Another Darkness, Another Dawn Read online

  50 BBOA TD370, 373. This translation comes from Marushiakova and Popov, Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire, pp. 32–3.

  51 K. Barkey, Empire of Difference, p. 1.

  52 Ibid. pp. 1 and 7. This insight also builds on the work of D. Lieven, Empire. The Russian Empire and its Rivals (New Haven, CT, 2000). More broadly on state practice see J. Scott, Seeing Like a State, How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT, 1998).

  ONE Out of the Medieval World

  1 For a general introduction to the period see E. Cameron, Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1999), and his The European Reformation (Oxford, 1991); on the Dutch revolt against the Spanish, G. Darby, ed., The Origins and Development of the Dutch Revolt (London, 2001); J. Collins, The State in Early Modern France (Cambridge, 2010) and M. P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion (Cambridge, 2005) provide a good introduction to France in the period, with J. Casey, Early Modern Spain: A Social History (London and New York, 1999) and J. N. Hillgarth, The Mirror of Spain, 1500–1700: The Formation of a Myth (Ann Arbor, MI, 2000), give useful perspectives on Spain.

  2 A. Fraser, The Gypsies (Oxford, 1995), chapter five.

  3 F. de Vaux de Foletier, Les tsiganes dans l’ancienne France (Paris, 1961), p. 48.

  4 Anon., A Parisian journal 1405–1449, trans. J. Shirley (Oxford, n.d.), pp. 218–19.

  5 See for example P. Horden, Freedom of Movement in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2006).

  6 P. Spufford, ‘Trade in Fourteenth Century Europe’, in New Cambridge Medieval History, vol VI, ed. M. Jones (Cambridge, 2000), p. 188.

  7 Trans. of H. Cornerus, Chronica novella usque ad annum 1435, in J. G. Eccard, Corpus historicum medii aevi (Leipzig, 1723), 2:1225, in Fraser, The Gypsies, p. 67.

  8 D. Abulafia, ‘The Coming of the Gypsies: Cities, Princes, Nomads’, in P.C.M. Hoppenbrouwers, A. Janse and R. Stein, eds, Power and Persuasion. Essays on the Art of State Building in Honour of W.P. Blockmans (Turnhout, 2011) pp. 325–42.

  9 Argot here is used to describe the informal language or ‘cant’ used generally by vagrants and others. For more detail on the broader argument see R Jütte, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1994), chapter ten.

  10 D. Pym, ‘The Pariah Within: Early Modern Spain’s Gypsies’, Journal of Romance Studies IV/2 (2004), p. 33.

  11 On travel and pilgrimage in this period see for example R. Allen, ed., Eastward Bound: Travel and Travellers, 1050–1550 (Manchester, 2004); Horden, Freedom of Movement; J. Verdon, Travel in the Middle Ages, trans. G. Holoch (Notre Dame, 2003).

  12 M. Boes, ‘Unwanted Travellers? The Tightening of City Borders in Early Modern Germany’, in T. Betteridge, ed., Borders and Travellers in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 87–112.

  13 The exact words were ‘und hetten brieff, wer in nut ir almusen gab, dem mochten sy stellen’, from E. O. Winstedt, ‘Some records of the Gypsies in Germany, 1407–1792’, JGLS, 3rd series, XI/3 (1932), p. 101. The coinage of the different German states in this period is highly complex and localized, with silver groschens and gold guldens emerging as the most common large denomination coins by the early fifteenth century. Gold shortages in the mid-fifteenth century resulted in the production of the silver guldengroschen, which, by the following century, spread across Europe as the thaler. It is likely that Winstedt, in translating these documents, made a stab at converting the currencies into pounds, but we don’t know, however, if he then articulated this in 1930s values. Given the large sums he cites, it seems reasonable to suppose that he did.

  14 Sigismund (1368–1437) was King of Hungary from 1387; in 1411 the electors gave him the German crown, effectively making him Holy Roman Emperor, although he was not actually crowned by the pope until 1433. During his attempt to end the schism of the Church via the Council of Constance (1414–18), the town became a key centre for his court.

