Customer Reviews

The Rom: Walking in the Paths of the Gypsies

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This book is partly travelogue, partly glimpses into the history of the Silk Road, and partly anthropological research. The author, Roger Moreau, took time away from his job to spend several months researching the history of the Gypsy/Rom people. In it, he explores the following questions and proposes his answers, based on his research:

* Which of the tribes in northern India produced the ancestors of the Gypsies/Roma?

* Why did these people leave their homeland and move west?

* What overwhelming forces caused three tribes of Indian people to interbreed, overcoming deeply held cultural taboos against miscegenation, to form a new race?

* Why didn't the Gypsies/Roma retain the Hindu religion of their Indian homeland?

* What factors led to their arrival in Persia?

* Why did they leave Persia and move on to Constantinople?

*Why did they leave the home they had made for themselves in Constantinople and disperse widely among the lands of Europe?

* Why did the Europeans despise the Gypsies so much when they arrived among them?

* The best way to describe this book is speculative history. The above questions are not answered in any known historical documents that have survived to this day, and therefore no one can authoritatively state "This is the factual story." So Moreau carefully studied the historical documents that do survive that tell of events in the individual regions, and then he pieced together how those events probably would have affected the people of the kalo rat (dark blood). His speculations are very credible. Although he can't support them with historical documents stating, "The Gypsies/Rom did this because...." his conclusions fit very well with the facts that he was able to substantiate about events affecting the regions as a whole.

After describing his conclusions about the early history of the Gypsy/Romany people, Moreau then led into Book Two, which described what happened to them after they left Constantinople and spread across Europe. This part of the book was very difficult to read, because it told a story of many centuries of persecution, including slavery that was just as heinous as the acts perpetrated on the early African-Americans, persecution during the Spanish Inquisition, and near extinction in the gas chambers of Hitler. But Moreau's story of the Gypsies/Rom would have been incomplete without covering those horrors, and it helped me understand why I've heard people say that the Gypsies/Rom lived with many hardships over their history.

The thread that binds much of the book together is Moreau's description of his three Indian traveling companions--one from each of the Indian tribes that Moreau believes comprised the ancestors of the Gypsy/Romany people. To some extent, it was fun to read about the exploits of this group as they made their way across India, into Afghanistan, and eventually to Turkey. They definitely added a human element to the book. But at times, I found myself getting a bit impatient because I wanted Moreau to get back to the point of revealing his research, theories, and discoveries.

I wouldn't advise the author to remove his traveling companions from the book, but I would have preferred that he devote a little less space to them and more to the anthropological and cultural histories of the region he researched.

I talked myself out of getting this book for almost a year, because of the word "Speculative" history. As a Romani researcher, dealing with pre-1600's gypsies, that word always makes me a little wary. But in reading this, Moreau puts forth some very interesting theories on the origins of the Roma. I think this book is more than worth its price, and that anyone interested in the origin theories should take a look at this!

Moreau's amazing personal account of his efforts to trace the history of the Gypsy/Rom is inspiring to anyone who wants to make sense of the past in order to avoid future social catastrophies.

Unless the Gypsy/Rom of Europe are understood and accepted soon, Europe faces another Holocaust. Even in countries as EU-ready as the Czech Republic, there is much reference to the "The Gypsy Problem" evoking memories of 1930s Nazi Germany.

The author spends the entire book describing his highly romanticized time travelling with three "gypsies" he picks up in order to follow "the paths" of their ancestors. Highly speculative, his theories are so fanciful (think "Foucault's Pendulum" style associations) and without corroboration that, while they may be fascinating and interesting 'what-ifs' for people versed in Rromani studies, I am afraid this book will only spread more misconceptions, spawn unrigorous standards in research undertakings and give an even worse name to 'gadje' ethnographers than they already have made for themselves. He stereotypes various clans and nations to make them fit into his limited perspective of them (i.e. he wants there to be a natisye of "entertainers," another of "tinkers" etc) so as to concoct a hypothetical story of diaspora. Unless you've read EVERY other book out there on the subject, skip this one. If you're looking for a good primer, especially as a 'gadjo', go with Ian Hancock's book "We Are the Romani People." Sadly, Moreau's journey was much more fun for him to live than it is for us to read.

In response to the reviewer who accuses the Czechs of a crime they didn't commit, I have to say that the traveling lifestyle of the Rom people does present a problem. This lifestyle precludes them from making adequate living to feed their families, and forces them to supplement it by means that are not always legal or safe. The Czechs do see this as a problem, but their solution has been to provide jobs, living spaces, and education for the Rom children. In a great number of cases the jobs have been abandoned and the living spaces destroyed, as the recipients moved on to the next town.