African diaspora

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The African diaspora was the movement of Africans and their descendants to places throughout the world - predominantly to the Americas, then later to Europe, the Middle East and other corners of the globe. Much of the African diaspora is descended from people who were enslaved and shipped to the Americas during the Atlantic slave trade, with the largest population living in Brazil (see Afro-Brazilian). People of Sub-Saharan descent) number over 900 million, representing around 14% of the world's population.[citation needed]

A poster of "African Reparation, Reconciliation and Restoration Conference"
A poster of "African Reparation, Reconciliation and Restoration Conference"

Contents

[edit] History

Prehistoric Africans who left the continent within the past 100,000 years are the ancestors of all non-African humans. But as communities began to form, especially in Egypt and the Middle East, these migrations were greatly reduced because the only land route out of the African continent is through the Sinai Peninsula. After the rise of civilization and the development of sailing, black Africans traveled to the Middle East, Europe, and Asia in a number of occupations.[citation needed] Many of these individuals settled in Europe and Asia and invariably intermarried with the local populations.[citation needed] Today research has discovered mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome haplotypes in Europeans and Asians that indicate distant African ancestry. But these early migrations out of Africa are dwarfed by those associated with the Atlantic and Arab slave trades.[1]

[edit] Dispersal through slavery

See also: Atlantic Slave Trade and Arab Slave Trade

Much of the African diaspora was dispersed throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas during the Atlantic and Arab Slave Trades. Beginning in the 9th century, African slaves were taken from the northern and eastern portions of the continent into the Middle East and Asia. Then beginning in the 15th century, Africans were taken from much of the rest of the continent, especially West Africa, to Europe and later to the Americas. Both the Arab and Atlantic slave trades ended in the 19th century.[2]

The dispersal through slave trading is representative of one of the largest migrations in human history. The economic effect on the African continent was devastating. Some communities created by descendants of sub-Saharan African slaves in Europe and Asia have survived to the modern day but in most cases Africans intermarried with non-Africans and their descendants blended into the local population. In the Americas, the confluence of multiple racial groups from around the world created a widespread mixing bowl effect. In Central and South America most people are descended from European, American Indian, and African ancestry. In Brazil, where in 1888 nearly half the population was descended from African slaves, the variation of physical characteristics extends across a broad range. In the United States, racist Jim Crow and anti-miscegenation laws maintained a distinction between racial groups lead to the adoption of the one drop rule which defined anyone with any discernible African ancestry as African even though the strictest application of that rule would categorize nearly all Americans as African.[1]

[edit] Dispersal through immigration

From the very onset of Spanish activity in the Americas, Africans were present both as voluntary expeditionaries and as involuntary colonists.[3] [4] Juan Garrido was one such black conquistador. He crossed the Atlantic as a freedman in the 1510s and participated in the siege of Tenochtitlan.[5]

African immigration has become the primary force in the modern diaspora. It is estimated that the current population of recent African immigrants to the United States alone is over 600,000.[6]. Countries with the most immigrants to the U.S. are Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Egypt, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and South Africa. Some immigrants have come from Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique(see Luso American), Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, and Cameroon. Immigrants typically congregate in urban areas, moving to suburban areas over time.

There are significant populations of African immigrants in many other countries around the world, including the UK[7] and France.[8][9]

[edit] Intra-Africa

Paul Tiyambe Zeleza writes that often diaspora studies focus too much on the Atlantic slave trade. He describes the four dominant dimensions of the global African diasporas: the intra-Africa, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, and Atlantic diasporas.[10] The intra-Africa diaspora concerns itself with the movement of people between the nations of Africa. It is still an emerging area of research for Western scholars.

[edit] Indian & Pacific Oceans

More broadly, the African diaspora comprises the descendants of the indigenous peoples of Africa, wherever they are in the world outside Africa itself. Some Pan-Africanists also consider other Africoid peoples as diasporic African peoples (Negrito). These groups include, among others, peoples of the Malay Peninsula (Orang Asli);[11] New Guinea (Papuans);[12] Andamanese; certain peoples of the Indian subcontinent,[13][14] notably Dravidians such as Tamils; and the aboriginal peoples of Melanesia and Micronesia.[15]

[edit] Definitions

See also: Black people

The African Union has defined the African diaspora as "[consisting] of people of African origin living outside the continent, irrespective of their citizenship and nationality and who are willing to contribute to the development of the continent and the building of the African Union." Its constitutive act declares that it shall "invite and encourage the full participation of the African Diaspora as an important part of our Continent, in the building of the African Union."

