scholarly journals Origins, Admixture Dynamics, and Homogenization of the African Gene Pool in the Americas

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 1647-1656 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mateus H Gouveia ◽  
Victor Borda ◽  
Thiago P Leal ◽  
Rennan G Moreira ◽  
Andrew W Bergen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Population Differentiation ◽  
Gene Pool ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Demographic History ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
The United States ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
West Central ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
A Genome

Abstract The Transatlantic Slave Trade transported more than 9 million Africans to the Americas between the early 16th and the mid-19th centuries. We performed a genome-wide analysis using 6,267 individuals from 25 populations to infer how different African groups contributed to North-, South-American, and Caribbean populations, in the context of geographic and geopolitical factors, and compared genetic data with demographic history records of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. We observed that West-Central Africa and Western Africa-associated ancestry clusters are more prevalent in northern latitudes of the Americas, whereas the South/East Africa-associated ancestry cluster is more prevalent in southern latitudes of the Americas. This pattern results from geographic and geopolitical factors leading to population differentiation. However, there is a substantial decrease in the between-population differentiation of the African gene pool within the Americas, when compared with the regions of origin from Africa, underscoring the importance of historical factors favoring admixture between individuals with different African origins in the New World. This between-population homogenization in the Americas is consistent with the excess of West-Central Africa ancestry (the most prevalent in the Americas) in the United States and Southeast-Brazil, with respect to historical-demography expectations. We also inferred that in most of the Americas, intercontinental admixture intensification occurred between 1750 and 1850, which correlates strongly with the peak of arrivals from Africa. This study contributes with a population genetics perspective to the ongoing social, cultural, and political debate regarding ancestry, admixture, and the mestizaje process in the Americas.

scholarly journals Origins, admixture dynamics and homogenization of the African gene pool in the Americas

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mateus H. Gouveia ◽  
Victor Borda ◽  
Thiago P. Leal ◽  
Rennan G. Moreira ◽  
Andrew W. Bergen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South America ◽  
Gene Pool ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Demographic History ◽  
African Ancestry ◽  
Population Diversity ◽  
Genomic Diversity ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Historical Factors

AbstractThe Transatlantic Slave Trade transported more than 9 million Africans to the Americas between the early 16th and the mid-19th centuries. We performed genome-wide analysis of 6,267 individuals from 22 populations and observed an enrichment in West-African ancestry in northern latitudes of the Americas, whereas South/East African ancestry is more prevalent in southern South-America. This pattern results from distinct geographic and geopolitical factors leading to population differentiation. However, we observed a decrease of 68% in the African gene pool between-population diversity within the Americas when compared to the regions of origin from Africa, underscoring the importance of historical factors favoring admixture between individuals with different African origins in the New World. This is consistent with the excess of West-Central Africa ancestry (the most prevalent in the Americas) in the US and Southeast-Brazil, respect to historical-demography expectations. Also, in most of the Americas, admixture intensification occurred between 1,750 and 1,850, which correlates strongly with the peak of arrivals from Africa. This study contributes with a population genetics perspective to the ongoing social, cultural and political debate regarding ancestry, race, and admixture in the Americas.Significance StatementDifferently from most genetic studies, that have estimated the overall African ancestry in the Americas, we perform a finer geographic analysis and infer how different African groups contributed to North-, South-American and Caribbean populations, in the context of geographic and geopolitical factors. We also perform a formal comparison of information from demographic history records of the Transatlantic Slave Trade with inferences based on genomic diversity of current populations. Our approach reveals the distinct regional African ancestry roots of different populations from North-, South-America and the Caribe and other important aspects of the historical process of mestizaje and its dynamics in the American continent.

Africa, Slavery, and the Slave Trade, Mid-Seventeenth to Mid-Eighteenth Centuries

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Eltis
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
The South ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
The Third ◽  
West Central ◽  
Major Supplier

Which of the major components of the Atlantic world — the Americas, Africa, and Europe — was most immediately affected by the integration of the Old and New Worlds that Columbian contact triggered? On epidemiological grounds alone the Americas would be the choice of most scholars, with Europe, at least prior to the eighteenth century, the least affected. In terms of dramatic economic, demographic, and social consequences of the early stages of Atlantic integration, Africa lies somewhere between the two. Yet if we shift the focus to changes in the nature and size of connections between the continents as opposed to changes within them, the most striking developments between the 1640s and the 1770s relate to Africa, not Europe or the Americas. The Slave Coast was a major supplier of slaves to transatlantic markets. West Central Africa, by far the largest supplier of slaves to the Americas, experienced two diasporas. Captives from the northern ports went to the colonies of northern Europeans, those from Luanda and Benguela in the south went to Brazil. By the end of the third quarter of the eighteenth century, the transatlantic slave trade was close to the highest level it was ever to attain.

