engleski

"Observers" or “Bystanders” of History. On the Research(ing) of Roma History in Croatian Historiography.

Scientific research on the history of the Roma in Croatia began in the 18th century, and in the following centuries only a few scholars dealt with this topic. And most of these scholars researched the history of the Roma as part of their secondary research, often perceiving this area as “unexplored, exotic and adventurous”. Until the Second World War, only one historiographical text was published within Croatian historiography, published in 1894 in one of the Croatian daily newspaper Narodne novine. During this period, the “nationalist current” was extremely dominant in Croatian historiography, often subject to certain state ideological and political goals of synthesizing the history of the dominant Croatian people, while “stifling” any interest in a more systematic historiographical research of Roma history. Thus, the call of Franjo Fancev, a prominent historian of Croatian literature, in 1912 to help him (support) research the history of the Roma in Croatia remained unanswered. After 1945, in the new socialist Croatian historiography, the Roma were, similarly to their then socioeconomic position, reduced to the margins of interest of historians, who only occasionally (and incidentally) mentioned the Roma as “secondary” observers of historical events within Croatian (then emphasize by most of scholars as a Yugoslav) history. It was not until the mid-1980s that the first historiographical paper on the history of the Roma were published. In this paper was analysed suffering of Roma in the Second World War. Among these rare historians who researched history of Roma in Independent State of Croatia, stood out Narcisa Lengel- Krizman. She had researched this field as part of her broader (and dominant) research interest in the history of the suffering of the Jewish population in the same period. The scientific discourse of these historians, all of non-Roma origin, was a “top-down view” of the Roma, often with prejudice, viewing the Roma as a distant and foreign object of their academic curiosity. At the same time, scientists from other fields, such as linguists, sociologists, anthropologists, and pedagogues, showed interest in the field of Roma history in Croatia. Thus, one of the first historiographical texts on the history of Roma in the Republic of Croatia (after the breakup of socialist Yugoslavia) was written by Neven Hrvatić (professor at the Department of Pedagogy at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb) and Suzana Ivančić (primary school history teacher) in 2000 in the Zagreb journal Društvena istrazivanja. In the last ten years there has been a certain (evident) shift in Croatian historiography, or rather, an increased interest in studying the history of the Roma. This interest is primarily focused with researching their suffering in the Second World War. However, more than six-century history of life of the Roma in Croatian areas still remains unresearched and at the level of “scientific exotics (curiosity)”. The perspective of further progress of the scientific research of Roma history as a part of Croatian historiography is certainly much more optimistic compared to the period twenty years ago. In this context, there is a need to make a synthesis of the history of the Roma in Croatian areas and their entire history, not just a segmental part of their suffering during the Second World War. Also, it is necessary to look at the history of the Roma as an integral part of the history of the population in Croatia, without which the history itself would remain incomplete. The absence of the scholarly and research interest from the Roma community and its individuals (intellectuals) is still modest and result of these is still prevailing non-Roma academic interest in these field of research. In the paper it will be analysed the “attitude” towards (or position of) the history of the Roma within Croatian historiography as a kind of example of non-integration and marginality of researching the history of a minority population, such as the Roma in Croatia.

Croatia, historiography, Roma, history.

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