Most societies that apply the "black" label on the basis of a person's ancestry justify it as to applying to members of the African diaspora.[citation needed] Between 1500 and 1900, approximately four million enslaved African were transported to island plantations in the Indian Ocean, about eight million were shipped to Mediterranean-area countries, and about eleven million survived the Middle Passage to the New World.[16] Their descendants are now found around the globe. Due to intermarriage and genetic assimilation, just who is a descendant of the African diaspora is not entirely self-evident.

A few examples of populations on continents away from Africa who are seen as "Black" or who see themselves as "Black" because they descend from native Africans are: African Americans and many Latin Americans.

African Americans — (see description above) or visit African American.

Afro-Latin Americans — Among the Afro-Latin American populations in South and Central America, there are populations that identify as negros. Some identify as Afro-Latin Americans when they have high levels of admixture of other ethnicities, as well.

Afro-Arabs — Various people of the Middle East whose ancestors were brought during the Arab slave trade period.[17]

Siddis — Black people of African descent in Pakistan and India. Many share the similar name "Saeed" (Sheedis, Shudra, and Siddi).

[edit] Estimated population and distribution

Continent / Country Country population Afro-descendants [18]population
Caribbean 39,148,115 73.2% 28,671,508
Haiti 8,924,553 97.5% 8,701,439
Dominican Republic 9,507,133 84.00% 7,985,991
Cuba 11,423,925 62.00% 7,082,834
Jamaica[19] 2,804,332 97.4% 2,731,419
Trinidad and Tobago 1,047,366 58.00% 607,472
Puerto Rico 3,958,128 8.00% 316,650*
The Bahamas[20] 307,451 85.00% 261,333
Barbados 281,968 90.00% 253,771
Netherlands Antilles 225,369 85.00% 191,564
Saint Lucia 172,884 82.5% 142,629
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 118,432 85.00% 100,667
Virgin Islands 108,210 79.70% 86,243
Grenada 90,343 95.00% 81,309
Antigua and Barbuda 78,000 94.90% 63,000
Bermuda 66,536 61.20% 40,720
Saint Kitts and Nevis 39,619 98.00% 38,827
Cayman Islands 47,862 60.00% 28,717
British Virgin Islands 24,004 83.00% 19,923
Turks and Caicos islands[21] 26,000 34.00% 18,000
Europe 190,856,462.00 2.1% 4,017,583
France[22][23] 62,752,136 3.0% 5,000,000
United Kingdom 60,609,153 1.9% (inc. partial) 2,015,400
Italy,[24] 59,448,163 1.3% 755,000
Spain 40,397,842 1.3% 505,400
Netherlands[25] 16,491,461 1.8% 300,000
Portugal 10,605,870 2.0% 201,200
Russia[26] 141,594,000 0.12% 400,000
Poland 38,082,000 0.5% 4,500
South America/Central America 425,664,476 23.9% 101,532,873
Belize 301,270 31.00% 93,394
Guatemala 13,002,206 2.00% 260,044
El Salvador 7,066,403 < 0.01% 0*
Honduras 7,639,327 2.00% 152,787
Nicaragua 5,785,846 9.00% 520,726
Costa Rica 4,195,914 3.00% 125,877
Panama 3,292,693 14.00% 460,977
Colombia 45,013,674 21.00% 9,452,872
Venezuela[27] 26,414,815 10.00% 2,641,481
Guyana 770,794 36.00% 277,486
Suriname 475,996 47.00% 223,718
French Guiana 199,509 66.00% 131,676
Brazil 191,908,598 44.70% 85,783,143
Ecuador 13,927,650 3.00% 417,830
Peru 29,180,899 3.00% 875,427
Bolivia 9,247,816 1.1% 108,000
Chile 16,454,143 < 0.1% 0*
Paraguay 6,831,306 < 0.1% 0*
Argentina 40,677,348 < 0.1% 0*
Uruguay 3,477,778 4.00% 139,111
North America 440,244,038 11.8% 39,264,514
United States[28] 298,444,215 12.90% 38,499,304
Canada[29] 33,098,932 2.7% 662,210
Mexico 108,700,891 <1.00% 103,000
Oceania
Australia[30] 21,000,000 0.9% (includes partial) 248,605
Sub-Saharan Africa 770,300,000 99% 767,000,000
Outside Africa 5,821,000,000 2.9% 168,879,165
Total 6,581,000,000 14.2% 936,384,565

(*)Note that population statistics from different sources and countries use highly divergent methods of rating the "race", ethnicity, or national or genetic origin of individuals, from observing for color and racial characteristics, to asking the person to choose from a set of pre-defined choices, sometimes with an Other category, and sometimes with an open-ended option, and sometimes not, which different national populations tend to choose in divergent ways. Color and visual characteristics were considered an invalid way to determine the genetic "racial" branch in anthopology (the field of science that original conceived of "race", as a genetic branch of people who could have a relative success together compared with other branches, now considered invalid) as of 1910, thus not fully reflecting the percentage of the population who actually are of African heritage.

