6533b831fe1ef96bd1298252

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Regional existence of the "Gypsy nation" : Lorraine’s "Bohémiens" at the end of the Ancien Regime : (seventeenth-eighteenth centuries)

subject

description

In the eighteenth century, the "Bohémiens" are already in the kingdom of France and its provinces since over three hundred years. In the last two centuries of the Ancien Regime, their lifestyle is progressively criminalized, resulting in their rejection in marginal fringes of vagabonds, thieves, etc. Therefore, in the historiography of these groups in Western Europe in the modern era, criminal law and judicial archives dominate. However, it must be moved beyond an unambiguous reading of these documents. The study of the regulation of the "Bohémiens" in Lorraine (in fact Gypsies belonging to the Manouche or Sinti group) and considerations of doctrine provide a broad framework, but the many parts of the trial provide access to a more subtle anthropological reality as judges must prove the gypsy quality, and to this end, seek to characterize the accused. It is through investigative techniques, interrogations, and legal information they seek to carry out this business. The archival collection consisted primarily of garnering data from bailiwicks and maréchaussées, and is particularly based on the largely unpublished body of the bailiwick of Germany ("bailliage d’Allemagne"). The consequent mass of criminal court records relating to vagrancy required a real investigative work, first of all to identify the Gypsies. The pleadings therefore reveal an important source of information, and, through individual interviews, collective identity is emerging. The art of Gypsy ("métier de Bohémien") appears as a central concept in the characterization of these groups. Transnational nature of the movement of Lorraine’s "Bohémiens", whose traces are found throughout the territory of the kingdom of France, Belgium, Luxembourg, in the German provinces, Switzerland and Italy, lets nonetheless see strong roots in the Palatinate region and the German Lorraine. Still, judges are confined to the allocation of a virtual identity, which obliterates a real identity marked by the integration of Gypsies into the social fabric. The legal doctrine and human sciences in the making, seizing the question at the end of the eighteenth century, play an important role in this process.