Warsaw - April 27, 1937
In a ceremony before a crowd of thousands in the National Army Stadium, influential Romani leader Janusz Kwiek is crowned "King of the Gypsies" by the Archbishop of Warsaw, taking the royal name of Janos I and announcing his intention to establish a homeland for the Roma people. Initially petitioning an unreceptive Benito Mussolini for land in Abyssinia, he would quickly pivot to talks with the British government over land in Egypt and South Africa. While these attempts would prove unsuccessful, they garnered considerable publicity, ultimately making significant progress in advancing the idea of an independent Roma nation.
Parallels were quickly drawn between Zionism and the newer "Romaniist" movement, as both pursued similar goals while suffering discrimination from the various fascist regimes of interwar Europe. The two movements would more closely align with one another over the course of the late 1930's, up to to Second World War, which saw both groups suffer catastrophic losses at the hands of brutal campaigns of genocide. As the war eventually came to a close, conflict stirred in British Palestine as millions of European Jews migrated from the German occupation zones into the place they viewed as their homeland, sparking a major international incident and starting a series of wars in the region which would continue for decades.
The Romaniist movement, going through a similar fever pitch, continued to heavily petition various governments for an area they could transform into their homeland, with little success. It was in 1948 that they would finally receive an offer.
Canberra - February 14, 1948
Ben Chifely had come to a decision regarding the uncooperative territories Australia had inherited from the United Kingdom- enough was enough. For the last two years, significant unrest had been fermenting amongst the locals in Papua and New Guinea, greatly increasing the financial and political costs of holding on to the region. His decision the year before to deploy an additional security force of 20,000 Australian soldiers to the highlands was met with an unexpected level of international backlash, leaving him in a difficult position as local support continued to dry up and political agitation grew louder.
Talks with political leadership in the territories over increased autonomy and other concessions had proven unsuccessful (rousing suspicion of Soviet involvement), and while local Australian settlers vehemently opposed entertaining the idea of independence, it became clear in the face of failed diplomacy and unsustainable occupation that without significant changes, such was an inevitability.
It was at around this time that he would receive a petition from King Janos I, asking for a strip of land in the Northern Territory in which they could establish their "homeland". Thinking quickly, he put forth a counteroffer that would make Australia's position in Papua and New Guinea far more sustainable- the Bismarck Archipelago. Janos I, despite never having heard of the islands, immediately accepted the deal, announcing to the world that the Roma would indeed have a chance to carve out their own nation in a new land.
Kimbe - September 3, 1950
The capital of Romaniland had, over the last two years, rapidly transformed from a sleepy Bakovi village into a large, bustling commercial hub. While the indigenous population of New Britain had hardly been negligible, with some estimates ranging up as far as 120,000, the overwhelming majority fit into a category which could generously be described as "rural". Outside of those working on Copra plantations, virtually the entire island performed sustenance agriculture and hunting in the secluded mountains and rainforests. Only a few thousand lived in settlements large enough to be called villages, in stark contrast to the largely urban-dwelling Romani population that began to migrate to New Britain in the late 1940's. Though the population of the island increased roughly four-fold over the Kingdom's first few years, many of the villages would increase in population many times over. The prime example of this trend was Kimbe, a village of roughly 2,000 prior to the transfer of territory that had swelled to contain a population of 74,000 by late 1950.
This first wave of migration had consisted of the more urbanized, relatively well-off portions of the Romani population which could scrounge up the required money to reach the islands. These initial settlers, mostly from central and western Europe, would struggle in their new environment, with food remaining a pressing issue and many falling to heat stroke, tropical diseases and malnutrition. Outright starvation was only avoided by trade with the natives, and with heavy Australian assistance. This assistance would not come without a price- in April of 1949, in the midst of a severe food shortage, King Janos I, who had consolidated power greatly during his time on the island, partitioned the rights to grow Copra on the islands to various Australian companies in exchange for aid. He also allowed Australian vessels to fish in the territorial waters of Romaniland, and virtually eliminated tariffs levied on Australian imports. While these concessions would later result in significant discontent, they allowed Romaniland to survive long enough to become self-sustaining. By mid-1950, the Romani population of the islands had mostly achieved food stability, and it was around this time that the second major wave of settlers would arrive to the islands.
Rabaul - October 10, 1954
While the area had served as a major military center for Japan in World War II, the city that had once served as the capital of German New Guinea was, for all intents and purposes, abandoned since being destroyed by a volcano in 1937. This would change as the second major wave of Romani migration arrived to the islands, primarily settling down on the eastern end of the island, further from the large cities and towns that had emerged over the late 1940's and early 1950's. This group consisted of the poorer, more rural Romani of the Balkans and southern Europe, who brought with them significant agricultural experience, as well as a starkly different set of values from the more urban, established Romani of western New Britain.
