Europe's other world : Romany memory within the new dynamics of the globital memory field

Digital connective media are enabling new articulations of memory that reanimate what has been a viscous amnesia of slavery vvithin the heartland of Europe. This chapter aims to examine how digital connective media may offer new possibilities in relation to the public memory of Romain Europe. What may be loosely termed 'older media' have in various ways erased significant aspects of Roma- 'gypsy' - memory, including Europe's shameful history of rrobia, namely Roma people's enslavement for over 500 years in what is now predominantly the national territory of Romania. In escaping bondage, Roma people fled across Europe, resulting in the present-day Roma communities to be found in all countries of Europe, with substantial minorities in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Slavery in various forms continued until abolition, or desrrobija, which began as a social and legislative movement at the end of the eighteenth century. Inspired in part by otl1er anti-slavery campaigns in Europe and North America, the antislavery movement continued as an ongoing social and political struggle until the end of Roma slavery in the middle of the nineteenth century.