[edit] Top 11 African Diaspora populations

Country Population Rank
Brazil 85,783,143 1
United States 38,499,304 2
Colombia 9,452,872 3
Haiti 8,701,439 4
Dominican Republic 7,985,991 5
Cuba 7,082,834 6
France 5,000,000 7
Jamaica 2,731,419 8
Venezuela 2,641,481 9
United Kingdom 2,015,400 10
Trinidad and Tobago 1,047,366 11

[edit] North America

Several migration waves to the Americas, as well as relocations within the Americas, have brought people of African descent to North America. According to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the first African populations came to North America in the 16th century via Mexico and the Caribbean to the Spanish colonies of Florida, Texas and other parts of the South.[31] Out of the 12 million people from Africa who were shipped to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade,[32] 645,000 were shipped to the British colonies on the North American mainland and the United States; another 1,840,000 arrived at other British colonies, chiefly the West Indies.[33] In 2000, African Americans comprised 12.1 percent of the total population in the United States, constituting the largest racial minority group. The African American population is concentrated in the southern states and urban areas.[34]

In the construction of the African Diaspora, the transatlantic slave trade is often considered the defining element, but people of African descent have engaged in eleven other migration movements involving North America since the 16th century, many being voluntary migrations, although undertaken in exploitative and hostile environments.[31]

In the 1860s, people from sub-Saharan Africa, mainly from West Africa and the Cape Verde Islands, started to arrive in a voluntary immigration wave to seek employment as whalers in Massachusetts. This migration continued until restrictive laws were enacted in 1921 that in effect closed the door on non-Europeans, but by that time, men of African ancestry were already a majority in New England’s whaling industry, with African Americans working as sailors, blacksmiths, shipbuilders, officers, and owners, eventually bringing their trade to California.[35]

1.7 million people in the United States are descended from voluntary immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa. African immigrants represent 6 percent of all immigrants to the United States and almost 5 percent of the African American community nationwide. About 57 percent immigrated between 1990 and 2000.[36] Immigrants born in Africa constitute 1.6 percent of the black population. The largest African immigrant communities in the United States are in New York, followed by California, Texas, and Maryland.[36] The states with the highest percentages of Africans in their total populations are the District of Columbia, followed by Mississippi, and Louisiana. Refugees represent a minority.

U.S. Bureau of the Census categorizes the population by race based on self-identification.[37] The census surveys have no provision for a "multiracial" or "biracial" self-identity, but since 2000, respondents may check off more than one box and claim multiple ethnicity that way.

[edit] Latin America

Main article: Afro-Latin American

At an intermediate level, in Latin America and in the former plantations in and around the Indian Ocean, descendants of enslaved people are a bit harder to define because many people are mixed in demographic proportion to the original slave population. In places that imported relatively few slaves (like Argentina or Bolivia), few if any are considered Black today.[38] In places that imported many enslaved people (like Brazil or Dominican Republic), the number is larger, but most are of mixed ancestry.[39]

[edit] Europe

Main article: Afro-European

There are about 1.2 million British Afro-Caribbeans, a group largely attributable to immigration from the British West Indies after World War II. Of course these Afro-Caribbeans were chiefly descended from diasporic Africans brought to the West Indies centuries before by the slave trade.

France has about 2 million residents of African descent, largely from North Africa: Algeria (between 800,000) and the Maghreb generally (around 800,000),[40] the Netherlands ca. 700,000, and Germany ca. 300,000. Altogether, the European population with African ancestry is estimated at more than 5 million.

