifically to what labor they did during slavery.
Holocaust (1933-1945): Roma were some of the forced workers who built the labor camps, many of whom would die in the camps the built. Forced labor occurred in many concentration camps. Around 2 million Roma died in the Holocaust.
Nowadays, Roma are still the most heavily trafficked group in the world for reasons such as forced labour, sex trafficking, illegal adoption. This is in many places, but here are just a few stats to show the severity: "Roma constitute only approximately 7% of the total Hungarian population. A police source estimated that 80% of trafficked persons are Romani. According to information provided by two NGOs supplying services to prostitutes/sex workers in destination countries (Switzerland and the Netherlands), approximately 25-30% of their beneficiaries are Hungarian women, of which 80% are Romani, a large number of whom have been trafficked and/or are exploited."
You can read more about trafficking in Europe here.
And to leave it off, here is this: "A grim illustration of the silent normalization of extremist attitudes and opinions can be found under the most mundane forms: internet comments. In the section for opinions and comments, at the end of media articles on the long history of the Roma slavery in the Romanian Principalities, some readers are openly stating that the only sad part about the Romani enslavement, from their perspective, was its abolition. A number of other comments were patronizing the daring act of Romani activism, associating Roma people with second-class citizens who should not have a saying in the matters of society. Most of all, since when do they have an informed opinion? Aren’t they supposed to be stealing something or destroy our calm as decent citizens?"
Mate, you have no idea how hilarious it is to hear my mum's story about various ethnic grievances in Kazakhstan. During her youth she lived in a small town near Kazakhstan's then-capital, which was extremely ethnically diverse: Turks, Chechens, Germans, you name it, and Greeks too. They all had beef with each other. Turks are assholes, Chechens too, but at least they kept Turks in line, so props to them for that, Greeks are rich assholes and mafiosos, and they love to wear massive Orthodox crosses on their fat hairy bellies, it's the funniest shit. And Soviet Greeks all have last names ending with “-idi”. I even knew a guy whose name was Ivan Sapidi.
So you probably know that during WW2 Stalin deported tons of ethnic minorities to Siberia and Kazakhstan, so Kazakhstan became this ridiculously ethnically diverse place. It's actually funny, when Westerners always assume that every place on earth are these ethnically homogeneous nation-states, and only liberal Western countries have this new and fresh “multiculturalism”. I remember when I came to Leicester in the UK, some doe-eyed white kid was on about how Leicester is so multicultural, and I'm like dude, why are you telling me that, it's not like I never lived in a diverse place.
So yeah, Kazakhstan is home to Kazakhs, Russians, Tatars, Germans, Poles, Greeks, Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Turks, Chechens, Ossetians, Koreans, Ukrainians, you name it. Volga Germans specifically lived along the Volga river since 16–18 centuries and were deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan, so ended up being one of the biggest minority groups.
My grandpa spent 10 years in Gulag, settled in Kazakhstan during Khruschev. Very anti-Stalin obvs. Loves Zhukov though. Reminds me of another funny thing, when I'd visit him in Berlin and ask him about the rest of Germany, he would go on rants like “Frankfurt? Screw Frankfurt, a nest of Nazis who weren't beaten enough.”
Where's the lie tho? Well, beyond the rich part lol. Although I guess for Russopontics maybe it was true in Kazakhstan.
Yes, Pontic Greeks. They all end with -idis (-idi is the female version). You're talking about the "Russopontics" I mentioned before lol. Btw my grandma was Pontic, but from Trabzon which is in Turkey, not Russia. She was also an "-idi".
Fun guide to Greek naming conventions:
-idis: Almost definitely Pontic
-akis: Almost definitely Cretan
-poulos: Messinian, frpossibly om somewhere else in the Peloponnese
-eas/-akos: Usually from Mani and Laconia, you know, the place where Gerard Butler was so passionate for while fighting Persians shirtless
Very short name that ends with -as especially if it starts with Z: Probably from Epirus, although that's less reliable.
Surname is the same as the first name but with an "-ou" suffix: Cypriot. I don't know why that's so much more common with Cypriots but it is. Many Cypriot surnames are for just a normal first name with an -ou suffix, and for some reason it's very common for them to be the same as the first name.
Greek surnames are fun because they're relatively recent and they mean things you can actually track down sometimes. I'm obviously not gonna say what my surname is but it has something to do with my great-great-great-grandpa being a priest. My grandma's name has something to do with being short which makes a lot of sense if you meet anyone from her family.
I think you're talking about Ivan Savvidis? Ivan Savvidis is a Pontic Greek-Russian multimillionaire businessman who is prominent in Greece because he owns a large football team, a TV channel, and yeah, he is a bit of a mafioso. A few years ago he got pissed at a game the team he owns was playing and he walked into the field waving around a fucking gun in front of the cameras lmao
Although Sapidis would be a fun name because sapios means rotten.
Uh, based department?
Ah yes, of course, the teenage kid I went to a martial arts club with was a Greek-Russian multimillionaire, lol. Nah, he's just a random acquaintance, and his surname was Sapidi, without the ‘s’. Ethnic minorities in Soviet Union would end up assimilating into Russian culture pretty seriously, I doubt Greeks would even speak Greek and know that masculine surnames must end in ‘s’. I mean shit, even Savvidis's surname is without the ultimate ‘s’ in Russian according to Wikipedia.
Anyway, super interesting stuff, I enjoyed the hell out of it. Feel free to throw these nuggets of knowledge at me any time, I love it.
Ah I thought you meant you didn't personally knew him, you just heard about him.
Well in Greek everyone calls him Savvidis but I guess that sort of stuff happens when you go to other countries. I'm not sure exactly what that concept is called in English, I think it is called declination. It exists in German, you have Nominativ, Genitiv, Dativ, and Akkusativ, right? It's similar in Greek but we don't have "Dativ", but we do have another declination which is for "calling" someone, "klitiki". In all except the Nominativ analogue it is Savvidi, without the s. So I can see how they ended up dropping it, since when you call someone, "Savvidi" is the right form, so I guess eventually that became the norm. It's always weird because obviously people who don't speak Greek can never properly pronounce your name and don't even know the correct forms so it always sounds kinda funny, and people end up having their names spelled and pronounced like 10 different ways because they can't decide how to best "explain" them. For instance, Sapidis shouldn't really have a d. It's not pronounced like a d, it is pronounced like "th" in "the" or "though". So maybe someone tries to spell it that way but then people pronounce it like "Th" in "thought", and so he realizes that that's a bad idea, but then he decides he should probably spell it Sapides because that's how ancient Greek names are often latinized but then he figures people get the pronounciation wrong so he makes it Sapidis again, and then he also decides that Sapidi is better because it's more natural when people are calling him, etc. And that's how you end up with 50 different versions of your name.
But yeah, Sapidis means rotten lmao.
Yeah, I also really like learning about weird details from other countries.
Declension and vocative case, yeah, I know what you're talking about. Mpig ntick and all that.
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