Creole peoples

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For the languages, see Creole language

The term Creole and its cognates in other languages — such as crioulo, criollo, créole, kriolu, criol, kreyol, kriulo, kriol, krio, etc. — have been applied to people in different countries and epochs, with rather different meanings.

Those terms are almost always used in the general area of present or former European colonies in other continents, and originally referred to locally-born people with European ancestry. However, this original meaning has often changed over the last five centuries, and in many cases the term has come to designate some distinct local ethnic group — often, but not always, of mixed European and native ancestry.

1 Crioulos in Africa
2 Spanish American Criollos
3 Brazilian Crioulos
4 Philippine Criollos (Insulares)
5 Louisiana Creoles
6 Alaska Creoles
7 Caribbean Creoles
8 Indian Ocean Creoles
9 See also
10 External links

[edit] Crioulos in Africa

The English word creole apparently came from the French créole, which in turn came from Portuguese crioulo. This word, a derivative of the verb criar ("to raise"), was coined in the 15th century, in the trading and military outposts established by Portugal in West Africa and Cape Verde. It was originally applied to descendants of the Portuguese settlers who were born and "raised" locally. The word then spread to other languages, probably by the Portuguese slave traders who supplied most of the slaves to South America through the 16th century.

While the Portuguese may have originally reserved the term crioulo to people of strictly European descent, the crioulo population eventually came to be dominated by people of mixed Portuguese and African ancestry. This mixing happened relatively quickly in most Portuguese colonies of the time, due to the scarcity of Portuguese-born women in the settlements, and to a Portuguese Crown policy of encouraging mixed marriages in the colonies.

These crioulos of mixed Portuguese and African descent eventually gave rise to several major ethnic groups in Africa, especially in Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé e Príncipe, Ziguinchor, Angola, Mozambique. However, only a few of these groups have retained the name Crioulo or variations thereof:

Cape Verde: the dominant ethnic group, called Krioulus or Kriols in the local dialects
Guinea-Bissau: Crioulos
São Tomé and Príncipe: Crioulos.

[edit] Spanish American Criollos

Main article: Spanish Criollo peoples

In Spanish-speaking Latin America, the word criollo (cognate and closest equivalent of English Creole) generally refers to people of unmixed European (typically Spanish) descent born in the New World. According to the Spanish caste system, people with European and indigenous origin who possessed 1/8th or less of Amerindian ancestry, were also considered criollos (unlike people with mainly European and some black African ancestry, who were deemed to be mulatto or mixed-raced regardless of their percentage of white ancestry). In any case, the expression Spanish American criollo is only applicable to people born in the New World.

Throughout the colonial period, a caste system was effectively in force, where the local-born criollos ranked strictly lower than governing peninsulares ("born in the Iberian Peninsula"), despite both being of European ancestry. By the 19th century, this discrimination eventually led the criollo to rebel against the Spanish rule. With the support of the even lower classes — castizos, mestizos, cholos, mulattos, amerindians, zambos, and ultimately blacks — they engaged Spain in the Mexican War of Independence (1810–1821) and the South American Wars of Independence (1810–1826), which ended with the break-up of former Spanish Empire in America into a number of independent republics.

[edit] Brazilian Crioulos

In Brazil, the word crioulo for some reason came to mean dark skinned person, that is, a person of predominantly African ancestry.

African slaves were imported into the country from the 17th century until the first half of the 19th century. Due to their multiple ethnic roots and to the extension of the country, the Brazilian slaves and their descendants did not constitute a cohesive ethnic group. On the other hand, as in the Portuguese colonies in Africa, people of mixed Portuguese and African ancestry soon came to constitute a large segment of the population, in which there were no sharp class divisions based on degrees of "Africaness".

As a consequence, the term crioulo never became the name of an ethnic group. Instead it became simply a racial label, that is now considered highly offensive — roughly with the same connotations that nigger has in the US.

[edit] Philippine Criollos (Insulares)

During the colonial era of the Philippines, the Spanish term criollo was used with the same sense as in Latin America, namely person born in the Philippines with wholly Spanish ancestry. However, the term was not widely used, and instead were more commonly called insulares ("from the islands"), to contrast them with the higher-ranking peninsulares born on the Iberian Peninsula. However, the most common term was filipinos ("from the Philippines").

The meaning of filipino changed drastically during the Philippine Revolution. It was adopted by nationalist movements and transformed into a national designation that encompassed the entire population of the Philippines, especially the descendants of the native Austronesian peoples. In fact, the meaning of Filipino today is the opposite of its colonial meaning, since it tends to exclude the 3.6% mestizos of mixed Spanish descent, who are seen, and often regard themselves, as foreigners; as well as the non-mixed criollos, who have always been an even smaller group, and today number only 17,000 (0.02%) amid a total population of almost 90 million.

[edit] Louisiana Creoles

Main article: Louisiana Creole people

In the US, the word "Creole" usually refers to people of any race or mixture thereof who are descended from settlers in colonial French Louisiana before it became part of the USA in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase. Some writers from other parts of the USA have mistakenly assumed the term to refer only to people of mixed racial descent, but this is not the traditional Louisiana usage. It is now accepted that Creole is a broad cultural group of people of all races who share a French or Spanish background. Louisianans who identify themselves as "Creole" are most commonly from historically Francophone communities with some ancestors who came to Louisiana either directly from France or via the French colonies in the Caribbean. (Those descended from the Acadians of French Canada are more likely to identify themselves as Cajun than Creole.) The term is also often used to mean simply "pertaining to New Orleans".

[edit] Alaska Creoles

People of mixed Native American (especially Alaskan) and European (esp. Russian) ancestry. The intermingling of promyshleniki men and Aleut women in the late 18th century gave rise to a people who assumed a prominent position in the economy of fur trading in the northern Pacific.

[edit] Caribbean Creoles

In the Caribbean region, the term Creole is sometimes used to describe anyone, regardless of race or ethnicity, who was born and raised in the region. It is sometimes used to refer to persons of European, African, or mixed Afro-European descent, in contradistinction to other ethnicities such as East Indians in Trinidad and Guyana, or Metizos in Belize. It also refers to the syncretism of the various cultures (African, French, British and Spanish among others) which influenced the area. This is also referred to as the creolization of society "due to its ability to suggest some of the complex sociocultural issues also involved in the process" (Manuel, p. 14).

[edit] Indian Ocean Creoles

In Mauritius, in the Indian ocean, the term denotes someone whose ancestry is so mixed that they don't belong to the other categories (small white, big white, Indian, Chinese, and so on).

In Reunion island, creole is a more inclusive term that denotes all those born on the island.