The longue durée of enslavement: Extracting labor from Romani music in Liviu Rebreanu's Ion

The enslavement of Romani populations in East Europe remains an eloquent silence in labor history. This essay traces the imbrication of material histories and textual strategies that place Romani labor, especially as aesthetic performance, outside of the purview of labor histories of East Europe. We sketch a history of enslavement of Romani populations in Wallachia and Moldova and of their regulation in Transylvania. We argue that the Romanian-language novel Ion, which enlists Romani characters in the service of a narrative depicting the struggles of Romanian nationalism within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, echoes this history of enslavement. Our analysis sheds light on Romani laborers' travels as constitutive of the co-formations of art, labor, and nationalist struggle in an inter-imperial world.