  15 Cited in Fraser, The Gypsies, pp. 64–5.

  16 A Parisian Journal, pp. 217–18; and quoted in F. de Vaux de Foletier, ‘Le pèlerinage romain des Tsiganes en 1422 et les lettres du Pape Martin V’, Etudes Tsiganes, 4 (1965), pp. 13–24.

  17 Andreas, ‘The Gypsy Visit to Rome in 1422’, JGLS, 3rd series, XI/3–4(1932), pp. 111–15.

  18 Fraser, The Gypsies, p. 64.

  19 Boes, ‘Unwanted Travellers?’, pp. 87–112.

  20 E. O. Winstedt, ‘Some Records of the Gypsies in Germany, 1407–1792’, JGLS, 3rd series, XII/3 (1933), p. 123.

  21 Vaux de Foletier, Les tsiganes dans l’ancienne France, pp. 46 and 49.

  22 Boes, ‘Unwanted Travellers?’, p. 90.

  23 M. Montaigne, ‘Of Cannibals’, trans. J. M. Cohen, in Essays (London, 1958), p. 109. For a reflection on how differences between Europeans and the people they encountered often became compressed into depictions of cannibals, see T. Betteridge, ‘Introduction: Borders, Travel and Writing’, in Betteridge, Borders and Travellers, pp. 1–14.

  24 A. Pagden, European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven, CT, 1993), p. 13.

  25 Abulafia, ‘The Coming of the Gypsies’, p. 326. This is not to argue that there was no persecution before this period. See R. I. Moore, Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford, 1987).

  26 Boes, ‘Unwanted Travellers?’, pp. 88–9.

  27 For example from Erfurt, 1458; Mainz, 1470; Bamberg, 1478; Magdeburg, 1493; Nuremburg and Ulm, 1499; and Regensburg 1519.

  28 Boes, ‘Unwanted Travellers?’, pp. 93–6.

  29 Ibid., pp. 101–3.

  30 It is important to note, however, that this period of repression in western Europe coincided with an opening up of society for Jews in Poland in particular, leading to its becoming the centre of Jewish culture and religious development.

  31 See R. Muchembled, ‘The Witches of the Cambresis: The Acculturation of the Rural World in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries’, in Religion and the People, 800–1700, ed. J. Obelkevich (Chapel Hill, NC, 1979), pp. 221–76.

  32 R. Briggs, Witches and Neighbours: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft (New York, 1996).

  33 Jütte, Poverty and Deviance, p. 120.

  34 M. K. McIntosh, Controlling Misbehavior in England, 1370–1600 (Cambridge, 1998).

  35 Hereford Archives, BG/11/28. Misc. Papers, vol. 6, item 18, 17 August 1530. I am indebted to Tom Johnson not only for drawing this fragment to my attention, but for the analysis.

  36 See for example L. Abreu, Monitoring Health Status and Vulnerable Groups in Europe: Past and Present (Santiago de Compostela, 2006) on Portugal’s harsh treatment of its indigent poor as early as the fourteenth century.

  37 C. Dyer, ‘Poverty and its Relief in Late Medieval England’, Past and Present, 216 (2012), pp. 41–78.

  38 A. L. Beier, Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England, 1560–1640 (London, 1987), p. ix.

  39 Dyer, ‘Poverty and its Relief’, p. 41. This article provides a good overview of the latest thinking on this subject.

  40 O. P. Grell and A. Cunningham, eds, Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe, 1500–1700 (London, 1997), p. 3. See also Verdon, Travel in the Middle Ages, p. 106.

  41 Beier, Masterless Men, pp. 4–5.

  42 Here I have updated the list suggested in Beier, Masterless Men, p. 5.

  43 L. Abreu, ‘Beggars, Vagrants and Romanies: Repression and Persecution in Portuguese Society (14th–18th Centuries)’, www.ep.liu.se/ej/hygiea (accessed 14 October 2012).

