Klaus-Michael Bogdal

Ethnic and cultural difference was, in late 19th-century Europe, of keen interest to scholars and the public alike. When, for instance, a Roma group made camp near Berlin in 1885, tourists sought it out, driven by curiosity. The Berlin camp was not unique; across Europe photographers, artists, grammarians and others took interest in the Roma. In Hungary and Romania, folklorists took the summer air and observed Roma life. In Britain, a travelling Romani family found themselves the focus of so much attention that they struggled to keep visitors out of their tents at mealtimes. One member of this family, Lazzy Smith, decided to make Romani culture visible to non-Romanies on his own terms by offering a pay-to-view experience. He famously appeared at the 1886 Liverpool International Exhibition and published an accompanying pamphlet.

Klaus-Michael Bogdal’s Europe and the Roma is, largely, a history of the Roma people’s battle to tell their own story on their own terms. And it is a battle: who these people were, what it meant to be Roma, and what that meant for the rest of society are questions that have been perennially caught in the tides of European politics since the late Middle Ages. For at least 600 years, diverse groups such as the Sinti, Calé, Manouches and Kalderash have been categorised, simply, as ‘gypsies’ and alien to European civilisation. (Bogdal uses a lowercase ‘g’ to indicate an exonymous cultural construction, but ‘Gypsy’ refers to a legally recognised ethnicity in the UK and is usually capitalised.) The book pushes against the tired assumption that the Roma then, as now, face a simple choice: assimilate, or suffer as outsiders.

Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.

Jodie Matthews is Professor of Literature at the University of Huddersfield.… (mehr)