Afrocreole Culture and Influence

In 1790, according to Robin Blackburn, "nearly three million slaves of African origin or descent toiled in the Caribbean plantations to furnish a new culture of consumption in Europe and North American," with products including "sugar, rum, molasses, coffee, cotton, indigo and pimiento". With numerous European nations involved in West Indian colonialism, the destinies of those toiling in the fields would be as diverse as their languages, cultures, and lands of origin. Slaves within French colonies would enjoy freedom first, followed by the British Emancipation Law some forty years later in 1833. Emancipation of blacks, then, was a process rather than a single event, with one rebellion or concession building upon another across the islands and the continent of Europe. Successful slave revolts were effective in some Caribbean venues, and the effect was potent and self-perpetuating. As Blackburn expresses it, "the extraordinary events of the 1790s had welded the mass of former slaves into an unconquerable force". The establishment of the Republic of Haiti in 1804 was a direct result of Black victories, and "New World slavery had been dealt a blow from which it would never recover" from the Haitian Revolution.Culture research papers on Afro-Creole peoples and their anthropological influence in the world are complex. Get help with your research paper today or use the topic outlined below to assist you with writing a custom Afro-Creole paper that discusses the influence of culture.

African and Creole Tradition

Though the processes through which African and European peoples had come to inhabit the West Indies were painfully distinct from one another, the fact of Caribbean slavery juxtaposed - no, interlaced - individuals from many different cultures. Through both colonial and postcolonial eras, interaction among the many groups resulted in reciprocal influence with regard to various cultural elements:

• Afro-Creole Culture
• Afro-Creole Language
• A mix of African and Creole Religion
• Afro-Creole music
• African and Creole Tradition
• Food from Africa and the Caribbean

This mutual exchange, though originally restrained somewhat by the slave-owner dichotomy, could not but change all cultures involved. Far from their homelands in Africa and Europe, the diverse inhabitants of the West Indies found themselves living together and learning from one another. Under such circumstances, Creolization was inevitable. In fact, Bongie states that within at least one millennium, "even at the height of slavery, white and black Jamaicans were creating and participating in a common culture". One suspects that the same would be true of other venues in the West Indies as well.