  44 Boes, ‘Unwanted Travellers?’, p. 99.

  45 In addition, legislation governing vagrancy and poor relief was passed in Leisning, in 1523–4; Zurich, Mons and Ypres, 1525; Venice, 1527–8; Lyon, Rouen, Geneva, between 1531 and 1535; Paris, Madrid, Toledo and London, 1540; the Netherlands, 1531; England 1531, 1536, 1547; Brandenburg and Castile 1540, France 1536 and 1566. See Jütte, Poverty and Deviance, p. 105.

  46 Pym, ‘The Pariah Within’, pp. 21–35.

  47 A. Bancroft, Roma
and Gypsy-Travellers in Europe: Modernity, Race, Space, and Exclusion (Aldershot, 2005), p. 17.

  48 Cited in J. Watts de Peyster, Gypsies. Information Translated and Gathered from Various Sources (New York, 1885), p. 12.

  49 E. O. Winstedt, ‘Some Records of the Gypsies in Germany, 1407–1792. Conclusion’, JGLS, 3rd series, XIII/2 (1934), p. 99.

  50 R. Pym, The Gypsies of Early Modern Spain, 1425–1783 (Basingstoke, 2007).

  51 For an introduction to this see J. Casey, Early Modern Spain: A Social History (London and New York, 1999) and Hillgarth, The Mirror of Spain.

  52 A. J. Cruz and M. E. Perry, ‘Introduction’, in Culture and Control in Counter-Reformation Spain, ed. A. J. Cruz and M. E. Perry (Minneapolis, MN, 1992).

  53 B. Donovan, ‘Changing Perceptions of Social Deviance: Gypsies in Early Modern Portugal and Brazil’, Journal of Social History, XXVI/1 (1992), pp. 33–53.

  54 R. Pym ‘Law and Disorder: Anti-Gypsy Legislation and its Failures in Seventeenth Century Spain’, in Rhetoric and Reality in Early Modern Spain, ed. R. Pym (London, 2006), pp. 41–56.

  55 Pym, ‘The Pariah Within’, pp. 21–35. See also B. Leblon, Los gitanos de España (Barcelona, 2001), p. 27; and Gil Ayuso Faustino, ed., Textos y disposiciones legales de Castilla impresos en los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid, 1935), pp. 12–13.

  56 C. Pérez de Herrera, Amparo de pobres [1598] (Madrid, 1975), p. 177, quoted in Pym, ‘The Pariah Within’.

  57 Pym, ‘The Pariah Within’, pp. 21–35, and Fraser, The Gypsies, p. 161.

  58 J. P. Liégois, Les tsiganes (Paris, 1971), p. 14.

  59 Vaux de Foletier, Les tsiganes dans l’ancienne France, pp. 52–3 and 57.

  60 Fraser, The Gypsies, p. 142.

  61 Vaux de Foletier, Les tsiganes dans l’ancienne France, pp. 86 and 89.

  62 This is a translation of a decree of Sultan Selim II, 1574, to be found in E. Marushiakova and V. Popov, Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire (Hatfield, 2001), p. 34.

  63 Cited in Ibid., pp. 36–7.

  64 Hans Dernschwam, Tagebuch einer Reise nach Konstantinopel und Kleinasien 1553–55, cited in Marushiakova and Popov, Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire, p. 49.

  65 D. Crowe, A History of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia (Basingstoke, 2006), p. 107.

  66 Fraser, The Gypsies, p. 59.

  67 M. Gaster, ‘Rumanian Gypsies in 1560’, jgls, 3rd series, xii/1 (1933), p. 61.

  TWO Breaking Bodies, Banishing Bodies

  1 E. O. Winstedt, ‘Some Records of the Gypsies in Germany. Conclusion’, JGLS, 3rd series, XII/3 (1933), p. 101.

  2 R. Pym ‘Law and Disorder: Anti-Gypsy Legislation and its Failures in Seventeenth Century Spain’, in Rhetoric and Reality in Early Modern Spain, ed. R. Pym (London, 2006), p. 41.

