Afro-Jamaican Origins - Part 3

This week's article will elaborate on the people that Jamaicans span from to provide a bit of background on our roots.

Below is a table that specifies what regions the percentage of enslaved Africans that arrived in Jamaica between 1700-1800 were exported from. This table will be used as a guide of which African people's most likely account for the majority of Jamaican African genetics.

Region of embarkment (1701-1800) Percentage

Bight of Biafra (Igbo, Ibibio)*1 31.9

Gold Coast (Asante, Fante Akan) 29.5

West-central Africa (Kongo, Mbundu) 15.2

Bight of Benin (Yoruba, Ewe, Fon, Allada

and Mahi) 10.1

Windward Coast (Mande, Kru) 4.8

Sierra Leone (Mende, Temne) 3.8

Southeast Africa 0.1

Unknown 4.6

The Igbo

Modern day Igbo live primarily in Southeastern Nigeria. Vestiges of Igbo culture may be found in Jamaican patois – the word used for you “unu”, is also still used in the Igbo native language, also called Igbo.

Son of the late Eze Nri at Oreri, wearing a Benin-style bronze pectoral mask

Photo: Thurstan shaw, 1960

The Nri people were a subgroup of the Igbo people. Eze Nri is the title given to the ruler of the Kingdom of Nri. The Eze Nri was a priest-king that held ritual, religious and mystic power, rather than a typical king that held military power.

Examples of scarification patterns

Photo: Somadina Obiejesi, Pinterest

An Igbo woman from Nibo, present-day Anambra State, Nigeria

Photo: Northcote Thomas, 1911

The uri body art of a lady who may be from Isuochi

Photo: G.I. Jones, 1930s

a man from Nsukwa (Nchukwa), a western Igbo community in the Enuani area of modern-day Delta State, Nigeria.

Photo: Northcote Thomas, 1913

Titled igbo woman with full-face ichi marks from Iwollo.

Photo: Herbert Cole

An Igbo girl from Nibo

Photo: Northcote Thomas, 1911

A child in Isua in modern-day Edo State, Nigeria

Photo: Northcote Thomas, 1909

Igbo before the 1940s

Photo: Ukpuru

Many thanks to Somadina Obiejesi for his Ibgo Cultural Archive and Ukpuru, sourcing these pictures would have been much more difficult and time consuming without their pages.

Ibibio

Modern day Ibibio are regarded as coastal people and live in Sothern Nigeria (Heath, 2010). The Ibibio are said to be the earliest inhabitants of the region, arriving at their present home at ~ 7000BC from present day Cameroon.

Asante

Image: Asantehene Prempeh I and Queenmother

Pinterest

Asante or Asante (meaning warlike) form part of the Akan ethnic group and are native to the Asante Region of modern-day Ghana. Wealthy and gold-rich, the Asante people developed the Asante Empire in 1670. The Asante fought four wars against the British between 1823 and 1896 and played a large part in the slave trade.

Ashanti Chief and fellows

Photo: Alamy

Ashanti Warriors, 1897

Photo: Unknown

Indigenous people from the Gold Coast

Photo: Ghana Rising, Photographer unknown, date unknown

Freed slaves in Kumase

Photo: Ghana Rising, Photographer unknown, date unknown

Fante Akan

Fante Akan, or simply Fante (or Mfantsefo) are part of the Akan ethnicity and are mainly found in the central coastal region of Ghana, with a minority in the Ivory Coast. The name of the subgroup came from their separation from the Bono people, Fante being derived from “Fa-atsew”, meaning “half that left”. When the Portuguese initially arrived in the 15th century, the Fante prevented them from venturing further inland.

Kongo

The Kongo or Bakongo people are part of the Bantu ethnicity and historically lived along the Atlantic coast of Central Africa (4). The Kongo people were amongst the earliest sub-Saharan Africans to welcome Portugeese traders in 1482/3. They were also some of the earliest people to protest Portugeese slavery of black people and sent multiple protests to the King of Portugal throughout the early 16th century. Despite their earlier opposition, they succumbed to the demand for slaves in the later century and would become a major part of slave raiding and trading to the Europeans in the 17th and 18th century (4).

Mbundu

The Mbundu or Ambundu were from modern day Angola and were also of the Bantu ethnicity (1 – El Fasi General History of Africa, XX). The territories and kingdoms of the Ambundu: Matamba, NDongo and Kisama were vassals of the Kingdom of Kongo. The kingdoms were heavily involved in slave exportation to the Portugeese up until the 19th century when slavery declined and would later completely succumb to the Portugeese who subjugated them and consolidated them into the Portuguese colony of Angola in the 20th century.

