Banat

   Province in the Balkans bordering Romania that has at different times been under Hungarian (c. 850-c. 1550), Ottoman (c. 1550-1718), and Austrian (1718-1920) rule. Records exist of Gypsies in the 18th century engaged in charcoal burning, gold washing, bear leading, horse trading, and coppersmithing. They performed services for the villagers, the value of which was recognized in an edict of 1757 to stop tax collectors from driving Gypsies out of the villages by extortionate taxation. In 1763 a census recorded some 5,000 Gypsies. Historian Angus Fraser has suggested, on linguistic grounds, that the Kalderash coming into western Europe in the 19th century had emigrated from the Banat and not from Wallachia and Moldavia, as others maintain. In 1920 the Banat was divided between Hungary and Yugoslavia. During World War II, the Yugoslav Banat was under direct German military rule, and persecution of the Gypsy minority began toward the end of the war.