European countries
Europe
See also: Afro-European
Some European countries make it illegal to collect demographic census information based on ethnicity or ancestry (e.g. France), but some others do query along racial lines (e.g. the UK). Of 42 countries surveyed by a European Commission against Racism and Intolerance study in 2007, it was found that 29 collected official statistics on country of birth, 37 on citizenship, 24 on religion, 26 on language, 6 on country of birth of parents, and 22 on nationality or ethnicity.
African Diaspora in European Countries
United Kingdom
Main article: Black British
There are about 2 million people identifying as Black British (not including British Mixed), among which are Afro-Caribbeans. They live mostly in urban areas in England.
France
See also: Blacks in France
Estimates of 2 to 3 million of African descent, although one quarter of the Afro-French population live in overseas territories. This number is difficult to estimate because the French census does not use race as a category for ideological reasons.[108]
Netherlands
See also: Afro-Dutch
There are an estimated 500,000 black people in the Netherlands and the Dutch Antilles. They mainly live in the islands of Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao and Saint Martin, the latter of which is also partly French-controlled. Many Afro-Dutch people reside in the Netherlands.
Germany
See also: Afro-Germans
As of 2005, there were approximately 500,000 Afro-Germans (not including those of mixed ethnicity). This number is difficult to estimate because the German census does not use race as a category.
Spain
See also: Afro-Spaniards
As of 2016, there were 1,045,120 Africans. They mainly live in the regions of Andalusia, Catalonia, Madrid and the Canaries.
Abkhazia
Main article: Afro-Abkhazians
Some blacks of unknown origin once inhabited southern Abkhazia; today, they have been assimilated into the Abkhaz population.
Romania[edit]
Main article: Afro-Romanian
Around 145,600 people of African descendants are living in Romania.[citation needed]
Eurasia[edit]
Russia
Main article: Afro-Russians
The first blacks in Russia were the result of the slave trade of the Ottoman Empire[109] and their descendants still live on the coasts of the Black Sea. Czar Peter the Great was advised by his friend Lefort to bring in Africans to Russia for hard labor. Alexander Pushkin‘s great grandfather was the African princeling Abram Petrovich Gannibal, who became Peter’s protégé, was educated as a military engineer in France, and eventually became general-en-chef, responsible for the building of sea forts and canals in Russia.
During the 1930s fifteen Black American families moved to the Soviet Union as agricultural experts.[112] As African states became independent in the 1960s, the Soviet Union offered their citizens the chance to study in Russia; over 40 years, 400,000 African students came, and some settled there.[109][113]
Turkey
Main article: Afro-Turks
Afro Turks are people of Zanj (Bantu) descent in Turkey. Like the Afro-Abkhazians, they trace their origin to the Ottoman slave trade. Beginning several centuries ago, a number of Africans, usually via Zanzibar as Zanj and from places such as Niger, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Kenya and Sudan,[114] came to the Ottoman Empire settled by the Dalaman, Menderes and Gediz valleys, Manavgat, and Çukurova. African quarters of 19th-century İzmir, including Sabırtaşı, Dolapkuyu, Tamaşalık, İkiçeşmelik, and Ballıkuyu, are mentioned in contemporary records.[115]
There are a number of communities in South Asia that are descended from African slaves, traders or soldiers.[116] These communities are the Siddi, Sheedi, Makrani and Sri Lanka Kaffirs. In some cases, they became very prominent, such as Jamal-ud-Din Yaqut, Hoshu Sheedi or the rulers of Janjira State. The Mauritian creole people are the descendants of African slaves similar to those in the Americas.
Some Pan-Africanists also consider other peoples as diasporic African peoples. These groups include, among others, Negritos, such as in the case of the peoples of the Malay Peninsula (Orang Asli); New Guinea (Papuans);[118] Andamanese; certain peoples of the Indian subcontinent,[119][120] and the aboriginal peoples of Melanesia and Micronesia.[121][122] Most of these claims are rejected by mainstream ethnologists as pseudoscience and pseudoanthropology, as part of ideologically motivated Afrocentrist irredentism, touted primarily among some extremist elements in the United States who do not reflect on the mainstream African-American community.[123] Mainstream anthropologists determine that the Andamanese and others are part of a network of authothonous ethnic groups present in South Asia that trace their genetic ancestry to a migratory sequence that culminated in the Australian Aboriginals rather than from Africa directly.[124][125][126] Genetic testing has shown the Andamani to belong to the Y-Chromosome Haplogroup D-M174, which is in common with Australian Aboriginals and the Ainu people of Japan rather than the actual African diaspora.