  3 Winstedt, ‘Some Records of the Gypsies in Germany. Conclusion’, pp. 98–116.

  4 Pym, ‘Law and Disorder’, p. 42.

  5 A. Fraser, The Gypsies (Oxford, 1995), pp. 161–3.

  6 D. Pym, ‘The Pariah Within: Early Modern Spain’s Gypsies’, Journal of Romance Studies, IV/2 (2004), pp. 21–35.

  7 Winstedt, ‘Some Records of the Gypsies in Germany. Conclusion’, pp. 100–101.

  8 Daranes, ‘False Passports’, JGLS, 3rd series, XII/4 (1933), pp. 214–16. This account is based on the evidence of Fritsch in his Praeclarissimus Dominus Ahasuerus Fritsch, J.U.C. (1660).

  9 J. Collins, The State in Early Modern France (Cambridge, 2010), p. 6; M. P. Holt’s, The French Wars of Religion (Cambridge, 2005) also provides a good overview of France in this period.

  10 See J. P. Liégois, ‘Bohémiens et pouvoirs publics en France du XVème au XIXème siècle’, Études Tsiganes IV/21 (1978), pp. 15–19; and B. Geremek, Les fils de Cain. L’image des pauvres et des vagabonds dans la littérature européenne du XVe au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1991), pp. 78 and 358.

  11 F. de Vaux de Foletier, Les tsiganes dans l’ancienne France (Paris, 1961), pp. 209–10.

  12 H. Asséo, ‘Des hommes à part: les Bohémiens en forêt XVIIIe siècle: Forêt, villageois et marginaux, XVIe–XXe siècle’, in Forêt, Villageois et marginaux, ed. A. Corvol (Paris, 1990), pp. 30–35.

  13 Vaux de Foletier, Les tsiganes dans l’ancienne France, p. 179.

  14 See P. Bamford, Fighting Ships and Prisons: The Mediterranean Galleys of France in the Age of Louis XIV (Minneapolis, MN, 1973).

  15 See R. Pike, Penal Servitude in Early Modern Spain (Madison, WI, 1983), chapter one.

  16 L. Lucassen, ‘Eternal Vagrants? State Formation, Migration and Travelling Groups in Western Europe, 1350–1914’, in L. Lucassen, W. Willems and A. Cottaar, Gypsies and Other Itinerant Groups: A Socio-historical Approach (London and New York, 1998), p. 62.

  17 F. Redlich, The German Military Enterpriser and his Work Force: A Study in European Economic and Social History (Wiesbaden, 1965), pp. 173–4.

  18 Lucassen, ‘Eternal Vagrants?’, p. 63.

  19 Winstedt, ‘Some Records of the Gypsies in Germany’, p. 192.

  20 Ibid., ‘Conclusion’, pp. 103–5.

  21 This was J. B. Weissenbruch, Ausfuhrliche Relation von der famosen Ziegeuner-Diebs-Mord-und Rauber-Bande, welche De. 14. Und 15. Novembr. Ao 1726. ZU Giessen durch Schwerdt, Strang und Rad, respective justificirt worden (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1727).

  22 E. M. Hall, ‘Gentile Cruelty to Gypsies’, JGLS, 3rd series, XI/2 (1932), p. 50.

  23 Winstedt, ‘Some records of the Gypsies in Germany’, pp. 104–5. His account is a translation from Karl von Weber’s archival account of Saxony 1488–1792 entitled Aus vier Jahrhunderten (Leipzig, 1861).

  24 Winstedt, ‘Some Records of the Gypsies in Germany’, ‘Conclusion’, pp. 105–7.

  25 Hall, ‘Gentile Cruelty to Gypsies’, pp. 51–2.

  26 Winstedt, ‘Some Records of the Gypsies in Germany’, ‘Conclusion’, p. 98.

  27 Lucassen, ‘Eternal Vagrants?’, p. 63.

  28 Winstedt, ‘Some Records of the Gypsies in Germany’, p. 193.

  29 M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan (New York, 1977).

  30 Hall, ‘Gentile Cruelty to Gypsies’, pp. 49–56. Her account is based on the writings of Dr Weissenbruch who was an assessor at the tribunal. See Weissenbruch Ausfuhrliche Relation von der famosen Ziegeuner-Diebs-Mord-und Rauber-Bande.

