Afro-Caribbean or African Caribbean people or Afro-West Indians are Caribbean people who trace their full or partial ancestry to Sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of the modern Afro-Caribbean people descend from the West and Central Africans taken as slaves to the colonial Caribbean via the trans-Atlantic slave trade between the 15th and 19th centuries to work primarily on various sugar plantations and in domestic households. Other names for the ethnic group include Black Caribbean, Afro- or Black West Indian, or Afro- or Black Antillean or . The term West Indian Creole has also been used to refer to Afro-Caribbean people, as well as other ethnic and racial groups in the region, though there remains debate about its use to refer to Afro-Caribbean people specifically.Allen, C., 1998. "Creole then and now: the problem of definition". Caribbean Quarterly, 44(1-2), pp.36–7. The term Afro-Caribbean was not coined by Caribbean people themselves but was first used by European Americans in the late 1960s.
People of Afro-Caribbean descent today are largely of West African and Central African ancestry, and may additionally be of other origins, including European, Chinese, South Asian, Jewish and Amerindian descent, as there has been extensive intermarriage and unions among the peoples of the Caribbean over the centuries.
Although most Afro-Caribbean people today continue to reside in English, French, Dutch, and Spanish-speaking Caribbean nations and territories, there are also significant diaspora populations throughout the Western world, especially in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands. Caribbean peoples are predominantly of Christian faith, though some practice African-derived or syncretic religions, such as Santeria, Vodou and Winti. Many speak creole languages, such as Haitian Creole, Jamaican Patois, Sranantongo, Saint Lucian Creole, Martinican Creole or Papiamento.
Both the home and diaspora populations have produced a number of individuals who have had a notable influence on modern African, Caribbean and Western societies; they include political activists such as Marcus Garvey and C. L. R. James; writers and theorists such as Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon; US military leader and statesman Colin Powell; athletes such as Usain Bolt, Tim Duncan and David Ortiz; and musicians Bob Marley, Nicki Minaj, Wyclef Jean, Rihanna, and the actor and musician Jacob Anderson.
History
16th–18th centuries During the post-Columbian era, the archipelagos and islands of the Caribbean were the first sites of African diaspora dispersal in the western Atlantic.
In the early 16th century, more Africans began to enter the population of the Spanish Caribbean colonies, sometimes arriving as free men of mixed ancestry or as indentured servants, but increasingly as enslaved workers and servants. This increasing demand for African labour in the Caribbean was in part the result of the massive depopulation of the native Taíno and other Indigenous peoples caused by the new infectious diseases, harsh conditions, and warfare brought by European colonists. By the mid-16th century, the slave trade from West Africa to the Caribbean was so profitable that Francis Drake and John Hawkins were prepared to engage in piracy as well as break Spanish colonial laws, in order to forcibly transport approximately 1500 enslaved people from Sierra Leone to Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic).
During the 17th and 18th centuries, European colonial development in the Caribbean became increasingly reliant on plantation slavery to cultivate and process the lucrative commodity crop of sugarcane. On many islands shortly before the end of the 18th century, the enslaved Afro-Caribbean people greatly outnumbered their European masters. In addition, there developed a class of free people of color, especially in the French islands, where certain individuals of mixed race were given rights.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". On Saint-Domingue, free people of color and slaves rebelled against harsh conditions, and constant inter-imperial warfare. Inspired by French revolutionary sentiments which pronounced all men free and equal, Toussaint L'Ouverture and Jean Jacques Dessalines led the Haitian Revolution. When it became independent in 1804, Haiti became the first Afro-Caribbean republic in the Western Hemisphere and the first state which was both free from slavery (though not from forced labour) and ruled by non-whites and former captives.
19th–20th centuries In 1804, Haiti, with its overwhelmingly African population and leadership, became the second nation in the Americas to win independence from a European state. During the 19th century, continuous waves of rebellion, such as the Baptist War, led by Sam Sharpe in Jamaica, created the conditions for the incremental abolition of slavery in the region by various colonial powers. Great Britain abolished slavery in its holdings in 1834. Cuba was the last island to be emancipated, when Spain abolished slavery in its colonies.
During the 20th century, Afro-Caribbean people, who were a majority in many Caribbean societies, began to assert their cultural, economic, and political rights with more vigor on the world stage. Marcus Garvey was among many influential immigrants to the United States from Jamaica, expanding his UNIA movement in New York City and the U.S.Martin, Tony. Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggle of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1976. Afro-Caribbean people, such as Claude McKay and Eric D. Walrond, were influential in the Harlem Renaissance as artists and writers.Tillery (1992). Claude McKay: A Black Poet's Struggle for Identity. p. 42.Villalon, Oscar (16 January 2013). "'Tropic Death' Presents Life's Horrors In Beautiful Prose". NPR.org. Retrieved 22 May 2019.Barceló, Margarita, "Walrond, Eric", in William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster & Trudier Harris (eds), Oxford Companion to African American Literature, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 754. Aimé Césaire developed a négritude movement.
