Over 50 million people living in other continents today are wholly or partly of African origin. In Europe, the chief identifiable communities are the 300,000 Algerians in France, and the 250,000 West Indians of partly African origin who have been settling in Britain in recent years. African elements have blended into the population of southern Spain (mainly Moorish, i.e. Arab-Berber elements) and Portugal (Moorish and Negro).
Elsewhere, African movement overseas has almost entirely been in the grim form of slavery (F). Africa has exported slaves throughout recorded history (there are still traces of clandestine sales to some Arab lands). Sizeable African groups were thus created in past centuries in various places in Asia. Thus the East African slaves around Basra on the Persian Gulf were numerous enough in the 9th century to stage a rebellion and hold out for over 14 years; and one 15th-century local ruler in India owned 8,000 Africans. But these groups have merged into the surrounding population, except in a few places in Arabia.
European slave trading to the Americas between the 16th and 19th centuries created much larger and distinctive communities of African or partly African origin. The two biggest are the 19 million 'Negroes' in the United States (where the word is applied even to
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Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information:
Book title: An Atlas of African Affairs.
Contributors: Andrew Boyd - Author, Patrick Van Rensburg - Author.
Publisher: Praeger.
Place of publication: New York.
Publication year: 1962.
Page number: 36.
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