We all know that post-independence and even post-abolition Latin American countries received scores of immigrants from Europe to countries like Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, and etc. Regardless of the motives- manpower or blanquiemento- they soon became a vibrant part of Latin American post-colonial society. What I am wondering is if the same event could have also been found with African immigrants? How would it be possible for free African immigrants to embark to Latin America like their European counterparts?
Plausible Free African Immigration to Latin America?
- Thread starter manitobot
- Start date
Chapman
Donor
I'd be interested to see if anyone can come up with a productive response, because I honestly can't think of one. I can't see much of any incentive for African immigrants, be they African Americans or those from Africa itself, to travel to Latin/South America. They'd face discrimination similar to (if not worse than) what they saw in their homelands, likely have to learn a new language and integrate somewhat into a new culture. The Africans already living there may or may not embrace them, but I tend to think that they wouldn't, in a fashion similar to the disconnect between African Americans and their relatives from the home continent. Other than as a cheap source of labor, which could already be found within most of these countries (especially Brazil, which kept slavery around later than many), there wouldn't be much practical use for them.
The only thing I can see that might work, and i'm not sure how you arrive there, is to have Africans already in these countries be granted Civil Rights earlier on and treated more equally. If the government(s) made it a priority to uplift former slaves, giving Africans better social mobility, you might see some immigrants taking note and deciding to make the trip. But that strikes me as quite a longshot.
The only thing I can see that might work, and i'm not sure how you arrive there, is to have Africans already in these countries be granted Civil Rights earlier on and treated more equally. If the government(s) made it a priority to uplift former slaves, giving Africans better social mobility, you might see some immigrants taking note and deciding to make the trip. But that strikes me as quite a longshot.
Spain is more extensively involved in scramble for sub Saharan Africa.
Said African country collapses into civil war post independance and it’s population is willing to move to South America because of the language ties
Said African country collapses into civil war post independance and it’s population is willing to move to South America because of the language ties
This happened OTL on a small scale, one of my ancestors was a free emigrant from Fante to Haiti in the mid 1800s. But it wasn’t common. He emigrated due to a combination of instability at home and perceived business opportunity abroad, while his choice of destination was based on Haiti being relatively friendly to black people. So to achieve more of this you would need a larger mercantile class in West Africa (not too hard as it already was happening otl) combined with some form of political instability, again not hard because we saw this OTL with the Fulani jihads and other societal disruptions. The largest changes would have to occur on the American side; making more desirable locations for immigration in terms of opportunity and/or accommodation of black people.
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unprincipled peter
Donor
immigrants have to pay for transit and settling. my understanding is that free Africans typically lead lifestyles which aren't monetary based, thus they don't accumulate funds to migrate across the seas. Plus their culture/way of life was diametrically opposite of the 'civilized white man society'. One method of African based industry (such as mineral extraction) turned the natives into indentured workers was to impose a head tax, which the natives couldn't pay (not being in the habit of accumulating money), so they were forced to enter 'voluntary' slavery. So, they wouldn't have the funds to travel, nor the desire. If they wanted to join the white man's world, they'd have worked to establish that world in their own homelands.
Many countries set up a system of a company/estate paying for transit in return for the immigrant entering a period of indentured servitude. Naturally, the system is ripe for exploitation, so you'd have to be pretty eager to migrate in order for someone to enter that arrangement. some German states forbade this system with Brazil as the coffee plantation owners were extremely exploitative to the german immigrants.
Bottom line, you need to have a situation where the Africans wanted to migrate, and a system which funds their way without being so onerous that it discourages migration.
Many countries set up a system of a company/estate paying for transit in return for the immigrant entering a period of indentured servitude. Naturally, the system is ripe for exploitation, so you'd have to be pretty eager to migrate in order for someone to enter that arrangement. some German states forbade this system with Brazil as the coffee plantation owners were extremely exploitative to the german immigrants.
Bottom line, you need to have a situation where the Africans wanted to migrate, and a system which funds their way without being so onerous that it discourages migration.