Aksumite settlers in Himyar
The Kingdom of Aksum at its height, with a presence on the Arabian peninsula outside of the African continent
The Kingdom of Aksum was an ancient empire in what is now northern Ethiopia. There were four invasions and subsequent settlements of Aksumites in Himyar, located across the Red Sea in modern-day Yemen. These invasions and settlements led to one of the first large-scale African diasporas in the ancient world.
In 517 AD, the Himyarite king Ma’adikarib was overthrown by Dhu Nuwas, a Jewish leader who began persecuting Christians and confiscating trade goods between Aksum and the Byzantine Empire, both of which were Christian nations. A man identified as Bishop Thomas journeyed to Aksum to report on the persecution of Christians in Himyar to the Aksumite Kingdom. As a result, the Aksumite king Ahayawa invaded Himyar. Dhu Nuwas fled this first invasion, and at least 580 Aksumite soldiers remained in Himyar. Himyarites who opposed Aksumite settlement united under Dhu Nuwas, and the formerly expelled king traveled back to kill the Aksumite soldiers and continue the oppression of Christians, forcing some settlers back into Aksum.
Coin of Kaleb
In response to Dhu Nuwas’s Christian persecution, the new Aksumite king Kaleb first sent a group of Himyarite refugees in his Aksumite kingdom back into Himyar to stir up underground resistance against Dhu Nuwas. These discontented Himyarites then united under nobleman Sumyafa Ashwa.[137] Kaleb successfully invaded Himyar with an Aksumite army in 525 and installed Sumyafa Ashwa to rule.[138] [139] More Aksumite soldiers remained in Himyar to claim land.[140] The Byzantine ruler Justinian learned of this development and sent an ambassador, Julianus, to ally Aksum and Himyar with the Byzantine Empire against Persia. The overtures made by the Byzantine Empire to influence Himyar demonstrate that the Aksumite settlers in Himyar, due to their sustained residence and political organization, constituted a “stable community in exile,” which historian Carlton Wilson deems a necessary condition to classify a settlement as a diaspora.[141] Justinian had two wishes for this proposed alliance: first, for Aksum to purchase and distribute Indian silk to the Byzantine Empire to undermine Persia economically, and second, for Aksum-ruled Himyar to invade Persia, led by the general Caisus. Both of these plans failed, as Persia’s proximity to India made the interruption of their silk trade impossible, and neither Himyar nor Aksum saw value in attacking an adversary that was both stronger and far too distant. Caisus was also responsible for killing a relative of Sumyafa Ashwa’s, making Aksumites unwilling to go into battle under him.[142]
A third invasion was prompted by a rebellion of Aksumite soldiers between 532 and 535,[143] led by the former slave[140] and Aksumite commander[143] Abreha, against Sumyafa Ashwa. Kaleb sent 3,000 soldiers to quell this rebellion, led by one of his relatives, but these soldiers joined Abreha’s rebellion upon arrival and killed Kaleb’s relative. Kaleb sent reinforcements in another attempt to end the rebellion, but his soldiers were defeated and forced to turn around. Following Kaleb’s death, Abreha paid tribute to Aksum to reinforce Himyar’s independence.[140] The new Himyarite nation consisted of several thousand Aksumite emigrants, serving as one of the earliest examples of a large-scale movement of tropical Africans outside of the continent. Just a century later, Aksum’s relationship to this southwestern part of the Arabian peninsula would be pivotal to the introduction of Islam at Mecca and Yathrib (Medina), as evidenced by the naming of Bilal,[144] an Ethiopian,[145] as the first muezzin, and the flight of some of Muhammad’s earliest followers from Mecca to Askum.[146]