  31 A reproduction of this picture can be found fronting Hall’s ‘Gentile Cruelty to Gypsies’.

  32 See Winstedt, ‘Some Records of the Gypsies in Germany’, pp. 135–40. His account is based on his translation of F. Sauter, Württembergische Vierteljahrshefte für Landesgeschichte, vol. IV (Stuttgart, 1881), which comes from surviving correspondence between the town of Netschetin and Casimir Graf von Kupperwaldt.

  33 We have similar evidence of repeated legislation from other territories in this period too. For example, the Duchy of Silesia passed decrees in 1618, 1619, 1683, 1685, 1688, 1689, 1695, 1703, 1706, 1708, 1715, 1721 and 1726, all of which were variations on Gypsies being banished or threatened with death, and that the local police/militia were to be used in order to enact the powers. Similarly in Saxony from 1579 to 1722. See Zedler’s Grosses Universal Lexicon aller Wissenschaten und Kunste welche, etc. (Leipzig and Halle, 1749).

  34 Winstedt, ‘Some Records of the Gypsies in Germany’, p. 132.

  35 This reflection on the severity of the law in England in the eighteenth century (the ‘Bloody Code’) is attributed to George Savile, 1st Marquis of Halifax.

  36 Cited in J. Watts de Peyster, Gypsies. Information Translated and Gathered from Various Sources (New York, 1885), pp. 12–13.

  37 Winstedt, ‘Some Records of the Gypsies in Germany’, pp. 130–31.

  38 Quoted in H. Asséo, Les Tsiganes: Une destinée européenne (Paris, 1994), p. 123.

  39 Cited in H.M.G. Grellmann, Dissertation on the Gypsies, being an Historical Enquiry, Concerning the Manner of Life, Economy, Customs and Conditions of these People of Europe, and their Origin, trans. M. Rapier (London, 1787), pp. 349
–50.

  40 Vaux de Foletier, Les tsiganes dans l’ancienne France, pp. 182, 185–9; R. Pym, The Gypsies of Early Modern Spain, 1425–1783 (Basingstoke, 2007).

  41 Cited in Grellmann, Dissertation on the Gypsies, pp. 349–50.

  42 Fraser, The Gypsies, p. 181.

  43 See Pym, Gypsies of Early Modern Spain.

  44 The Settlement Act’s full title was An Act for the Better Relief of the Poor of this Kingdom (14 Car. II c.12). It was based on principles that went back to the 1388 Statute of Cambridge and allowed for the removal from a parish, back to their place of settlement, of newcomers whom local justices deemed ‘likely to be chargeable’ to the parish poor rates. Exemption was given if the new arrival was able to rent a property for at least £10 a year, but this was well beyond the means of an average labourer. Expensive legal battles often took place between a parish attempting to remove a pauper whom it claimed it had no duty to support, and the parish that it claimed did have responsibility.

  45 This is based on a sample of records from Warwickshire, Sheffield, Dorset and Essex. See P. Slack, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London and New York, 1988), p. 92.

  46 The following is based on an analysis of the constables’ accounts of Repton (Derbyshire); Utoxeter; Market Harborough; Melton Mowbray, Wymeswold and Stathern; and Ecclesfield set out in T. W. Thompson, ‘Gleanings from Constables Accounts and Other Sources’, JGLS, 3rd series, VII/1 (1928), pp. 30–47.

  47 Ibid.

  48 Ibid.

  49 Oxford Quarter Sessions, August 1736, in Anon., ‘Gypsies as Highwaymen and Footpads’, JGLS, 3rd series, VI/2 (1927), pp. 70–72.

  THREE The Dark Enlightenment

  1 T. Coates, ‘Social Exclusion: Practice and Fear of Exile (degredo) in Portuguese History: A Case Study of Castro Marim’, Campus Social: Revista Lusófona de Ciências Sociais, 2 (2005), pp. 122–4.

  2 Alvará of 15 April 1718 cited in B. Donovan, ‘Changing Perceptions of Social Deviance: Gypsies in Early Modern Portugal and Brazil’, Journal of Social History, XXVI/1 (1992), p. 38. The following account is based on this article.