[edit] Status and obligations
The slaves were considered personal property of the master,[20] who was allowed to put them to work, selling them or exchanging them for other goods and the possessions of the slaves (usually cattle) were also at the discretion of the master.[21] ... the only obligation of the master being to clothe and feed the slaves who worked at his manor.[22] ...
The social prestige of a slave master was often proportional to the number and kinds of skilled slaves in his possession, outstanding cooks and embroiderers being used to symbolically demonstrate the high status of the boyar families.[24] Good musicians, embroiderers or cooks were prized and fetched higher prices: for instance, in the first half of the 18th century, a regular slave was valued at around 20–30 lei, a cook would be 40 lei.[25]
However, Djuvara, who bases his argument on a number of contemporary sources, also notes that the slaves were exceptionally cheap by any standard: in 1832, an contract involving the dowry of a boyaress shows that thirty Roma slaves were exchanged for one carriage, while the British diplomat William Wilkinson noted that the slave trade was a semi-clandestine matter, and that vătraşi slaves could fetch the modest sum of five or six hundred piastres.[26] According to Djuvara's estimate, lăieşi could be worth only half the sum attested by Wilkinson.[26]
In the Principalities, the slaves were governed by common law.[10] By the 17th century, the earliest written laws to mention slavery appeared. The Wallachian Pravila de la Govora (1640) and Îndreptarea legii (1652) and the Moldavian Carte românească de învăţătură (1646), which, among other things, regulated slavery, were based on the Byzantine law on slavery and on the common law then in use. However, customary law (obiceiul pământului) was almost always used in practice.[10]
If a slave owned property, one would have to pay the same taxes as the free men. Usually, there was no tax on privately owned slaves, excepting ... On the occasion, each individual over the age of 15 was required to pay a sum of between thirty and forty piastres.[18]
Legal disputes and disruption of the traditional lifestyles
Initially, and down to the 15th century, Roma and Tatar slaves were all grouped into self-administrating sălaşe.[9] Their leaders, themselves slaves, were known as cneji, juzi or vătămani, and, in addition to
sorting legal disputes,
collected taxes and
organised labour for the owners.[9]
With time, disputes between two Roma slaves were usually dealt by the community leaders, who became known as bulibaşi.[28] Occasionally, the larger slave communities elected themselves a başbulibaşa, who was superior to the bulibaşi and charged with solving the more divisive or complicated conflicts within the respective group.[29] The system went unregulated, often leading to violent conflicts between slaves, which, in one such case attested for the 19th century, led to boyar intervention and the foot whipping of those deemed guilty of insubordination.[29]
The disputes with non-slaves and the manslaughter cases were dealt by the state judiciary system.[27] Slaves were not allowed to defend themselves in front of a court, .. the owner being accountable for any such damages, the compensation being sometimes the renunciation of the ownership of the slave to the other party.[27] ...
The Orthodox Church, itself a major slaveholder, did not contest the institution of slavery,[31] ...
Like many of the serfs in the two principalities, slaves were prone to escape from the estates and seek a better life on other domains or abroad ... the duties of collecting wartime tithes and of retrieving runaways were performed by a category called globnici, many of whom were also slaves.[9] Beginning in the 17th century, much of the Kalderash population left the region to settle south into the Balkans, and later also moved into other regions of Europe.[36]
A small section of the native Roma population managed to evade the system (either by not having been originally enslaved as a group, or by regrouping runaway slaves).[29] They lived in isolation on the margin of society, and tended to settle in places where access was a problem. They were known to locals as netoţi (lit. "incomplete ones", a dismissive term generally used to designate people with mental disorders or who display poor judgment).[29] Around 1830, they became the target of regular manhunts, those captured being turned into ţigani domneşti.[29]
A particular problem regarded the vătraşi, whose lifestyle was heavily disrupted by forced settlement and the requirement that they perform menial labour.[37] Traditionally, this category made efforts to avoid agricultural work in service of their masters. Djuvara argues that this was because their economic patterns were at a hunter-gatherer stage.[7] Christine Reinhard, an early 19th century intellectual and wife of French diplomat Charles-Frédéric Reinhard, recorded that, in 1806, a member of the Moldavian Sturdza family employed a group vătraşi at his factory. The project was reputedly abandoned after Sturdza realised he was inflicting intense suffering on his employees.[7]
Roma artisans were occasionally allowed to practice their trade outside the boyar household, in exchange for their own revenue. This was the case of Lăutari, who were routinely present at fairs and in public houses as independent tarafs.[18] Slaves could own a number of bovines, but part of their other forms of revenue was collected by the master.[30] In parallel, the lăieşi are believed to have often resorted to stealing the property of peasants.[18] According to Djuvara, Roma housemaids were often spared hard work, especially in cases where the number of slaves per household ensured a fairer division of labour.[18]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Romania#Marriage_regulations_and_cases_of_sexual_abuse
... through a financial agreement which resulted in the selling ... or through an exchange.[38] ...
Marriage between a free person and a slave was initially possible only by the free person becoming a slave ... Marital relations between Roma people and the majority ethnic Romanian population were rare, due to the difference in status and, as Djuvara notes, to an emerging form of racial prejudice.[34] Nevertheless, extra-marital relationships between male slave owners and female slaves, as well as the rape of Roma women by their owners, were widespread, and the illegitimate children were themselves kept as slaves on the estate.[42]
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and had a group of landowners sign them up as paid workforce
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proposed to put an end to slavery by allowing the slaves to buy their own freedom.[55]
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The political power was in the hand of the conservative boyars, who were also owners of large numbers of slaves and as such disagreed to any reforms that might affect them.[55]
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the law emancipated all slaves to the status of taxpayers (that is, citizens).
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The freed slaves had to settle to a town or village and stay there for at least two censuses and they would pay their taxes to the compensation fund.[64]
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The Romanian abolitionist movement was also influenced by the much larger movement against Black slavery in the United States through press reports and through a translation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Translated by Theodor Codrescu and first published in Iaşi in 1853, under the name Coliba lui Moşu Toma sau Viaţa negrilor în sudul Statelor Unite din America (which translates back as "Uncle Toma's Cabin or the Life of Blacks in the Southern United States of America"), it was the first American novel to be published in Romanian, and it included a foreword study on slavery by Mihail Kogălniceanu.[56]
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