| Group: | Afro-Haitians |
| Pop: | [1] |
| Langs: | FrenchHaitian Creole |
| Rels: | Christianity (predominantly Roman Catholicism), Haitian Vodou, Islam |
| Related: | European Haitiansother Afro-Caribbeans |
Afro-Haitians or Black Haitians (French: Afro-Haïtiens, Haïtiens Noirs; Haitian; Haitian Creole: Afro-Ayisyen, Ayisyen Nwa) are Haitians who trace their full or partial ancestry to Sub-Saharan Africa. They form the largest racial group in Haiti and together with other Afro-Caribbean groups, the largest racial group in the region.
The majority of Afro-Haitians are descendants of enslaved Africans brought to the island by Spain and France to work on plantations. Since the Haitian Revolution, Afro-Haitians have been the largest racial group in the country, accounting for 95% of the population in the early 21st century. The remaining 5% of the population is made up of mixed persons (mixed African and European descent) and other minor groups (European, Arab, and Asian descent).[2]
The Island of Hispaniola was originally inhabited by the Taino, the Arawak and the Ciboney. Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sighted Quisqueya on December 6, 1492, and named the place La Isla Española (“The Spanish Island”), later Anglicized as Hispaniola. The indigenous people died of European diseases, mestizaje with the Spanish, and harsh working conditions. The Spanish later abandoned the western third of the island to the French in 1697 and renamed the western portion of the island as Saint-Domingue, of what will later become known as Haiti, while the other still maintained their Spanish colony in the eastern two thirds of what later became the Dominican Republic. French buccaneers started settling the abandoned area until the French crown claimed that part of the island. The French imported African slaves in the 1600s two hundred years after the first slaves were bought from Africa by Spain and France to produce sugar, coffee, cacao, indigo, and cotton.[3] France had many colonies in the Caribbean in which slavery supported a plantation economy that produced sugar, coffee, and cotton. The most important was Saint Domingue, which had 500,000 slaves, in which 32,000 were whites, and 28,000 free blacks (which included both blacks and mulattos). Some free blacks owned slaves in Haiti.[4] The slave system in Saint-Domingue was considered quite harsh, with high levels of both mortality and violence. To supply the plantation system, French slaveholders imported around 800,000 Africans to the colony. During the mid to late 1700s, African slaves fled to remote mountainous to join the maroons, meaning 'escaped slave'. The maroons formed close-knit communities that practised small-scale agriculture and hunting. They were known to return to plantations to free family and friends from the overseers and white plantation owners, they retreated further into the mountainous forests of Saint-Domingue. In 1791, as the French Revolution came to affect, Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henri Christophe all rose up against their plantation owners and overseers with a Voodoo ceremony that took place in Bois Caïman led by Boukman Dutty but was captured and executed by the French. Toussaint, a who was a French general and had an ambiguous policy toward France and slaves (he was a slave-owner himself), was treacherously captured by order of Napoléon and died in France in 1803, leaving Dessalines to defeat the French for the final time at the Battle of Vertières on 18 November. On 1 January 1804, the former French colony of Saint-Domingue with its overwhelmingly African population as well as the mulatto and black leadership and renamed the island nation of Ayiti, meaning (Land of High Mountains) in the Taïno language. Haiti became the world's first and oldest black republic in the New World, the first country to abolish slavery, the first Caribbean nation and the first Latin American country as a whole in the Americas to win independence from France and the second republic in the modern era after the United States. Between February and 22 April 1804, Dessalines did not trust the remaining white population and he ordered squads of black and mulatto soldiers to move from house to house throughout Haiti, torturing and killing entire white families. Between 3,000 and 5,000 white people were killed. He declared Haiti to become all-black nation and forbade whites from owning property or land there. It was stated by Dessalines of proclamation of 8 April 1804, "We have given these true cannibals war for war, crime for crime, outrage for outrage. Yes, I have saved my country, I have avenged America."[5]
