AHC: Romany-a

Your mission, if you choose to accept it; With a POD anywhere between 1450 & 1850 AD, establish a nation of significant importance anywhere in Europe -- other than in what in OTL 2012AD is Russia/Belarus/Ukraine -- within which the Romany ('Gypsy') people dominate politically & culturally and that lasts up until at least 1939.
 
Your mission, if you choose to accept it; With a POD anywhere between 1450 & 1850 AD, establish a nation of significant importance anywhere in Europe -- other than in what in OTL 2012AD is Russia/Belarus/Ukraine -- within which the Romany ('Gypsy') people dominate politically & culturally and that lasts up until at least 1939.

Romania, or a part of it, seems a possibility with a proper POD.
In any case, I'd go with the Balkans or nearby areas.
 
Weaken early Slavic migration, perhaps have some plague that Gypsys bring from India that destroys the Illyrian, Thracian and Dacian populations a'la Mesoamerica.
 
Romania, or a part of it, seems a possibility with a proper POD.
In any case, I'd go with the Balkans or nearby areas.
Alongside, or even instead of, the Vlach? Yes, that seemed one of the best possibilities to me, too.

Weaken early Slavic migration, perhaps have some plague that Gypsys bring from India that destroys the Illyrian, Thracian and Dacian populations a'la Mesoamerica.
Remember, I said with a POD after 1450 AD...
 
All you really need is a greater concentration of Romanies in one place. Probably somewhere in the Carpathians.

The problem is that, as nomads, you'll have difficulty getting the concentration of people necessary to found a proper state. Furthermore, Romany internal dynamics mean that there would probably be a lot of rivalry between the sub-groups wherever this state is formed.

Moreover, the incomers are going to be, by definition, treading on someone's toes wherever they choose to settle.

Perhaps, if they're in the service of a local lord as mercenaries, he might see fit to create an appenage for his gypsy mercenaries out of the lands of a conquered foe...?

I seem to remember reading somewhere that there was a short-lived gypsy polity on Cyprus or something of that ilk. Can't remember the exact details, though.
 
All you really need is a greater concentration of Romanies in one place. Probably somewhere in the Carpathians.

The problem is that, as nomads, you'll have difficulty getting the concentration of people necessary to found a proper state. Furthermore, Romany internal dynamics mean that there would probably be a lot of rivalry between the sub-groups wherever this state is formed.

Moreover, the incomers are going to be, by definition, treading on someone's toes wherever they choose to settle.
Although the modern Vlach people in Rumania claim descent from Romanised Dacian inahbitants of the same lands there are also scattered groups of Vlach -- some of them at least semi-nomadic as sheep-herders -- in various parts of the Balkans as well: Some [non-Rumanian] historians have suggested that the ancestors of the Vlach stock living in Rumania today didn't actually arrive there until after had Hungary become strong enough to suppress or expel the Turkic nomads who previously controlled those plains south & east of the Carpathians, and had invited some of those groups in as settlers. If that's true then maybe settling Romany (whom I think were arriving in Europe around then) in the area too, or instead, might have been feasible.
And after all, there are quite a few 'settled' Romany in some parts of the Balkans as it is IOTL...
 
Maybe in a Romania that doesn't unify, a Romany slave revolt in the early 1870s establishes a Romany-dominated state in Wallachia?
 
Maybe in a Romania that doesn't unify, a Romany slave revolt in the early 1870s establishes a Romany-dominated state in Wallachia?
H'mm.
Or maybe even more of the Romany living within the Ottoman Empire convert to Islam than was the case IOTL, and theEmperor gives them an area somewhere along its borders to run in exchange for military service... where they are joined by other Romany escaping from servitude in other countries? Perhaps the Dobruja?
 
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