How to be a Roma Invader: Unpicking a Media Spectacle (1906) - ONLINE

In 1906, the British authorities mobilized in response to the presence of several hundred Sinti and Roma who had arrived from Germany in British ports and travelled around the country for several months. The press, too pursued the travellers, both recording and feeding the ambivalent fascination of the public with what was rapidly dubbed the ‘German G***y Invasion’. Media coverage, both textual and visual, remains the most substantial and accessible body of sources for what happened during those months. In its own terms, it constitutes a racialized spectacle in the tradition of the spectacularization and securitization of Roma populations that persists to this day. But it can also be read against the grain, for traces of agency and voice that provide insight into the motivations, resources and everyday practices of the so-called ‘invaders’.

Eve Rosenhaft is Professor Emerita of German Historical Studies at the University of Liverpool. She has published widely on modern German social history, and has been researching aspects of Romani history since the late 1990s. This talk reflects research in the framework of the AHRC–DFG collaborative project ‘Romani Migration between Germany and Britain (1880s–1914): Spaces of Informal Business, Media Spectacle, and Racial Policing’, in which the GHIL is a partner.