This illustrated text tracing the origin of the Gypsies in India and their journey westward up until their arrival on the shores of the Mediterranean at Constantinople was first published in France in 1993 (in French and English) as "Gypsies - From India to the Mediterranean" but the English edition was not easily obtainable in this country. It has since been translated into ten European languages including Romani. The new title reflects the fact that this new edition published in Britain by the University of Hertfordshire Press is more than twice the length of the first edition and follows their path to the shores of the Thames and also looks at their distant relatives who stayed in India or dropped off on the way west and still carry on a nomadic life in Persia and neighbouring countries. A controversial addition of particular interest to historians, linguists and academics researching the origin of the Romanies is the introduction which looks at popular and scholarly theories of the origins of the Gypsies. And of contemporary interest there is a chapter describing how links are being forged between Europe's last nomads and modern India.

Table of Contents

Foreword; Introduction - who are the Romanies? Part One; 1. From India to Persia: 224 - 642; 2 Under Arab Rule: 642 - c. 900; 3. In the Byzantine Empire: c.900 - 1454; Part Two; 4. In the Balkans; 5. In Central Europe; 6. In Western Europe - Refugees; 7. In Western Europe - Acrobats and Fortune Tellers; Part Three; 8. 'Gypsies' in the Middle East; 9. Mother India; Conclusion; The Romani language; List of illustrations

Author Biography

Donald Kenrick took a first-class honours degree in Arabic from London University, followed by a Master's on the image of the Jew in Scandinavian literature, for which he was required to master all the nordic languages as well as Hebrew and Yiddish. An enthusiast for the rights of small language groups, he was at one time active in the Cornish revivalist movement. An enthusiasm for Bulgarian folkdance led him to a job teaching in Bulgaria, where he came into contact with the Romani language, eventually completing a PhD on the Drindari dialect. He has made a lasting contribution to Romani linguistics and was the first secretary of the WRC Language Commission in 1971. He also wrote with Gratton Puxon the first full-length study of the Romani Holocaust, and served for a while as secretary of the early Gypsy Council. Later he worked voluntarily for the National Gypsy Education Council, and the Romany Guild. He is the author of: Moving on: the Gypsies and Travellers of Britain (University of Hertfordshire Press, 1999), Gypsies under the Swastika (University of Hertfordshire Press, 1999) and with Gillian Taylor of the Historical Dictionary of the Gypsies (Romanies). He also translated From 'Race Science' to the Camps and edited In the Shadow of the Swastika, the first two volumes of Gypsies during the Second World War.