The African people of Haiti derived from various areas, spanning from Senegal to the Congo. Most of which were brought from West Africa, with a considerable number also brought from Central Africa. Some of these groups include those from the former Kongo kingdom (Kongo), Benin (Ewe, Yoruba) and Togoland. Many other people trace so much of their DNA from the native people.[6] [7] Others in Haiti were brought from Senegal,[8] Guinea (imported by the Spanish since the sixteenth century and then by the French), Sierra Leone, Windward Coast, Angola, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, and Southeast Africa (such as the Bara tribesmen of Madagascar, who were brought to Haiti in the eighteenth century).[9] Haitian culture is very tied to West African culture, especially that of pre-colonialism Benin, Haitian Vodou mostly has origins from the original West African Vodun of Benin and the French-based Haitian Creole language has influences from several African languages including the Fon language. At the time of the Haitian Revolution, an event that involved the massacre of many whites (mostly French) and mulattoes in the War of the Knives in Haiti, many of the blacks in Haiti were African-born and had no non-African admixture. This was because the average African slave in colonial Haiti had a short life span and France continuously imported thousands of Africans yearly to keep the slave population up, by 1790 there were nearly 600,000 slaves, outnumbering whites about 20 to 1.
Although Haiti averages approximately 250 people per square kilometre (650 per sq mi.), its population is concentrated most heavily in urban areas, coastal plains, and valleys. Haiti's population was about 11 million according to UN 2018 estimates,[10] with half of the population being under 20 years old.[11] The first formal census, taken in 1950, showed a population of 3.1 million.[12]
According to The World Factbook, 95% of Haitians are primarily of African descent; the remaining 5% of the population are mostly of mixed-race and European background, and a number of other ethnicities.[13] [14]
Culture, religion and social organization are the result in Haiti of a process of syncretism between French and African traditions, mainly Dahomey-Nigerian. A small minority cultural practice in Haiti is Haitian Vodou. This probably originated in Benin, although there are strong elements added from the Congo of Central Africa and many African nations are represented in the liturgy of Sèvis Lwa. A generally ignored but significant element is that of the Taino people, the indigenous people of Hispaniola. The Tainos were influential in the belief system of Haitian Vodou, especially in the Petro cult, a religious group with no counterpart on the African continent. Characterized by the worship of the loa, the sect has influences from Native American folklore zemis. The entire northern area of Haiti is influenced by the practices of the Congo. In the north, these are often called Rites Congo or Lemba. In the south, the Congo influence is called Petwo (Petro). Many loa are of Congolese origin, such as Basimbi and Lemba.[15]
Polygyny persists alongside Catholic marriages. The dances and some forms of recreation tie in with African activities. The preparation of beans is done in the style of Western Africa. Popular literature retains fables and other forms that are expressed in the vernacular. Economic activities are typical of Western culture and clothing tends to be European, but the scarf worn by women over the head is typical of clothing worn throughout West Africa.
Two languages are spoken in Haiti. French is taught in schools and known by about 42% of the population,[16] but spoken by a minority of black and biracial residents, in Port-au-Prince and other cities. Haitian Creole, with roots in French, Spanish, Taino. Portuguese, English and African languages, is a language with dialectal forms in different regions. It is spoken throughout the country, but is used extensively in rural areas.[17]
The music of Haiti is heavily influenced by the rhythms which came from Africa with the slaves. Two of these rhythms come directly from the harbour and the Congo; a third rhythm, the "petro", developed on the island during the colonial era. All are part of the rhythms used in Vodou ceremonies. These rhythms have created a musical style, rasin, where percussion is the most important musical instrument, and despite being closely related to religion has become a popular kind of folk music. Another type of music, which arises spontaneously from people with hand-held instruments, is twoubadou, a musical style that has endured to this day. Currently the music heard in Haiti's Compas genre is a little softer than the merengue, and combines Congo rhythms with European and Caribbean influences. Konpa is the most current version of this rhythm.[18]