Outlaws in their own lands: expulsions and forced assimilation
Across Western and Central Europe, states outlaw, expel, brand, hang and later try to forcibly assimilate Roma, culminating in Spain's Great Round-up of 1749 and the Habsburg campaign to make them "new peasants".
- The Gypsies — Angus Fraser, Blackwell (1992)
- The Royal Order of October 1749 and the Historic Consequences of the Great Roma Round-Up — Library of Congress (In Custodia Legis blog) (2021)
- I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies — Yaron Matras, Allen Lane (2014)
- The Traveller-Gypsies — Judith Okely, Cambridge University Press (1983)
From around 1500, the tolerance of the first encounters ended. The Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire in 1498–1500 declared “Gypsies” outlaws who could be harmed without punishment; Spain’s Catholic Monarchs in 1499 ordered them to settle with a master or leave; England’s Egyptians Act of 1530 expelled them, and later laws made being one a capital crime. In the Netherlands and German states, eighteenth-century “heathen hunts” drove them out by force, and signs at borders threatened flogging and branding.
- The Gypsies — Angus Fraser, Blackwell (1992)
- The Traveller-Gypsies — Judith Okely, Cambridge University Press (1983)
Others tried to erase them by assimilation. On the night of 30 July 1749, in the Great Round-up (Gran Redada), Spanish troops arrested an estimated 9,000 to 12,000 Gitanos, separated men from women and sent them to forced labour in shipyards and workshops; many were held for years. In the Habsburg lands, Maria Theresa and Joseph II (1758–1783) banned Romani language, dress and travelling, renamed Roma “new Hungarians” or “new peasants”, and took children to be raised by non-Roma families. In 1783 Spain’s Charles III banned the very word gitano while still punishing Gitano ways of life.
- The Royal Order of October 1749 and the Historic Consequences of the Great Roma Round-Up — Library of Congress (In Custodia Legis blog) (2021)
- The Gypsies — Angus Fraser, Blackwell (1992)
- I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies — Yaron Matras, Allen Lane (2014)
Why it matters today
These centuries created a pattern that Roma recognise in later policies: either expel them or make them disappear as a people. Laws banning Romani language, dress and travel, and the taking of children, are part of family memory and explain a deep wariness of authorities, schools and social workers.