The Yoruba

The Yoruba are one of the largest ethnic groups in modern day Nigeria. Like many of the other ethnicities detailed here, the Yoruba traded with the Europeans for the purchase of guns and would in the coming centuries be colonised. The Yoruba people were exported as slaves to countries such as the US, Cuba, Trinidad, Brazil, Grenada, Jamaica and other Caribbean islands.

The Ewe

Ewe people are primarily located in coastal West Africa around the Mono River at the Togo and Benin border. As is the case with many ethnicities, they were victims of slave raiding and trading, as well as being slave raiders and sellers themselves; Being more politically segmented due to a chiefdom structure, the Ewe people would fight amongst themselves as well as other regions such as Asanteland, and sell their captives as slaves. Following the abolishment of slave trade, the economy shifted away from slavery to palm oil and copra.

The Fon

The Fon people are the largest ethnic group in Benin (formerly Dahomey), The cities built by the Fon on what was referred to by Europeans as the Slave Coast became major commercial centres for the slave trade. A significant portion of the sugar plantations in the French Caribbean were populated with slaves that came from the Slave Coast (Cornevin, 1962).

By the 1700s, the Fon had entered into the Slave trade and their coastline and ports soon became one of the largest exporters of slaves (Heath, 2010). The Fon like their kin and neighbours, raided for slaves and sold their captives into transatlantic slavery. Competition for captives, slaves and revenue amongst the African kingdoms escalated the mutual pressure and justification for it to continue. When the slave trade was abolished in Europe and The Americas, the King of Fon shifted to agricultural exports such as Palm Oil but used slaves to operate the plantations.

The Allada

The Allada were the people of the Kingdom of Arda, in what is now Southern Benin. The Arda state reached its peak in the 16th and early 17th century when it became an important source of slaves for the Europeans. Between 1640-1690, approximately 125,000 slaves were sold from Allada (Filippello, 2017). With the growth of nearby the nearby Kingdom of Dahomey, Allada’s supply of slaves was restricted, and their regional power greatly reduced. In 1724 the Kingdom would be invaded and successfully overcome by the Kingdom of Dahomey. More than 8,000 of the Kingdom’s ~200,000 people would be taken as prisoners and sold into slavery (Cornevin, 1962).

The Mahi

The Ethnonym Mahi is distributed in the literature, as the historical use of the term was as a reference to the individual communities or diverse origins that resisted the Dahomey kingdom. The term was monikered by the Dahomey royalty to collectively refer to the communities that had unified against it from the 17th to the 19th century. It would later be adopted by these communities when the French colonised the region. The Mahi are in fact made up of many peoples who still have a primary sense of identity and think of the term Mahi as their secondary identity. These peoples include the Djigbenu, Gbanlinu, Devo, Dovi and more who have become amalgamated by their joint hatred and resistance to the historic Kingdom of Dahomey (Anignikin, 2001).

Mande

The Mande are a family of ethnic groups in west Africa. The Mandinka and Malinke people, two branches of the Mande are credited with founding the largest ancient West African empires, The Ghana, Mali and Songhai Empires.

Kru

The Kru people made up ~70% of slaves taken from Africa after 1740 by the Dutch when they lost access to West Africa’s more productive slaving zones. These slaves are estimated to have made up 40% of the Dutch’s slave labour force in the Americas. Amongst the Kru slaves, there were disproportionally high numbers of women and children. (Vos, 2010)

Mende

The Mende people are one of the two largest ethnic groups in Sierra Leone and belong to the larger group of “Mande” people who live throughout West Africa. Regional warfare throughout the 19th century led to capture and sale of many Mende into slavery.

Temne

The Temne are predominantly found in Sierra Leone and are the second largest ethnic group of the region. The Temne migrated south to Sierra Leone in the 15th century to escape Fulani invasions. The Fulani were a nomadic people that were widely dispersed through Sahel and West Africa (Hawthorne, 2010). They would over the course of the next century continue to lead wars inspired by Islam and cause instability in the region (it is believed that over time, selling slaves became an additional motivator in addition to religious expansionism).

In their escape, The Temne invaded the lands of the Limba, who they would in turn force out of their lands (Appiah and Gates, 2010). This resettlement would prove to be precarious as more ethnic groups arrived in the region to escape wars and jihadist movements and as wars broke out in the region between ethnic groups.

The Futa Djallon (an Islamic state in the Guinea highlands) Jihad of the early 18th century caused major sociopolital upheaval amongst the Temne which triggered slave raids and sale into the Transatlantic Slave Trade. These wars brought European slavery and colonialism to the region, and European colonisation would put an end to the jihads and jihad states to protect their interests (Kup, 1961).