The United States and the Contraband Slave Trade to Brazil, 1831–1856

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonardo Marques
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Slave Traders

Chapter 5 discusses the forms of U.S. participation in the transatlantic slave trade to Brazil during the illegal era. It shows how Portuguese and Brazilian slave traders employed multiple U.S. resources in the traffic and the political tensions generated by the multiple forms of U.S. participation in the slave trade.

Revolution

Atlantic Wars ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 252-273
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Plank
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
The United States ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
The Common ◽  
Moral Superiority

Chapter 11 traces the common origins and consequences of revolutions in various regions of the Atlantic world. In Europe and much of the Americas, a new military ethic developed, promoting patriotic and loyal service and condemning mercenaries and foreign interventionists. Campaigners against the transatlantic slave trade sought to dissociate Europeans and Americans from African violence. In the Americas, revolutionary conflict fuelled racial and communal animosity. Revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries sensed their own moral superiority and showed contempt for their opponents. Anger, fear, and the desire for vengeance fed on each other, in some places leading to genocidal violence. In the early nineteenth century the United States condemned British aid to indigenous American warriors and expressed general opposition to European military intervention in the newly independent American republics. National and imperial policies adopted in the revolutionary era broke the early modern pattern of transatlantic war.

British Antislavery and West Africa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Padraic Scanlan
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Black People ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Christian Teaching ◽  
Slave Ships ◽  
The 19Th Century

Resistance to slavery within African societies was as complex and heterogeneous as slavery itself. For enslaved Africans and their descendants taken by force to Europe’s colonies in the Americas, antislavery was an existential struggle. Among European states, Britain was among the first imperial powers to pass laws abolishing its slave trade (in 1807) and slavery in its colonies (in 1833). Antislavery was a transnational phenomenon, but Britain made suppressing the Atlantic slave trade an element of its foreign policy, employing a Royal Navy squadron to search for slave ships, pressing African leaders to sign anti-slave-trade treaties as a condition of trade and coordinating an international network of anti-slave-trade courts. And yet, for many leading British abolitionists, “Africa” was an ideological sandbox—an imagined blank space for speculation and experiment on the development of human societies and the progress of “civilization.” In the 18th century, early British critics of the transatlantic slave trade argued that “Africa” presented an unparalleled commercial and imperial opportunity. Although the slave trade—and the plantations in the Americas that slave ships supplied with labor—were profitable, some argued that slave-trading regions could, with enough investment, produce goods and commodities that would be many times more lucrative. Moreover, if Britain were the first European power to abolish the slave trade, it might also be among the first to gain a territorial foothold on African soil. Over time, these arguments coalesced into the concept of “legitimate commerce.” A combination of Christian teaching, slave-trade suppression, and commercial incentives would persuade slave-trading polities to give up the practice and instead produce other goods. Legitimate commerce intertwined with a theory of civilization that held that any society that enslaved people was so degenerate in its social development that nearly any reform or intervention was justifiable. By the end of the 19th century, antislavery became a justification for European conquest. There were at least three broad reform projects launched by British officials and merchants in Africa in the name of antislavery. First, drawing on critiques of the slave trade from the 18th century that emphasized the commercial potential of legitimate commerce, antislavery activists and politicians argued for replacing the slave trade with new kinds of export-oriented commerce. Second, in two colonies, Sierra Leone and Liberia, Britain and the United States experimented with the possibility of using Black people from the African diaspora as settlers and missionaries. In Sierra Leone, more than seventy thousand people, usually known as “Liberated Africans,” were repatriated from slave ships into the small colony. Third, in the mid-19th century, as the transatlantic slave trade declined, Britain and other European powers invested heavily in African plantation agriculture, particularly in cotton and palm oil monocrops.

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