Afro-Caribbean people

16th–18th centuries During the post-Columbian era, the archipelagos and islands of the Caribbean were the first sites of African diaspora dispersal in the western Atlantic. In the early 16th century, more Africans began to enter the population of the Spanish Caribbean colonies, sometimes arriving as free men of mixed ancestry or as indentured servants, but increasingly as enslaved workers and servants. This increasing demand for African labour in the Caribbean was in part the result of the massive depopulation of the native Taíno 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 West 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 Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic). During the 17th and 18th centuries, European colonial development in the Caribbean became increasingly reliant on plantation slavery to cultivate and process the lucrative commodity crop of sugarcane. On many islands shortly before the end of the 18th century, the enslaved Afro-Caribbean people greatly outnumbered their European masters. In addition, there developed a class of free people of color, especially in the French islands, where certain individuals of mixed race were given rights. On Saint-Domingue, free people of color and slaves rebelled against harsh conditions, and constant inter-imperial warfare. Inspired by French revolutionary sentiments which pronounced all men free and equal, Toussaint L'Ouverture and Jean Jacques Dessalines led the Haitian Revolution. When it became independent in 1804, Haiti became the first Afro-Caribbean republic in the Western Hemisphere and the first state which was both free from slavery (though not from forced labour) and ruled by non-whites and former captives. 19th–20th centuries In 1804, Haiti, with its overwhelmingly African population and leadership, 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 by various colonial powers. Great Britain abolished slavery in its holdings in 1834. Cuba was the last island to be emancipated, when Spain abolished slavery in its colonies. During the 20th century, Afro-Caribbean people, who were a majority in many Caribbean societies, began to assert their cultural, economic, and political rights with more vigor on the world stage. Marcus Garvey was among many influential immigrants to the United States from Jamaica, expanding his UNIA movement in New York City and the U.S. Afro-Caribbean people, such as Claude McKay and Eric D. Walrond, were influential in the Harlem Renaissance as artists and writers. Aimé Césaire developed a négritude movement. In the 1960s, the West Indian territories were given their political independence from British colonial rule. They were pre-eminent in creating new cultural forms such as reggae music, calypso and Rastafari within the Caribbean. Beyond the region, a developing Afro-Caribbean diaspora in the United States, including such figures as Stokely Carmichael and DJ Kool Herc, was influential in the development of the Black Power movement of the 1960s and the hip-hop movement of the 1980s. African-Caribbean individuals also contributed to cultural developments in Europe, as evidenced by influential theorists such as Frantz Fanon and Stuart Hall. African Origins Afro-Caribbeans descend from a variety of African ethnic groups, who were forcibly brought to the Caribbean during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Certain ethnic groups were more prominent in specific regions of the Caribbeans due to the different European powers having a stronger outpost in specific regions of the West Africa. Of the 40 distinct ethnic groups brought to the Caribbean, the most prevalent were the Igbo, Yoruba, Mande, Gbe, Akan, Bakongo, Mbundu, Wolof, and Fulani, among others. The Igbo from the Bight of Biafra and the Akan of the Gold Coast were commonly found in the British West Indies, whereas the Akan were also prevalent in the Dutch caribbean. Groups from Central Africa, like the Bakongo and Mbundu, were prevalent in the Spanish West Indies. However, the Bakongo were also common in the French West Indies due to slave post at Loango being dominated by both the Spanish and the French. The Yoruba from the Bight of Benin were more common in the Spanish West Indies as most Yoruba slaves were trafficked in the 18th and 19th century, following the collapse of Oyo and Spain's illegal involvement in the slave trade after the British abolition in 1807. The Gbe from the Bight of Benin were more prevalent in the French West Indies, along with the Dutch Caribbean. With the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) permitted Britian to supply African slaves to the Spanish colonies. Thic caused enslaved ethnicities, like the Igbo, to appear in Cuba and other Spanish colonies. Groups from Senegambia like Mande, Wolof, and Fulani were more prevalent in the Spanish West Indies in the early periods of the Atlantic Slave Trade. ==Notable people==