MapRom - Mapping the Romani population in rural and semi-urban Wallachia in 1838

The main archival source of MapRom database is the “Census of the population or Statistics of the Principalities (Wallachia and Moldova) of 1838”, ANIC, Fond Catagrafii, part I, Inventory number 501, volumes numbered I/8 to I/107 from the Historical National Archives, Bucharest, mostly unpublished and now digitized and automatized for the first time, in regard to Romani population. This Census was conducted by the Interior Ministry in February 1838. It is the first preserved Romanian modern census of population and dwellings, which introduced new techniques of reviewing, such as the nominal lists and the great number (24) of demographic variables, including ethnicity. The unit of observation was the “household”, and the scope was to obtain detailed information about: 1) the settled population by age group, and sex; 2) the number of households and their structure; 3) the number of residential buildings and their distribution according to the material from which they are built; 4) population distribution according to their participation in economic activity; 5) distribution of population by skills and occupations. Based on this information, the MapRom database presents: statistics of the Roma households per village, number of Roms per village, number of different Romani ethnic sub-groups (Lăieș, Vătraș, Rudar, Zlătar, etc), average Romani household size per village, age distribution, sex distribution, number of Roms per skill, geographic distribution of the Roms (in uplands and lowlands), cultivated land area by Roms per village, etc. We found insignificant number of free Roms, rest of them were slaves. For more than 50% of them, we have reconstructed, from other (unpublished) sources the name of the owners (private noblemen, or Monasteries and churches). We searched for other statistical documents to complete our data from 1838 Census, such as the Statistics of the Turkish Gypsies (1833, manuscript ANIC, Vornicia temnitelor, file 354/1833), Statistics of Boyar Gypsy slaves (1832, manuscript ANIC, Diplomatice, dos. 147/1832) and Statistics of Monastery Gypsy slaves (1844, manuscript ANIC, Logofeția Pricinilor Bisericești, dos. 25/1844). etc. When we compared these statistics, we found major discrepancies leading to the important source critical conclusion that the 1838 census concerns mostly the permanently settled Gypsies and included few of the nomadic people. Further examination showed that the number of nomadic Gypsies was relatively small. We also found documents that indicated that Gypsies of the Muslim faith were not either registered in the 1838 census. Over time the nominal lists of the 1838 Census for four counties (Ialomiţa, Gorj, Mededinţi and Vâlcea) as well as some two rural sub-districts and two towns has been lost, but that for 14 Wallachian counties has been preserved and entered in MapRom. The five volumes of nominal material for the capital city Bucharest (with a very large and multi-ethnic population) was not researched in this project as the census there was complexly different from that of the rural provinces in form and execution, but it is hoped that it can be researched at a later date. We estimate that MapRom gathers information on between two-thirds and three-fourths of Wallachia’s Romani population.