FillyofDelphi
Banned
The issue here is that, unlike the Catholic southern European immigrants who had substanital culturally similar populations to intigrate in, Africans woulden't have the same baked-in communities with actual social status to integrate into. That's because, outside Brazil, much of continental Latin America built up its economy/production based on the peonage rather than slave systems, so they never had to bring in large numbers of slaves. Not to mention, most of your free blacks post-independence are coming from English-speaking counteries with higher qualities of life (not by much, but still) than the peons in Latin America as compared to the abject poverty, say, the Sicilians were escaping from, so they have little motivation to go somewhere with a forgien language, culture, and religion just to live shittier lives.
I'd say your best bet might be a succcessful black-lead slave revolt somewhere on the coastal fringes of Brazil (Uruguay?) that Rio is willing to deem not worth the effort of retaking during the Independence struggles The state than exploits the chaos in the River Plate during the 30's and 40's to seize land and offers a "homestead" system. In that case, you could very well attract a number of free blacks from the US south and British Carribean to both create an earlier cultural/linguistic shift and set up an economic base to make it an attractive option later on.
I'd say your best bet might be a succcessful black-lead slave revolt somewhere on the coastal fringes of Brazil (Uruguay?) that Rio is willing to deem not worth the effort of retaking during the Independence struggles The state than exploits the chaos in the River Plate during the 30's and 40's to seize land and offers a "homestead" system. In that case, you could very well attract a number of free blacks from the US south and British Carribean to both create an earlier cultural/linguistic shift and set up an economic base to make it an attractive option later on.
Is there a way for Paraguay to send out an emergency call for immigrants after their disastrous Paraguayan War? Even with quite varying guesses as to the death toll, they probably lost a lot, and if things are tweaked a little more they could perhaps have lost more. Then, couldd someone have come into power who said, "This is ridiculous. We are not going to rebuild with these other Latin American foes coming into work. We are going to import African tribes who will be noble warriors to rebuild our military and our society."
It's a long shot, but stranger thigns have happened. And, there could have been some great animosity against their Latin American neighbors. Even if their losses weren't as astronomical as some claim.
It's a long shot, but stranger thigns have happened. And, there could have been some great animosity against their Latin American neighbors. Even if their losses weren't as astronomical as some claim.
I think if Sieyes had been able to take power without getting outmanuvered by Napoleon, an integrated free St.Domingue would have been possible. Sieyes and a lot of liberals were members of the Society of the Friends of Blacks after all (weird racial musings aside) and Napoleon faced a surprising amount of opposition to his decision to restore slavery considering his authoritarian rule. (EDIT: Also, even OTL he seriously considered making Touissaint Captain-General of St.Domingue and using his black army to attack the British before the war ended) There would still be a system of what was basically serfdom replacing slavery but ruled over by a mainly black/mulatto overclass. Touissiant managed to make a lot of progress in the short time he was in power considering the immense devastation of the Revolution so I don't see why ATL St.Domingue couldn't be fairly prosperous.
The relative poverty of most Africans would be a factor discouraging migration, as would be Africans' past experience of migration to the Americas being associated with a genocidal slave system, as would be the lack of political or other connections between African societies and the countries of Latin America, as would be the relatively small numbers of Africans before 1900. Maybe if there was some political unity--a Lusophone monarchy encompassing Brazil and Portuguese Africa?--you might get some migration.
1) The relative poverty thing doesn't really apply to pre-colonial Africa, where there was a large burgeoning merchant/capitalist class that only grew with the 19th century. This class was willing to migrate and travel for economic opportunity, as shown by the 19th century expansion of intra-continental trade routes, including the first ever connection of the four previously disconnected African trade arteries (West Africa, Kongo-Atlantic, Indian Ocean and Nile). EDIT: If anything the barrier here is that there is too much "open" opportunity for intracontinental trade for a West African to consider striking out on an unproven Latin American venture.
