2026 Annual Kenneth E. Naylor Symposium Opening Event: “Fighting for Freedom: The Court Trials of Enslaved Roma during Slavery: The Case of Ioana Rudăreasa.”

Speaker: Adrian-Nicolae Furtuna, Research Institute for Quality of Life, Romanian Academy and National Center of Roma Culture

Abstract:  A persistent assumption in European historiography is that Roma communities lack a documented historical past. In the Romanian principalities of Moldova and Wallachia, however, Roma were enslaved for nearly five centuries. Despite this prolonged system of bondage, the memory of slavery remains largely absent from many contemporary Roma family narratives, contributing to a form of cultural amnesia. The recovery of archival histories of Roma slavery contributes to challenging this cultural amnesia and to re-inscribing Roma experiences into national historiography. Based on archival research, this paper examines the case of Ioana Rudăreasa, an enslaved Romani woman who, beginning in 1843, pursued legal action for her own freedom and that of her family. Her lawsuit, initiated in a local court, advanced through multiple judicial levels and ultimately reached the highest court in Wallachia. In 1853—three years before the general emancipation of Roma in 1856—she was declared free. By analyzing this decade-long legal struggle, the paper highlights the legal agency of enslaved Roma and explores the tensions between propery law, social hierarchy, and emerging discourses of emancipation in late slaveholding Wallachia.