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Abolitionism In The Danubian Principalities, Olivia H. Cull

Young Historians Conference

In the Danubian Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, now a section of present-day Romania, evidence of Roma slavery dates back to the 13th century C.E. A vast majority of these slaves were of Roma ethnicity (commonly known by the pejorative term Gypsy); the principalities had enslaved the Roma for such an extended period of time that the Romanian word for “slave” (rob) and for “Gypsy” (rom) became interchangeable. Yet, in the mid 1800s, Wallachian and Moldavian society slowly but surely began to transition into a period of abolitionism. Why, after five hundred years of slavery, did the Wallachian and Moldavian …