[edit] The Americas

  • African Americans - There are an estimated 40 million people of African descent in the US. Note that this figure (here, and in the chart, above) directly conflicts with information in this same article that says that 30% of US people have genetic content from the [post 1400] African diaspora.
  • Afro-Latin American - There are an estimated 100 million people of African descent living in Latin America, making up 45 % of Brazil's population.[41] There are also sizeable African populations in Cuba, Haiti, Colombia, Dominican Republic and Venezuela.
  • The population in the Caribbean is approximately 31 million. Significant numbers of African-descended people include Haiti - 8 million, Cuba - 7 million, Dominican Republic - 7.9 million, Jamaica - 2.7 million,Puerto Rico[42]

[edit] Canada

Main article: Black Canadians

Much of the earliest black presence in Canada came from the United States, comprising African Americans who escaped along the Underground Railroad to locations in Nova Scotia and Southwestern Ontario.[citation needed] Slavery had begun to be outlawed in British North America as early as 1793. Later black immigration to Canada came primarily from the Caribbean, in such numbers that fully 70 per cent of all blacks now in Canada are of Caribbean origin.

As a result of the prominence of Caribbean immigration, the term "African Canadian", while sometimes used to refer to the minority of Canadian blacks who have direct African or African American heritage, is not normally used to denote black Canadians. Blacks of Caribbean origin are usually denoted as "West Indian Canadian", "Caribbean Canadian" or more rarely "Afro-Caribbean Canadian", but there remains no widely used alternative to "Black Canadian" which is considered inclusive of both the African Canadian and Caribbean Canadian communities.

[edit] Europe

Main article: Afro-European

[edit] United Kingdom

2 million (not inc. British Mixed) split evenly between African-Caribbeans and Africans, see also Black British.

see: Black British

[edit] France

5 million of African descent (North Africans included)[43].

[edit] Netherlands

300, 000 of Surinamese descent.

[edit] Russia

While there may have been black people in Russia early on[44] the first blacks in Russia was the result of slave trade by the Ottoman empire[45] and their descendants still live on the coasts of the Black Sea. Czar Peter the Great was recommended by his friend Lefort to bring in Africans to Russia for hard labor. Alexander Pushkin was the descendant of the African slave Abram Petrovich Gannibal, who became Peter's protege, was educated as a military engineer in France, and eventually became general-en-chef, responsible for the building of sea forts and canals in Russia.[46][47]

During the 1930s fifteen Black American families moved to the Soviet Union as agricultural experts.[48]As African states became independent in the 1960s, the Soviet Union offered them the chance to study in Russia; over 40 years, 400,000 African students came, and many settled there.[49][50]

Note that there are also non-African people within the former Soviet Union who are colloquially referred to as "the blacks" (chernye), and often face social discrimination. Gypsies, Georgians, and Tatars fall into this category [51].

See also Racism in modern Russia.