In the 1960s, the West Indian territories were given their political independence from British colonial rule. They were pre-eminent in creating new cultural forms such as reggae music, calypso and Rastafari within the Caribbean. Beyond the region, a developing Afro-Caribbean diaspora in the United States, including such figures as Stokely Carmichael and DJ Kool Herc, was influential in the development of the Black Power movement of the 1960s and the hip-hop movement of the 1980s. African-Caribbean individuals also contributed to cultural developments in Europe, as evidenced by influential theorists such as Frantz FanonNigel C. Gibson, Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination (2003: Oxford, Polity Press) and Stuart Hall.Chen, Kuan-Hsing. "The Formation of a Diasporic Intellectual: An interview with Stuart Hall," collected in David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (eds), Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, New York: Routledge, 1996.
African Origins Afro-Caribbeans descend from a variety of African ethnic groups, who were forcibly brought to the Caribbean during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Certain ethnic groups were more prominent in specific regions of the Caribbeans due to the different European powers having a stronger outpost in specific regions of the West Africa.
Of the 40 distinct ethnic groups brought to the Caribbean, the most prevalent were the Igbo, Yoruba, Mande, Gbe, Akan, Bakongo, Mbundu, Wolof, and Fulani, among others.
The Igbo from the Bight of Biafra and the Akan of the Gold Coast were commonly found in the British West Indies, whereas the Akan were also prevalent in the Dutch Caribbean. Groups from Central Africa, like the Bakongo and Mbundu, were prevalent in the Spanish West Indies. However, the Bakongo were also common in the French West Indies due to the slave post at Loango being dominated by both the Spanish and the French.
The Yoruba from the Bight of Benin were more common in the Spanish West Indies as most Yoruba slaves were trafficked in the 18th and 19th century, following the collapse of Oyo and Spain's illegal involvement in the slave trade after the British abolition in 1807. The Gbe from the Bight of Benin were more prevalent in the French West Indies, along with the Dutch Caribbean.
With the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), Britain was permitted to supply African slaves to the Spanish colonies. This caused enslaved ethnicities, like the Igbo, to appear in Cuba and other Spanish colonies. Groups from Senegambia like Mande, Wolof, and Fulani were more prevalent in the Spanish West Indies in the early periods of the Atlantic Slave Trade.
Notable people
Politics Sir Grantley Adams – Barbados, politician and lawyer; the first and only Prime Minister of the West Indies Federation (1958–1962) Marcos Evangelista Adón – Dominican Republic, politician and freedom fighter Jean-Bertrand Aristide – politician, priest and head of state, Haiti Dean Barrow – head of government, Belize Maurice Bishop – Grenada, revolutionary leader Paul Bogle – Jamaica, political activist Ertha Pascal Trouillot – Haiti, first Black female president in the world, lawyer Juan Almeida Bosque – Cuban revolutionary and politician Dutty Boukman – Haitian freedom fighter Forbes Burnham – Guyana, head of government Bussa – Barbados, freedom fighter Stokely Carmichael – Trinidad-born, civil rights activist and leader in the US Mary Eugenia Charles – Dominican head of government Perry Christie – Bahamian, politician and lawyer Henri Christophe – Haiti, revolutionary, general and head of state David Clarke (sheriff) – Barbudan, former Sheriff of Milwaukee John Compton – Saint Lucia, politician and lawyer Paris Dennard – Grenada, former CNN political commentator Jean-Jacques Dessalines – Haiti (est. 1804), revolutionary, general and first head of state of independent Haiti Papa Doc Duvalier – dictator of Haiti, 20th century Marcus Garvey – Jamaica, politician and writer, founder of UNIA and active in US politics from 1916 to 1927 Philip Goldson – Belize, politician Kamala Devi Harris – Jamaican descent, first African American, first Asian American, and first female Vice President of the United States Louis Farrakhan – Jamaican and St. Kitts ancestry. Religious leader, Head of Nation of Islam, USA Ulises Heureaux – Dominican Republic president and military leader Sam Hinds – Guyana, head of government Hubert Ingraham – Bahamian, politician and lawyer Toussaint L'Ouverture – Haiti, revolutionary, general and governor Joseph Robert Love – Bahamian-born, medical doctor; Jamaican politician and political activist who influenced Marcus Garvey Gregorio Luperón – Dominican Republic, revolutionary, general and president Antonio Maceo Grajales – Cuban revolutionary and general Michael Manley – Jamaica, politician Jon Miller – Montserrat, Conservative Review, BlazeTV Host Nanny of the Maroons – Jamaica, freedom fighter Jeanne Odo – Haiti, abolitionist Candace Owens – British Virgin Islander, PragerU Radio and Founder of Blexit Wendy Phipps (born 1967) is a Kittitian politician and businesswoman. Lynden Pindling – Bahamian politician, and first Prime minister of the Bahamas José Joaquín Puello – Dominican Republic revolutionary, government minister and activist Samuel Jackman Prescod – Barbados, first elected Afro-Caribbean politician in the House of Assembly Francisco del Rosario Sánchez – Dominican Republic, revolutionary and politician Sam Sharpe – Jamaica, freedom fighter Solitude – Guadeloupe, freedom fighter Eric Eustace Williams – Trinidad and Tobago politician, writer and head of government