work for the same masters, without significant improvement to their material conditions. Romani people who did not continue to labour for their former owners often suffered great economic hardship, imprisonment and death from hunger being frequent outcomes. During the first thirty years following liberation, a notable phenomenon of urbanisation occurred, with many Roma who were expelled from their former owners' estates, or who did not wish to adopt a lifestyle which would thrust them into poverty, migrating to towns. This contrasted the situation noted in some other groups of Roma, who adapted fully to this new condition and assimilated into the peasant population, losing their status as Roma both culturally and officially. The social upheaval of emancipation led to mass Romani emigration from Romanian territory, initially into the Austro-Hungarian empire and thence to Western Europe, Poland, the Russian Empire, Scandinavia and the Americas. This migration was the primary origin of the Vlax Roma populations found worldwide today, although it is likely that some Vlax groups may have migrated out of Romania prior to emancipation. This pattern of Roma emigration continued until after the First World War, with Roma in Bavaria recorded as carrying Romanian passports in the 1920s. The result of these processes of assimilation and emigration was a relative decline in the percentage of Roma inhabitants resident in Moldavia, Wallachia and Bessarabia. At the time of emancipation, the proportion of the populations of Moldavia and Wallachia who had been slaves was around 7%, between 200,000 and 250,000 people. By the last decade of the 19th century the number of Roma is estimated to have grown to between 250,000 and 300,000, 4-5% of the population. In 1893, the Hungarian authorities carried out a census of Transylvanian Roma which provides a wealth of information on their social and economic situation in the late 19th century. There is evidence for a similar process of assimilation into the general population as was occurring in Moldavia and Wallachia, with Romani groups adopting a Romanian, Hungarian, Székely or Saxon ethnic identity. However, there is also evidence of Roma retaining their specific identity, even when they had abandoned the Romani language: the census records that 38.1% of Transylvanian Roma spoke Hungarian as their mother tongue, 29.97% spoke Romani, 24.39% spoke Romanian, with smaller numbers speaking Slavic languages or German. Though a largely rural population, Transylvanian Roma were rarely involved in agriculture, more commonly working as artisans