2) Past experience for Africans wasn't associated with a genocidal slave system because most Africans living in coastal countries like Ashanti, Benin, or Fante were actually enriched by the slave trade. Of course, Africans on the other end in the Americas would have had a negative experience, but they're not the ones we need to be concerned about, unless we're speaking of trying to convince Sierra Leonans or Liberians to migrate back.
3) There were plenty of cultural connections that could easily develop into political connections given initiative from either side. As an example, the town of Arrada in Benin was a minor site of Haitian tourism because Touissant Loverture was from there. A large part of the Vodou pantheon also comes from Kongo which has spurred connections there as well.
I think this is interesting and a good POD, although I think a St Dominigue that stays a French vassal will go more the route of Martinique and Guadeloupe (aka underdeveloped colonies in all but name) and I fear the de facto racism even under liberal rule would discourage immigration for all but whites.
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Was there much of a history of return migration by free Africans, including from West Africa?
Did reports of what happened to the exported Africans make it back, or influence opinion?
[QUOTE[3) There were plenty of cultural connections that could easily develop into political connections given initiative from either side. As an example, the town of Arrada in Benin was a minor site of Haitian tourism because Touissant Loverture was from there. A large part of the Vodou pantheon also comes from Kongo which has spurred connections there as well.[/QUOTE]
Agreed.
I think this is interesting and a good POD, although I think a St Dominigue that stays a French vassal will go more the route of Martinique and Guadeloupe (aka underdeveloped colonies in all but name) and I fear the de facto racism even under liberal rule would discourage immigration for all but whites.[/QUOTE]
You guys are ignoring all the returnees that radically altered West African society.
Like y'all know there are still people who identify as Cuban and Brazilian in West Africa right?
Allow all westernized Africans mixed or not who speak Spanish or Portuguese and are Catholic to migrate and get land/social and legal whiteness and you're set (they were in many ways arbiters of westernization and thus could be recoginized for their work in colonialism).
Like y'all know there are still people who identify as Cuban and Brazilian in West Africa right?
Allow all westernized Africans mixed or not who speak Spanish or Portuguese and are Catholic to migrate and get land/social and legal whiteness and you're set (they were in many ways arbiters of westernization and thus could be recoginized for their work in colonialism).
If by return migration you mean free blacks from the Western hemisphere returning to Africa, yes although it's not as well documented as I would like. You had some cases where free Africans were forcibly resettled in Africa, which is especially what happened to Jamaican Maroons who were deported to Sierra Leone. But you also had smaller scale migration of free blacks into parts of modern day Southern Nigeria, although I would have to refresh myself to remember the details. As far as I remember a significant contingent of returnees were Brazilian.
Reports did make it back because there were slaves who managed in their lifetimes to make it back to Africa. And on a larger/more significant scale, Sierra Leone and Gabon were partially settled by illegally-traded slaves that had been freed by the British and French respectively. While this did significantly affect political thought in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Fante Confederacy, I have not seen evidence to suggest that this led to an enduring negative perception of the Atlantic slave trade among most West Africans.
EDIT: You posted this just a minute before I did (and confirmed my thought that significant numbers of returnees were Brazilian), so I didn't notice but I agree with this.
I think what makes me optimistic about the PoD is that there would be a large class of black/mulatto officers and common soldiers forming a powerful interest group on the island. They would not only be very important for the French military presence against Britain and the US but the officers in particular would also hold a lot of economic power as they had transferred many plantations over to themselves. I haven't researched the topic that much but as far as I'm aware, this kind of powerful group of black citizens didn't really exist in any other French colony. Extractive plantation economies are terrible and severely retard development so I still think Haiti would be pretty undeveloped but probably more along the lines of the Deep South than historical Guadeloupe/Martinique.
