Creole peoples
- For the languages, see Creole language. For other meanings, see Creole (disambiguation).
The term Creole and its cognates in other languages — such as crioulo, criollo, créole, kriolu, criol, kreyol, kriulo, kriol, krio, etc. — have been applied to people in different countries and epochs, with rather different meanings.
Those terms are almost always used in the general area of present or former colonies in other continents, and originally referred to locally-born people with foreign ancestry.
Creoles in Africa
The English word creole derives from the French créole, which in turn came from Portuguese crioulo. This word, a derivative of the verb criar ("to raise"), was coined in the 15th century, in the trading and military outposts established by Portugal in West Africa and Cape Verde. It was originally applied to descendants of the Portuguese settlers who were born and "raised" locally. The word then spread to other languages, probably by the Portuguese slave traders who supplied most of the slaves to South America through the 16th century.
While the Portuguese may have originally reserved the term crioulo to people of strictly European descent, the crioulo population eventually came to be dominated by people of mixed Portuguese and African ancestry. This mixing happened relatively quickly in most Portuguese colonies of the time, due to the scarcity of Portuguese-born women in the settlements, and to a Portuguese Crown policy of encouraging mixed marriages in the colonies.
These crioulos of mixed Portuguese and African descent eventually gave rise to several major ethnic groups in Africa, especially in Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé e Príncipe, Ziguinchor (Casamance), Angola, Mozambique. However, only a few of these groups have retained the name Crioulo or variations of it:
- Cape Verde: the dominant ethnic group, called Kriolus or Kriols in the local language; the language itself is also called Kriolu or Kriol
- Guinea-Bissau: Crioulos
- São Tomé and Príncipe: Crioulos.
Other Native African Creoles
- Equatorial Guinea: Arguably Los Fernandinos, also known as Emancipados, were those of native Bubi and Spanish ancestry. It wasn't uncommon for offspring of such unions to be accepted into the indigenous tribe; however, Los Fernandinos were later encouraged to collectively settle in Annobón as well as the Canary Islands, forming their own societies.
- It's also purported that a new wave of Creole immigrant descendants of freed slaves of Sierra Leone and Liberia are known as Fernandinos.
- In Sierra Leone there is the Krio
ethnic group whose ancestors were freed slaves from the United
States, Canada, the
British West Indies and various parts of West Africa. Their offspring (born in the Freetown colony) came to be known as Creoles or its cognate Krio. Some of these Krios or creoles were also of mixed ancestry. Many Krio immigrated into other African countries, like Equatorial Guinea where they are known as Kriollos or in Nigeria where they were known as Saros.
Spanish American Criollos
In Spanish-speaking Latin America, the word criollo (cognate and closest equivalent of English Creole) generally refers to people of unmixed European (typically Spanish) descent born in the New World. According to the Spanish American caste system, people with European and indigenous origin who possessed 1/8th or less of Amerindian ancestry, were also considered criollos (unlike people with mainly European and some black African ancestry, who were deemed to be mulatto or mixed-raced). In any case, the expression Spanish American criollo is only applicable to people born in the New World.
Throughout the colonial period, a caste
system was effectively in force, where the local-born criollos ranked strictly lower than governing
peninsulares ("born in the Iberian Peninsula"), despite both being of European
ancestry. By the 19th century, this discrimination and the example of the American
Revolution and the Enlightenment eventually led the criollo elite to
rebel against the Spanish rule. Enlisting in many cases the support of the even lower classes — castizos, mestizos,
Brazilian Crioulos
In Brazil, the word crioulo came to mean dark skinned person, that is, a person of predominantly African ancestry. In the Colony it was common to refer to a slave born in Brazil as a "crioulo" and to a slave from Africa as an "african".So the word "crioulo" in Brazil was not more used to people of European descent born and raised there, but instead used to slaves born and raised in Brazil. Later, the word "crioulo" would refer to all people of African ancestry.
