Afro-Caribbean

For the Afro-Caribbean community in the United Kingdom, see British African-Caribbean people.

Afro-Caribbean

Usain Bolt Colin Powell Bob Marley Sidney Poitier Nicki Minaj Tim Duncan Patrick Manning Orlando Hernández J-J Dessalines
Total population
24 million +
Regions with significant populations
Haiti 9M Jamaica 2.7M Trinidad and Tobago 520,000 Guyana 300,000 Suriname 100,000 Guadeloupe 440,000 Martinique 400,000 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 120,000 French Guiana 131,676 Grenada 101,309 Belize 93,394 Barbados 253,771 Saint Kitts and Nevis 38,827 Curaçao  ? U.S. Virgin Islands 75,000
Languages
Languages: English Guyanese Jamaican Trinidadian French French West Indies Spanish Dutch
Religion
Predominantly: Christianity Islam Minority: Rastafarianism Agnosticism Atheism Hinduism Buddhism Sikhism Jainism Zoroastrianism Others
Related ethnic groups
other African Americans

Afro-Caribbean people or Afro-Caribbeans are Caribbean people who trace their heritage to Africa in the period since Christopher Columbus's arrival in the region in 1492. Other names for the group include African-Caribbean (especially in the UK branch of the diaspora), Afro-Antillean or Afro-West Indian. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, most Africans arrived in the Caribbean during the era of the slave trade and were enslaved in forced-labour camps known as plantations controlled by British, French, Spanish, and Dutch colonial powers. Afro-Caribbean resistance, revolutions and uprisings led to the abolition of slavery, and their involvement in subsequent campaigns for independence led to the establishment of the region's nation states.

Although most Afro-Caribbean people today live in English, French, and Spanish-speaking Caribbean nations, there are also significant diaspora populations throughout the western hemisphere – notably in Britain, France, the United States, and Canada. Both the home and diaspora populations have produced a number of individuals who have had a notable influence on modern Western and African societies – from Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. DuBois to Franz Fanon, Colin Powell and Bob Marley.

History of the African-Caribbean peoples

Main article: Afro-Caribbean history

16th–18th centuries

The archipelagos and islands of the Caribbean were the first sites of African-Diaspora dispersal in the western Atlantic during the post-Columbian era. Specifically, in 1492, Pedro Alonso Niño, a black Spanish seafarer, piloted one of Columbus's ships. He returned in 1499, but did not settle. In the early 16th century, more Africans began to enter the population of the Spanish Caribbean colonies, sometimes as freedmen, but increasingly as enslaved servants, workers and labourers. This increasing demand for African labour in the Caribbean was in part the result of massive depopulation caused by the massacres, harsh conditions and disease brought by European colonists to the Taino and other indigenous peoples of the region. By the mid-16th century, slave trade from 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 San Domingo (modern day Haiti and Dominican Republic). During the 17th and 18th centuries, European colonialism in the Caribbean became increasingly reliant on plantation slavery, so that, by the end of the 18th century, on many islands, enslaved (and free) African-Caribbeans far outnumbered their European rulers. Harsh conditions, constant inter-imperial warfare and growing revolutionary sentiments resulted in the Haitian Revolution led by Toussaint L'Ouverture and Jean Jacques Dessalines.

19th–21st centuries

In 1804, Haiti, with its overwhelmingly black population and leadership, thus 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, with Cuba the last emancipated island. During the 20th century, Afro-Caribbean people began to assert their cultural, economic and political rights with ever more vigor on the world stage, starting with Marcus Garvey's UNIA movement in the U.S., continuing with Aimé Césaire's negritude movement. From the 1960s, the West Indian territories began to win their independence from British colonial rule, and were pre-eminent in creating new cultural forms such as reggae music, calypso and rastafarianism within the Caribbean itself. However, beyond the region, a developing Afro-Caribbean diaspora, including such figures as Stokely Carmichael and DJ Kool Herc was influential in the creation of the Black Power and hip-hop movements in the US, as well as cultural developments in Europe, as evidenced by influential theorists such as Franz Fanon and Stuart Hall.

List of major figures in African-Caribbean History

POLITICS

• Toussaint L'Ouverture — Haitian revolutionary, general and governor.
• Jean-Jacques Dessalines — Haiti revolutionary, general and head of state.
• Marcus Garvey — Jamaican politician and writer.
• Nanny of the Maroons — Jamaican freedom fighter.
• Bussa — Barbadian freedom fighter.
• Henri Christophe — Haitian revolutionary, general and head of state.
• Eric Williams — Trinidad and Tobago politician, writer and head of government.
• Sir Grantley Adams — Barbadian politician.
• Sam Sharpe — Jamaican freedom fighter.
• Papa Doc Duvalier — Haitian tyrant.
• Jean-Bertrand Aristide — Haitian politician, priest and head of state.
• Portia Simpson Miller — Jamaican head of government.
• Dean Barrow-Belizean head of government.
• Phillip S.W. Goldson-Belizean Politician.
• Paul Bogle — Jamaican political activist.
• Forbes Burnham — Guyanese head of government.
• Sam Hinds — Guyanese head of government.
• Hugo Chavez — Venezuelan head of state.
• Pedro Camejo — Venezuelan freedom fighter.
• Michael Manley — Jamaican politician.
• Dutty Boukman — Jamaican and Haitian freedom fighter.
• Antonio Maceo Grajales — Cuban revolutionary and general.
• Juan Almeida Bosque — Cuban revolutionary and politician.
• Mary Eugenia Charles — Dominican head of government.

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

• Franz Fanon — Martiniquais writer, psychiatrist and freedom fighter.
• Stuart Hall — Jamaican philosopher.
• Pedro Alonso Niño — Spanish explorer.
• Mary Seacole — Jamaican hospital director.
• C.L.R. James — Trinidad and Tobago activist and writer.
• Dr Samuel Rawlins — Kitts and St Nevis climate change scientist.
• Stokely Carmichael — Trinidad and Tobago activist and writer.
• Walter Rodney — Guyanese activist and writer.
• Arlie Petters-Belizean Professor at Duke University and Mathmetician.

ARTS AND CULTURE

• Bob Marley — Jamaican composer, singer and musician.
• Aimé Césaire — Martiniquais writer.
• Bebo Valdés — Cuban musician.
• Celia Cruz — Cuban singer.
• Carlos Acosta — Cuban ballet dancer.
• Derek Walcott — Saint Lucian poet.
• Wyclef Jean-Haitian Singer,Composer,and Activist.
• Sidney Poitier-Bahamian Academy Award winning Actor.
• John Barnes — Jamaican-born footballer.
• Chevalier de Saint-George — Guadeloupan composer.
• Frank Bowling — Guyanese-born painter.
• Brian Lara — Trinidadian Cricketer.
• Rhianna — Barbadian composer and singer
• Sir Vivian Richards - Antiguan Cricketer

Main-groups

• Afro-Jamaican
• Afro-Trinidadian
• Afro-Bahamian
• Afro-Cuban
• Afro-Costa Rican
• Afro-Puerto Rican
• Afro-Dominican
• Afro-Grenadian
• Afro-Vincentians
• Afro-Belizean
• Raizal, in the Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina, presently the Colombian San Andrés y Providencia Department, off the Nicaraguan Miskito Coast
• British African-Caribbean community
• Caribbean Australian
• Caribbean Brazilian
• West Indian American
• Other members of the African diaspora in or from the Caribbean

Culture

• Afro-Caribbean music

See also

• Afro Central American
• Afro-South American
• Afro-Latin American
• Afro-American peoples of the Americas