Unlike the western Romani, who mostly clung to the cities and surrounding areas, this second wave of settlers would establish farming towns and villages across the interior, sparking conflict with the indigenous population. While the first wave had, in the early days of Romaniland, relied heavily on trade and information from the natives, this second wave had arrived at a time when the Romani were far more secure and no longer reliant on such exchanges. As a result, they lacked the same elements of respect and co-existence that the harsh early years had fermented among the initial settlers. They also had significantly less respect for the authority Janos I, making it difficult for the king to contain these settlers so as to preserve peace with the natives. The primary view of this second wave was that the island was given to them to be their homeland, and as such the natives living on it were merely an obstacle to the creation of said homeland. This made the situation very tense in the east, and a series of clashes would eventually escalate into a low-level war which Janos struggled to contain.
While the Romani on the western portion of New Britain, as well as the outlaying islands like the sparsely settled New Ireland, Manus and Mussau, followed through with his attempts at reconciliation, the natives in eastern New Britain would ultimately be driven out by the more populous, better-armed settlers. The situation, particularly the refusal of the east to obey the authority of Janos I, nearly sparked a civil war in the country, a situation which was only avoided by the easterners agreeing to dissolve the village councils that had defined governance in the east in place of more direct royal authority. In the east, this was largely seen as an unreasonably strict demand, and in the west, it was seen as too lenient, as in their eyes the easterners had severely disrupted the hard-earned stability of the kingdom. Tensions would remain as a result of the incident for some time.
Kavieng - June 29, 1959
It was as an uneasy peace was settling into place in the Kingdom of Romaniland that the third and final major wave of Romani migration would arrive to the archipelago, this time choosing the largely unsettled island of New Ireland as their new home. This group had come from the largest Romani community in Europe- that of the Soviet Union. After decades of failed attempts at creating a Romani ASSR, as well as unsuccessful Romani collective farm projects and attempts at integration, the Soviets had, in the late 1950's, decided to instead try leveraging their Romani population to establish a stronger position in Oceania. They had encouraged and provided transportation for Roma across eastern Europe to reach the islands, where they had largely settled in New Ireland and New Hanover.
These new arrivals, being such a large group and having spent the last few decades in the Soviet Union, proved difficult to integrate into the rest of the nation. While tensions between the western and eastern New Britons were high, they still shared a great deal of commercial and cultural ties, with a unified Romani language having taken form over the previous decade, in no small part due to standardization efforts by Janos I. The previously eastern European Romani, on the other hand, had their language codified by the Soviets, and in Cyrillic. On New Ireland, they were more isolated from the primary community on New Britain, relying less on the vital ports of Kimbe and Rabaul and instead mostly trading from the provincial capital of Kavieng. While progress would slowly be made to bring New Ireland into the fold, the feeling of "otherness" would long persist.
They also brought with them a great deal of Soviet ties, as many migrants which had settled in the archipelago retained connections to various officials and organizations in the USSR. These connections would prove fruitful, as Soviet construction contractors and machinery suppliers would make their way into Romaniland, much to the chagrin of Australia and the United States, the governments of which would pressure Janos I, who in turn would unsuccessfully try to pressure New Ireland into breaking ties.
As the 1950's came to a close, it was clear that the Kingdom of Romaniland was, in reality, a tenuous set of alliances between the various peoples and interests of the country; one which, while stable enough in the short term, was clearly strained. It was only the effective leadership of Janos I that had held it together, and while many of his policies were unpopular in eastern New Britain, and his authority in New Ireland was fragile, he had managed to keep Romaniland from fracturing, as the Romani had done so many times in the past. He would continue to do so until February 29, 1974, when, at the age of 82, he would die from complications during surgery. Shortly after, the nation he had spent decades building would quickly begin to fall apart.
March 19, 1974
If the previous two and a half decades had been defined by slow, steady reconciliation, the weeks following the passing of Janos I were defined by a rapid, seemingly sudden shift towards chaos and separation. The King's only son and heir apparent had died in the late 1960's, along with the King's younger brother, forcing the succession to pass on to his 7-year-old nephew, who officially became Jozef I on March 3, 1974. His regent, as per Janos's will, was the largely unpopular Minister of Defense Piotr Wick. Speculation quickly began to circulate about the will being a forgery, and in response to large-scale protests breaking out across the east, Piotr ordered the national guard into a number of cities. This major escalation quickly enflamed a much greater antigovernmental response, with riots flaring up in Rabaul and clashes between police and protestors across eastern New Britain.
During a particularly violent series of riots in Pomio, a group of police officers fired into a crowd, resulting in nearly 20 deaths and dozens of wounded. The shooting led to massive public outcry in the east and in New Ireland, both of which saw increasingly violent demonstrations and riots. Piotr Wick, in a statement which would later become infamous, ordered the national guard to disperse these gatherings "by any means necessary". This would come to a head on March 14 when a group of citizens in Kokopo would fire on government forces entering the town, leading to a bloody skirmish that ultimately drove the national guard out of the area. Shortly after, armed rebels across the kingdom began rising up, and on March 17, the State of Romaniland, in eastern New Britain, declaring that the Royalist government in Kimbe was illegitimate, and announcing their intentions to abolish the monarchy. Two days later, on March 19, the People's Republic of Romaniland, composed of New Ireland and New Hanover, did the same. The Romaniland Civil War had begun.