African Slavery in the Caribbean & South America

One of the most important things that have made me very successful in my research is reading history. Reading history provides me with clues of where to look next. While the genealogy community has taken a stronghold of dipping into DNA testing, it has opened the door to a lot of misconceptions. Note that this is a long post but a valuable one if you’re researching your ancestry. I hope this post helps many with their DNA connections.

In recent months I have seen supposed “experienced genealogists” claim connection to people simply because they share a common last name or because they want to be connected to someone who is well known but share little DNA with someone. No research, simply a “we have a matching last name and oh by the way, you supposedly have someone important in your tree”. Well, as far as I’m concerned, all my ancestors are important or I wouldn’t be here without them.

However, those of us with more knowledge and experience have debunked these individuals with simply providing facts and actual sources than just hearsay, fabricated genealogy simply to connect to the person, and to seem more relevant to the world. That is completely the wrong approach and in order to claim to be a genealogist, you need to produce actual facts and not a fluff post to pull the wool over the exposure of truth.

So, for once I want people to stop assuming that because you do not recognize last names on someone’s tree, that the DNA match is false. Anything over 21 cMs is a real match, but the number of segments will push them further away in the relationship if segment counts are high. The problem is that you have other factors to consider such as endogamy and slavery.

Someone with borrowed knowledge once said that “I brought nothing to the table” when it comes to Caribbean genealogy. The sad truth is that this is their form of deflection from being called out for their nonexistent research work, then demanding that people reference them when the apparent facts are provided. So I dedicate this post to this individual as it is evident that they are clueless in the realm of genealogy and genetic genealogy. They will not be mentioned by name because they don’t deserve validation.

African Slavery & the Caribbean

Let’s talk about African Slavery and how it impacts everyone in the Caribbean. I have seen numerous posts and have had many conversations on not being able to locate the enslaved ancestor or even African connection. What I am about to discuss will explain a small piece of the complexity of when that enslaved ancestor potentially occurred.

Many of us do not realize that our DNA can carry ancestral connections going back 700 years. While many records have been destroyed in many places in the Caribbean, the same can be said regarding the southern part of the USA due to the Civil War. With constant name changes, it is not surprising that many cannot connect the dots. In researching my African lines, there has not been a line where last names were constantly changed. I have been successful in finding families because they stay living in the same households or living next door to each other.

Many of us were raised in the USA school system, which we realize is very lacking due to the sugar coating of the history and Europeans’ role in enslaving African people. Today, Texas textbooks hide slavery by referring to enslaved people as workers. If we teach the younger generations correctly, we would not have so much ignorance and racism abound, at least I would hope.

To discover historical information, you have two options. One, digging through old records where they are available. Two, looking at books generated by University Presses, which are generally written by professors who are well versed in history. One such professor, Herbert S. Klein, Ph.D. of Columbia University in New York City, has outstanding publications. I actually own two of his books, and I must say that the books are incredibly detailed and well-sourced. This post will cover his book, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean. His second book will have to be a separate post as it will help many not just in the Caribbean and South America but also those who were enslaved in the USA. Note that this is just one of many authors or documents I have in my possession or have reviewed. You can download and read the book by opening a free account on Academia.

Experimentation of Africans

Those in Puerto Rico and many other regions in the Caribbean, may advise that they cannot find their missing African ancestor. There may be a reason that this may be the case, especially if your ancestors arrived after slavery began in the Americas.

In the 1450s, Portugal had populated islands with no inhabitants off the African coast. Places like Azores, Madeira, Cape Verde Islands, and São Tomé. This is where the experimentations started with using Africans on sugar plantations. It is documented that even for the wealthiest Europeans during the 1500s that they held few enslaved people and that in Portugal it was unheard of and considered out of the norm to have 15 enslaved Africans.

What is critical to know was that those who descend from individuals of the Canary Islands will be surprised to discover that they were also enslaved along with Africans off the coast of Africa by the Portuguese. Portugal imported Guanches along with West Africans in the early 1400s to work in Madeira as the sugar industry took hold. By the 1450s, sugar from Madeira was being produced and exported to Europe and sold on the London market. In 1500, there were at least 80 sugar mills in Madeira. The largest plantation had at least 80 slaves that were a combination of Guanches, Moors from Spain, and West Africans.