African slaves were imported into the country from the 17th century until the first half of the 19th century. Due to their multiple ethnic roots and to the extension of the country, the Brazilian slaves and their descendants did not constitute a cohesive ethnic group. On the other hand, as in the Portuguese colonies in Africa, people of mixed Portuguese and African ancestry soon came to constitute a large segment of the population, in which there were no sharp class divisions based on degrees of "Africaness".
As a consequence, the term crioulo never became the name of an ethnic group. Instead it became simply a racial label, that is now considered highly offensive — roughly with the same connotations that nigger has in the US.
Philippine Criollos (Insulares)
During the colonial era of the Philippines, the Spanish term criollo was used with the same sense as Spanish America, namely, in reference to a person born in the Philippines with wholly Spanish ancestry. However, the term was not widely used, and instead were more commonly called insulares ("from the islands"), to contrast them with the higher-ranking peninsulares born on the Iberian Peninsula. However, the most common term was filipinos ("from the Philippines").
The meaning of filipino changed drastically during the Philippine Revolution. It was adopted by nationalist movements and transformed into a national designation that encompassed the entire population of the Philippines, especially the descendants of the native Austronesian peoples. In fact, the meaning of Filipino today is the opposite of its colonial meaning, since it tends to include the mestizos of mixed Spanish descent, who are seen as foreigners; as well as the non-mixed criollos.
Louisiana Creoles
In the United States, the word "Creole" usually refers to people of any race or mixture thereof who are descended from settlers in colonial French Louisiana before it became part of the United States in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase. Some writers from other parts of the country have mistakenly assumed the term to refer only to people of mixed racial descent, but this is not the traditional Louisiana usage. It is now accepted that Creoles form a broad cultural group of people of all races who share a French or Spanish background. Louisianans who identify themselves as "Creole" are most commonly from historically Francophone communities with some ancestors who came to Louisiana either directly from France or via the French colonies in the Caribbean. (Those descended from the Acadians of French Canada usually identify as Cajuns, rather than Creoles.) The term is also often used to mean simply "pertaining to New Orleans". The general perception of a Creole is usually of an olive toned individual and has been connoted more recently to be a person with strong African-American consanguine relations. While this is true for a number of the Creole population, not all have these ties and many are White New Orleanians or Whites in Southeast Louisiana. Others show a range of races native to post and pre-colonial settlement of Louisiana, notably Native American.
Alaska Creoles
People of mixed Native American (especially Alaskan) and European (esp. Russian) ancestry. The intermingling of promyshleniki men and Aleut women in the late 18th century gave rise to a people who assumed a prominent position in the economy of fur trading in the northern Pacific.
Caribbean Creoles
In the Caribbean region, the term Creole is sometimes used to describe anyone, regardless of race or ethnicity, who was born and raised in the region. It is sometimes used to refer to persons of European, African, or mixed Afro-European descent, in contradistinction to other ethnicities such as East Indians in Trinidad and Guyana, Afro-Portuguese in Barbados or Mestizos in Belize. It also refers to the syncretism of the various cultures (African, French, British and Spanish among others) which influenced the area. This is also referred to as the creolization of society "due to its ability to suggest some of the complex sociocultural issues also involved in the process" (Manuel, p. 14). Creole, 'Kreyol' or 'Kweyol' also refers to languages in the Caribbean that are derived from a fusion of African and European languages, dialects and syntax.
Indian Ocean Creoles
In Mauritius, in the Indian ocean, the term denotes someone whose ancestry is so mixed that they don't belong to the other categories (small white, big white, Indian, Chinese, and so on).[original research?]
In Reunion island, creole is a more inclusive term that denotes all those born on the island.
See also
External links
- Made for the Creole Experience, news website aimed at multiracial readers
- AllCaboVerde.com, about the Crioulos of Cape Verde
- Frenchcreoles.com, about the Louisiana Creoles
- Creole Heritage Center, also about the Louisiana Creoles
- kiskeyAcity blog entry: What exactly is a Creole?
- Avoyelles Parish Creoles
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