African diaspora
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 places around the globe.
The term is applied in particular to the descendents of the Black Africans who were enslaved and shipped to the Americas by way of the Atlantic slave trade, with the largest population in Brazil.
People of Sub-Saharan descent number at least 800 million in Africa and over 140 million in the Western Hemisphere, representing around 14% of the world's population.
History
Based on human genetics, it is widely believed that 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.
Many of these individuals settled in Europe and Asia and invariably intermarried with the local populations.
Today, human genetic research suggests that mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome haplotypes in Europeans and Asians have distant African ancestry. But these early migrations out of Africa are dwarfed by those associated with the Atlantic and Arab slave trades.
Dispersal through slavery
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.
The dispersal through slave trading represents one of the largest migrations in human history. The economic effect on the African continent was devastating. Some communities created by descendants of Black African slaves in Europe and Asia have survived to the modern day, but in other cases, blacks intermarried with non-blacks 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 bowFrom the very onset of Spanish activity in the Americas, Africans were present both as voluntary expeditionaries and as involuntary colonists.
Juan Garrido was one such black conquistador. He crossed the Atlantic as a freedman in the 1510s and participated in the siege of Tenochtitlan.
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. 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 and France.
l 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. The adoption of the one drop rule defined anyone with any discernible African ancestry as African, even though the strictest application of that rule would categorize nearly all Americans as African.
Dispersal through migration
From the very onset of Spanish activity in the Americas, Africans were present both as voluntary expeditionaries and as involuntary colonists.
Juan Garrido was one such black conquistador. He crossed the Atlantic as a freedman in the 1510s and participated in the siege of Tenochtitlan.
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. 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, 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 and France.
Definitions
The African Union 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."
Between 1500 and 1900, approximately four million enslaved Black Africans 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.
Their descendants are now found around the globe. Due to intermarriage and genetic assimilation, just who is a descendant of the Black 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 Black Africans are:
African Americans. People in the United States who are of African descent.
Afro-Caribbeans. People in the West Indies who identify themselves as Black African descent.
Afro-Latin Americans. Among these populations in South and Central America are those who 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.
Siddis. Inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent (Pakistan and India) of Black African descent.