Afro-Caribbeans

Afro-Caribbean

Total population
(c. 48 million)
Regions with significant populations
Haiti	8.9 million
Dominican Republic	8.1 million
Cuba	4.9 million
United States	2.88 million
Jamaica	2.5 million
Puerto Rico	420,000
Trinidad and Tobago	452,536
Bahamas	372,000
Guadeloupe	403,750
Martinique	390,000
Guyana	290,000
Barbados	253,771
Suriname	202,500
Saint Lucia	173,765
Curaçao	148,000
French Guiana	131,676
Grenada	101,309
Belize	93,394
U.S. Virgin Islands	79,000
Dominica	72,660
Saint Kitts and Nevis	38,827
Languages
Languages: English English Creole Caribbean Jamaican, Trinidadian, Tobagonian, Bahamian, Guyanese, Bajan, Grenadian, Belizean, Saint Kitts, Vincentian, Sranan Tongo French French Creole Haitian, Antillean Spanish Spanish Creole Caribbean Spanish Portuguese Portuguese Creole Papiamento Dutch Yoruba other African languages
Religion
Predominantly: Christianity Minority: Islam Bahá'í Judaism Traditional African religion Afro-American religion Obeah Rastafarianism Santería Orisha Trinidad Orisha Yoruba Vodou others
Related ethnic groups
Afro-Central American, Liberian, Americo-Liberian

African-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, European-led triangular trade brought African people to work as slaves in the Caribbean on various plantations. Many Afro-Caribbeans also have non-African ancestry, such as European, South Asian, East Asian, Middle Eastern and Native American, as there has been intermarriage over the centuries.

Although most Afro-Caribbean people today live in Spanish, French, and English-speaking Caribbean nations, there are also significant diaspora populations throughout the Western world – especially in Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, 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, Caribbean and African societies; they include political activists such as Marcus Garvey and C.L.R. James, to writer and theorists such as Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon, to US military leader and statesman Colin Powell whose parents were immigrants, and Jamaican musician Bob Marley.

During the post-Columbian era, the archipelagos and islands of the Caribbean were the first sites of African Diaspora dispersal in the western Atlantic. Specifically, in 1492, Pedro Alonso Niño, an African-Spanish seafarer, was recorded as piloting 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 free men or indentured servants, but increasingly as enslaved workers and servants. This increasing demand for African labour in the Caribbean was in part the result of massive depopulation of the native Taino 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 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).