Wealthy mulattos were actually a feature of French New World colonies, they existed in Guadeloupe and Martinique as well and well...look at them now. The famous black composer Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges was a wealthy mulatto from Guadeloupe who was hardly considered unusual to his contemporaries. The weirdest thing about him to contemporary French was that he moved to France to make a career instead of staying in the Caribbean to purchase a plantation of his own. A landed/wealthy mulatto class also existed in Louisiana and even survived as a distinct class from both blacks and whites after the Louisiana purchase, although they lost their economic dominance with the imposition of American white/black binary racialism. A famous example is that Beyonce is the descendant of Louisiana mulattos IIRC. In my opinion there isn't anything particularly exceptional about the mulatto class in Haiti relative to these other historical French colonies. Moreover the mulattos already owned many plantations before the revolutions but that economic power did not translate to political influence, because wealthy as they were, the French metropole was wealthier (and more importantly, had gunboats). The mulatto class wasn't that large relative to other demographics either, so they couldn't wield any power on behalf of numbers; estimates vary but the mulatto population was probably at most equal to the white population.
That's true and the mulattoes held that same status in Haiti before the revolution. I think there are two main differences here. The first is position and the second is numbers. The wealthy mulatto class was an important minority yet subordinate to whites and split with the blacks. The post-revolution Haiti elite was composed of both mulattoes and blacks (Toussaint was a black!) who had almost completely cleansed the island of the white plantation elites. Some were later invited back by Toussaint to provide technical expertise to help the plantations run but many complained that they weren't actually given the plantations themselves. The black/mulatto officer class wanted to keep control and ownership over the plantations themselves to reap the profits.The black and mulatto elites were essentially completely in control of the island in pretty much every aspect (militarily, administratively,economically etc). With the blacks included, the post-revolution elites had a very large number and training advantage against the remaining non-elite whites. Now of course, if France really wanted, they could do a huge amount of damage (as Napoleon did) but that requires brutal war to unseat the elites and the PoD is to ensure that that option isn't taken. A French governor (likely white) would probably be sent to rule (ppl were getting really mad at Toussaints insubordination) but he would have to work with the local elite to get anything done.
The issue with this is the bolded statement. Blacks and mulattos have never viewed themselves as a common interest group. The history of Haiti immediately post revolution was characterized by black/mulatto power struggles until the later 19th when mulatto power solidified, and then the Duvalier regime is often perceived as being the latest iteration of blacks/noiristes seizing power from mulattos. We don't even speak the same language. While I have made a conscious effort to speak Creole, no one else in my family speaks any Creole besides the small amount needed to communicate with domestic labor. This is despite being in a country where 95%+ of the population speaks only Creole. Mixed-race Haitians simply don't view Creolophones as being important enough to speak to. And from the black perspective the mulattos are definitely viewed as a foreign group of people, a saying in Creole "Li pale franse" literally means "He speaks French" but figuratively means "He's a pretentious piece of shit." Given the history of blacks and mulattos in Haiti to me I perceive a proposed black/mulatto power class as being like suggesting a mixed Tutsi/Hutu upper class.
That's interesting. Still, ever since the beginning of colonialism there was a lot of commercial exchange between Latin American and African ports, thus, we cannot simply presume that all migration to the Americas wasn't unfree, there certainly were some punctual examples of people migrating here and there due to business connections.
There's one Brazilian book from the 1920's called As Religiões no Rio which talks about how Camdomble priests went to Nigeria to study African religions.
As for AHC I won't take it. I don't think that there's enough of a population surplus in Africa back in the 1800's.
The best scenario is to have the Arab-Berber states of North Africa discover America.
A Jihadist force of Berbers, Arabs and possibly some African auxiliaries could have crossed the Atlantic to make war on the Aztecs, possibly with the help of Mexican Tlaxcala allies. What a bizarre battle that would be!
The southern countries were more or less successful at the time. While they weren't especially progressive in their views they were mostly, at least (and especially)Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, tended to care more about how much money you had than anything else. It was less racial discrimination and more "my culture is supwrios to yours). So if a small but successful african immigration can start then they can serve as a figurative "beach head" for more immigration.
Some countries like Argentina while nominally wanting european (northern to be precise) immigration didn't give much of a fuck about where their workers came from as long as they kept quiet and worked without complaining.
Some countries like Argentina while nominally wanting european (northern to be precise) immigration didn't give much of a fuck about where their workers came from as long as they kept quiet and worked without complaining.