Madeira was outdistanced by the Canary Islands when it came to producing sugar and they were milling about 50 tons annually. Lastly, on Madiera, there were more slave masters than plantations. By the 1550s, in Sao Tome, there were sixty mills and about 2,000 slaves living on plantations. Keep in mind that the mixing of Guanches, Moors, and West Africans were still occurring on these sugar plantations.

When we look at more recent history, we realize that places like Haiti (Saint Domingue) and Brazil had more enslaved labor force on their sugar plantation as they dominated the sugar production. It is like we are seeing what we would call in the technology world as a “proof of concept” when looking at how Madeira, São Tomé, the Azores, Cape Verde, and the Canary Islands had smaller plantations.

Keeping this all in mind, potentially we are looking at many options of where ancestors made the connection with Africans. It could have been the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, or even in Portugal or Spain as enslaved Africans were being taken to both European countries prior to Europeans getting lost at sea and locating the Caribbean.

The very first ones that were brought over to the Americas were those that came from European cities or had been Europeanized and referred to as ladinos. The ladinos were to sail with explorers and settlers (their captors) to the Americas and would be the first ones to step on American soil as enslaved people.

Portugal

Portugal didn’t immediately get into transporting enslaved people nor was it their goal. Their goal was to get as much gold as possible since it was scarce in Europe. In reality, slavery was a well-established institution and existed in many societies across the globe. There had been many agricultural slaves that existed prior to them being sent to the Americas.

We had the Wolof states that had a well-established slave system along the Niger River Valley in the Songhay Empire where several thousand slaves were producing wheat, rice, and many other crops to support their military food and also sold via caravans crossing the Sahara Dessert.

Slavery existed in the western Sudanese gold mines and the Sahara salt works of Teghaza. Then in East Africa, some plantations had enslaved people near Malindi, Mombasa and even Madagascar.

Initially, Portugal was interested in gold and in order to obtain gold, they had to trade enslaved people along the African coast with African kingdoms. We reference 1444 as the year of the first Africans being shipped to Portugal because the documentation exists but it may have been occurring prior to this documented year, we just will never know.

Prior to 1500, Portugal was shipping out about 1,000 enslaved Africans annually but then in 1500, things changed. The change was caused by the settlements created off the coast of Africa in Sao Tome with the trade relations with the Kingdom of the Kongo. The Kongolese located near the Zaire River sought close relations with the Portuguese and tried to control trades. This all occurred as Spain proceeded in the destruction of the Arawak, Taino, and Carib people in the Caribbean which led to the need of exporting Africans at a higher rate.

The first to be brought to the Americas were those on the islands from plantations in Madeira and Sao Tome with about 2,000 being shipped out and known as bozales. So potentially many in the Americas may descend from these individuals with an admixture that is more complex before they arrived. At one point, there were approximately 6,000 enslaved Africans held in slave pens that were to be transported to Europe and the Americas due to the decline of the sugar industry in São Tomé.

Food for thought…

In 1630, the city of Lisbon in Portugal had an estimated 15,000 enslaved Africans. In addition, there were neighborhoods with about 2,000 free Africans or African descendants that lived in the city. When I think of the potential of having “pardos“, could they have also contributed to those enslaved or freed in the Caribbean and throughout the Americas? Think of the volume of enslaved people well prior to the St. James settlement.

This is just a tiny summary of what the first chapter in this book covers and it is definitely worth the read as we continue to seek our ancestors in the maze of enslavement. I plan to provide more information I have but didn’t want to make this post a novel. I am more determined than ever to locate who they were and how I connect to many Black Americans from the southern US as well as uncovering all of the atrocities done to our ancestors. There are many documents and books I’ve touched but I must say that this book alone is a great resource and hope that many will download and read it since it is free.

Thanks to DNA we are providing an ability to try and connect to our past.

References

Klein, H. S. (1986). African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean. New York: Oxford University Press.

Portal de Archivos Españoles. (2008, June 1). Portal de Archivos Españoles. Retrieved from PARES: http://pares.mcu.es/