But, as far as I know, no one has really attempted a systematic and comprehensive definition of the term "African diaspora," although the concept has been around since the 19th century and the term has been used since the s, if not earlier. Does it refer simply to Africans abroad, that is to say the peoples of African descent who live outside their ancestral continent? Is Africa a part of the diaspora? Is the term synonymous with what is now being called the Black Atlantic?
The concept of a diaspora is not confined to the peoples of African descent. For example, historians are familiar with the migration of Asians that resulted in the peopling of the Americas. Sometime between 10 and 20 thousand years ago, these Asian peoples crossed the Bering Strait and settled in North and South America and the Caribbean islands. The Jewish diaspora, perhaps the most widely studied, also has very ancient roots, beginning about two thousand years ago. Starting in the eighth century, Muslim peoples brought their religion and culture to various parts of Asia, Europe, and Africa, creating communities in the process.
European peoples began their penetration of the African continent in the 15th century, a process that in time resulted in their dispersal in many other parts of the world, including the Americas. Obviously, these diasporic streams, or movements of specific peoples, were not the same in their timing, impetus, direction, or nature. The study of the African diaspora, as mentioned at the outset, represents a growth industry today.
But, there is no single diasporic movement or monolithic diasporic community to be studied. For the limited purposes of this discussion, I identify five major African diasporic streams that occurred at different times and for different reasons. The first African diaspora was a consequence of the great movement within and outside of Africa that began about , years ago. This early movement, the contours of which are still quite controversial, constitutes a necessary starting point for any study of the dispersal and settlement of African peoples.
To study early humankind is, in effect, to study this diaspora. Some scholars may argue, with considerable merit, that this early African exodus is so different in character from later movements and settlements that it should not be seen as constituting a phase of the diasporic process.
This issue ought to be a subject for a healthy and vigorous debate among our colleagues and students. The second major diasporic stream began about B. The third major stream, which I characterize loosely as a trading diaspora, involved the movement of traders, merchants, slaves, soldiers, and others to parts of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia beginning around the fifth century B.
Its pace was markedly uneven, and its texture and energy varied. Thus the brisk slave trade conducted by the Muslims to the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries starting after the seventh century was not a new development but its scope and intensity were certainly unprecedented.
This prolonged third diasporic stream resulted in the creation of communities of various sizes composed of peoples of African descent in India, Portugal, Spain, the Italian city-states, and elsewhere in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia long before Christopher Columbus undertook his voyages across the Atlantic. In his important study of blacks in classical antiquity, for example, Frank Snowden notes that while the "exact number of Ethiopians who entered the Greco-Roman world as a result of military, diplomatic, and commercial activity is difficult to determine.
The aforementioned three diasporic streams form what I shall call the premodern African diaspora. The fourth major African diasporic stream, and the one that is most widely studied today, is associated with the Atlantic trade in African slaves.
This trade, which began in earnest in the 15th century, may have delivered as many as , Africans to various European societies and 11 to 12 million to the Americas over time. The fifth major stream began during the 19th century particularly after slavery's demise in the Americas and continues to our own times. It is characterized by the movement of Africans and peoples of African descent among, and their resettlement in, various societies.
These latter two diasporic streams, along with several substreams and the communities that emerged, constitute the modern African diaspora. Unlike the premodern diaspora, "racial" oppression and resistance to it are two of its most salient features. The five major diasporic streams or four if the first is excluded that I have identified do not constitute the only significant movements of peoples of African descent within or outside of the African continent.
Scholars, depending on their perspectives, should identify other major streams or substreams, such as that resulting from the desiccation of the Sahara between B.
They should make sure, however, that these streams are not conflated in terms of their timing, scope, and nature. It should be stressed that it is these diasporic streams--or movements of specific peoples to several societies--together with the communities that they constructed, that form a diaspora.
She may never beat the drum of her ancestors, wear the regalia of her foremothers, feel the traditional land of her people, or dance to her traditional music.
This realization can cause great pain. At the same time, she is forced to accept a new culture: a culture that once saw her as a commodity, a culture that caused her so much pain, a culture that may or may not reject her. Africans in the diaspora and indigenous Africans, who were once joint in space and time are geographically disconnected.
Though, many cultures in the African Diaspora are traced with African influence — the Dominicans merengue, African Jamaican cuisine, African American music, and so forth.
Cultures in the African diaspora strive to re-capture what was lost from their global scattering and colonization. Many who are accustomed to being regarded as simply black are adventuring for terminology that categorizes them as individuals who are members of a larger culture which does not simply reflect the colour of their skin.
For Africans in the Diaspora, decolonization involves reclaiming their African identity that was stolen from them and dispelling the negative views of Africa they have been socialized to hold under colonization, seeing Africa for its true beauty. Pan-Africanism is a political doctrine, as well as a movement, with the aim of unifying and uplifting African nations and the African Diaspora as a universal African community.
Pan-Africanism aims to build solidarity and unity among all people of African Descent to promote social, political and economic success. In essence, Pan-Africanism holds that Africans and Africans in the Diaspora share not only a history, but common destiny. Ending on the wor ds of Teresa H. Since early modern times, the confessional minorities of Christianity were part of a Diaspora.
The term describes the process of dispersal and the dispersed ethnic population. The majority of the African Diaspora descends from people who were taken into slavery but there is also a rising number of voluntary immigrants and asylum-seekers. Apart from problems which the Diaspora faces, the situation of the Diaspora poses the question of cultural identity.
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