[edit] Turkey

Main article: Afro-Turks

Afro-Turks, gives an estimate of 2 million for the people of (full or partial) African ancestry (of any skin color), who live on the littoral between Antalya and Istanbul.[52]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Olson, Steve (2003). Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins. Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0618352104. 
  2. ^ Historical survey > The international slave trade. Slavery. Encyclopædia Britannica (2007). Retrieved on 2007-09-30.
  3. ^ Warren, J. Benedict (1985). The Conquest of Michoacán. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 080611858X. 
  4. ^ Krippner-Martínez, James (October 1990). "The Politics of Conquest: An Interpretation of the Relación de Michoacán". The Americas 47 (2): 177–198. doi:10.2307/1007371. 
  5. ^ Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, 327. 
  6. ^ Diversity in Black and White.
  7. ^ Mensah, John Freelove. Persons Granted British Citizenship United Kingdom, 2006. Home Office Statistical Bulletin 08/07, 22 May 2007. Retrieved 4 November 2007.
  8. ^ Thomas, Dominic (2006). Black France: Colonialism, Immigration, And Transnationalism. Indiana University Press, 2006, ISBN 0253348218.
  9. ^ Tattersall, Nick. Africans denounce French DNA immigration bill. Reuters Africa, 5 October 2007. Retrieved 4 November 2007.
  10. ^ Rewriting the African diaspora: Beyond the Black Atlantic Paul Tiyambe Zeleza African Affairs 2005 104(414):35-68; doi:10.1093/afraf/adi001
  11. ^ Runoko Rashidi (2000-11-04). [1] Black People in the Philippines]. Retrieved on 2007-09-29.
  12. ^ West Papua New Guinea: Interview with Foreign Minister Ben Tanggahma (2007-07-25). Retrieved on 20007-09-29.
  13. ^ Iniyan Elango (2002-08-08). Notes from a Brother in India: History and Heritage. Retrieved on 2007-09-29.
  14. ^ Horen Tudu (2002-08-08). The Blacks of East Bengal: A Native's Perspective. Retrieved on 2007-09-29.
  15. ^ Runoko Rashidi (1999-11-19). Blacks in the Pacific. Retrieved on 20007-09-29.
  16. ^ Larson, Pier M. (1999). "Reconsidering Trauma, Identity, and the African Diaspora: Enslavement and Historical Memory in Nineteenth-Century Highland Madagascar". William and Mary Quarterly 56 (2): 335–62.. doi:10.2307/2674122. 
  17. ^ A Legacy Hidden in Plain Sight (washingtonpost.com)
  18. ^ CIA - The World Factbook
  19. ^ https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/jm.html|-People
  20. ^ https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bf.html|-People
  21. ^ [2]
  22. ^ http://paceebene.org/pace/nvns/nonviolence-news-service-archive/in-officially-colorblind-f
  23. ^ globeandmail.com: World
  24. ^ ISTAT (Istituto Nazionale di Statistica), stranieri 2006 Africa Occidentale, Meridionale
  25. ^ http://www.cbs.nl/NR/rdonlyres/2DAFB377-8622-4A6F-9700-8E93EB8EDD61/0/pb01e067.pdf
  26. ^ Мймй Зпмдео Й Мймй Дйлупо. Фемертпелф "Юетоще Тхуулйе": Уйопруйу
  27. ^ Venezuela
  28. ^ CIA - The World Factbook - United States
  29. ^ Visible minority population, by province and territory (2001 Census)
  30. ^ 20680-Country of Birth of Person (full classification list) by Sex - Australia (2006)
  31. ^ a b Dodson, Howard and Sylviane A. Diouf, eds. (2005). In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. Retrieved 24 November 2007.
  32. ^ Ronald Segal (1995). The Black Diaspora: Five Centuries of the Black Experience Outside Africa. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p. 4. ISBN 0-374-11396-3. “It is now estimated that 11,863,000 slaves were shipped across the Atlantic. [Note in original: Paul E. Lovejoy, "The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on Africa: A Review of the Literature," in Journal of African History 30 (1989), p. 368.] ... It is widely conceded that further revisions are more likely to be upward than downward.” 
  33. ^ Stephen D. Behrendt, David Richardson, and David Eltis, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research, Harvard University. Based on "records for 27,233 voyages that set out to obtain slaves for the Americas". Stephen Behrendt (1999). "Transatlantic Slave Trade", Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. New York: Basic Civitas Books. ISBN 0-465-00071-1. 
  34. ^ United States African-American Population. CensusScope, Social Science Data Analysis Network. Retrieved 17 December 2007.
  35. ^ Heros in the Ships: African Americans in the Whaling Industry. Old Dartmouth Historical Society / New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2001.
  36. ^ a b Dodson, Howard and Sylviane A. Diouf, eds. (2005). The Immigration Waves: The numbers. In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. Retrieved 24 November 2007.
  37. ^ U.S. Census Bureau. State & County QuickFacts. Retrieved 6 November 2007.
  38. ^ Harry Hoetink, Caribbean Race Relations: A Study of Two Variants (Lon-don, 1971), xii.
  39. ^ Clara E. Rodriguez, "Challenging Racial Hegemony: Puerto Ricans in the United States," in Race, ed. Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek (New Brunswick NJ, 1994), 131-45, 137. See also Frederick P. Bowser, "Colonial Spanish America," in Neither Slave Nor Free: The Freedmen of African Descent in the Slave Societies of the New World, ed. David W. Cohen and Jack P. Greene (Baltimore, 1972), 19-58, 38.
  40. ^ in French
  41. ^ https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/br.html cia factbook
  42. ^ http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/WPP2004/World_Population_2004_chart.pdf
  43. ^ 1/4 of the French Black population comes from the Caribbean islands. in French
  44. ^ Black colchians black russians yes they exist
  45. ^ Лили Голден и Лили Диксон. Телепроект "Черные русские": синопсис. Info on "Black Russians" film project in English
  46. ^ Gnammankou, Dieudonné. Abraham Hanibal - l’aïeul noir de Pouchkine, Paris 1996.[3]
  47. ^ Barnes, Hugh. Gannibal: The Moor of Petersburg, London 2005.[4]
  48. ^ A New York Times review of family memoir entitled Three Very Rare Generations
  49. ^ MediaRights: Film: Black Russians
  50. ^ Лили Голден и Лили Диксон. Телепроект "Черные русские": синопсис. Info on "Black Russians" film project in English
  51. ^ The Unmaking of Soviet Life: Everyday Economies After Socialism By Caroline Humphrey Cornell University 2002 p36-37
  52. ^ (Turkish) Afrika kökenli Türk vatandaşları İzmir’de dernek kurdu, Radikal

[edit] External links

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