a Ancestral Diaspora b Estimated aboriginal population All population figures are estimates
Black Bermudians, African Bermudians, Afro-Bermudians or Bermudians of African descent, are Bermudians with any appreciable Black African ancestry. The population descends from Africans who arrived in Bermuda during the 17th century as indentured servants and slaves, mostly via Spanish, or former Spanish, territories or Spanish and other ships wrecked at Bermuda or captured by Bermuda-based privateers.
The first influx of blacks in any numbers came in the mid-17th century, when free blacks, most presumably Spanish-speaking Catholics, chose to immigrate to the Bermuda from former Spanish West Indian colonies that were captured by England and incorporated into its growing empire. As with most of the white settlers, few could afford the cost of their transport and so arrived as indentured servants. The continued reliance upon indentured servitude until the dissolution of the Somers Isles Company in 1684 meant that Bermuda's economy did not come to rely on slavery during the 17th century. Black and Native American slaves continued to trickle in Bermuda, however, due to privateers using the colony as a base of operations (Bermuda's utility as a base for his privateers having attracted Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, to become one of the major shareholders of the Somers Isles Company and the namesake of Warwick Parish).[6][7][8] Black and Native American slaves captured aboard enemy ships were considered property, and returned to Bermuda for sale along with ships and cargoes.[9] Bermuda was also used as a dumping ground for peoples ethnically-cleansed from their homelands by the expanse of the English Empire. This included particularly Algonquian peoples from New England, such as Pequots and Wampanoags, and native Irish Gaels, following the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. All of these peoples were shipped to Bermuda and sold into bondage. Whites (excluding the Irish) remained the majority in Bermuda at the end of the 17th century. Although fears of blacks and Irish especially led to the discouragement of black immigration, the prohibition of the importation of Irish, and continual efforts to encourage slave-owners to export their slaves and free non-whites to emigrate or risk enslavement, the blacks, Irish, Native Americans, and some part of the white Anglos merged into a single demographic during the course of the 18th century which was known as coloured (anyone who was not entirely white).[10]
Intermarriage and extramarital relationships between the coloured and white populations continued to shift the ratio of coloured to white Bermudians as a child of a coloured and a white parent was generally considered coloured. By the 19th century the coloured population surpassed the white population and became Bermuda's largest ethnic group. As in the United States and Britain, the term "coloured" came to be seen as offensive in Bermuda by the mid-20th century and fell out of official use. It has been replaced by the terms "Black" and sometimes "African-Bermudian". The small numbers of Asians and other non-African minorities in Bermuda had always been included in the "coloured" demographic, but are now listed separately. Portuguese immigration since the 1840s has contributed to 10% of the current population (although Portuguese have historically been defined as a separate racial demographic group from both white and coloured Bermudians), but with only those of entirely-European extraction being considered white and anyone with any black ancestry considered black, and with considerable black immigration from the West Indies during the course of the 20th century, blacks have remained in the majority since the 19th century.[citation needed]
Currently, Bermuda's largest demographic group is black, accounting for 54% of the territory's population.[1]
Source populations and genetic research
The founder population that settled in Bermuda between 1609 and the 1630s was almost entirely English. Typical Bermudian surnames that date to the Seventeenth Century indicate that the primary area of England from which settlers were sourced during that period was East Anglia and neighbouring regions. Examples include Ingham, from Ingham, Lincolnshire, and Trimingham, from the village of Trimingham in Norfolk. This ancestry is shared today by both white and black Bermudians (the latter demographic group, as noted above, being made up of individuals of a blend of mostly African, with smaller amounts of European and Native American ancestry to various degrees). A continuous inward flow of immigrants from other parts of the British Isles, other British (or formerly British) territories, and foreign countries has added to the population over the centuries, including sustained immigration from Portuguese Atlantic islands from the 1840s, and numerous Royal Navy and British Army personnel who were discharged and remained in Bermuda to contribute to the permanent population (white and multi-racial). Since the Second World War, Bermuda's rapid development as a centre of international business has attracted many immigrants, primarily whites from Britain and North America, while many whites from Europe and elsewhere have also been attracted by work in hotels, restaurants and other areas. Most recently, immigration from the Indian sub-continent and Asia (or of persons of such descent) have been a growing segment of the population. The white population (that is, those Bermudians presumed to be entirely of European ancestry) has consequently grown more diverse. As many of these immigrants have intermarried with black Bermudians, also, they have also contributed to the diversity of black Bermudians. Although black immigration was long discouraged, immigration by blacks from the British West Indies has been sustained since the start of the 20th Century. Despite the high level of immigration sustained over the last century, the largest part of Bermuda's ancestry dates to the 17th Century founder population. No genetic study has as yet been conducted either of or including the white population of Bermuda. Although European ancestry is the largest component of Bermuda's ancestry, and those entirely of European ancestry are by far the largest mono-racial group (based on actual ancestry, rather than self-identification), whites (and the European ancestry of blacks) are often excluded when Bermuda's source populations are discussed. By example, National Geographic's Genographic Project Reference Population (Geno 2.0 Next Generation) for "Bermudian" (as of 28 June 2020) was described on its website[11] (which was taken offline after 30 June 2020[12]) as "based on samples collected from mixed populations living in Bermuda" (this was not based on a survey of even the mixed, or other-than-entirely-European population, of Bermuda, as no such survey of all of Bermuda has been carried out).
In the British West Indian islands (and also in the southern continental colonies that were to become states of the United States of America), the majority of enslaved blacks brought across the Atlantic came from West Africa (roughly between modern Senegal and Ghana). By contrast, very little of Bermuda's original black emigration came (directly or indirectly) from this area. The first blacks to arrive in Bermuda in any numbers were free blacks who came in the mid-seventeenth century from Spanish-speaking areas of the West Indies, and most of the remainder were enslaved Latin American blacks and recently enslaved Africans captured from the Spanish by Bermudian privateers or survivors of shipwrecks. As Spain and Portugal sourced most of their slaves from South-West Africa (the Portuguese through ports in modern-day Angola; the Spanish purchased most of their African slaves from Portuguese traders, and from Arabs whose slave trading was centered in Zanzibar).
This history has been well understood from the written record, and was confirmed in 2009 by the only genetic survey of Bermuda, which looked exclusively at the black population of St. David's Island (as the purpose of the study was to seek Native American haplogroups, which could be assumed to be absent from the white population) consequently showed that the African ancestry of black Bermudians (other than those resulting from recent immigration from the British West Indian islands) is largely from a band across southern Africa, from Angola to Mozambique, which is similar to what is revealed in Latin America, but distinctly different from the blacks of the British West Indies and the United States.[13]
68% of the mtDNA (maternal) lineages of the black islanders were found to be African, with the two most common being L0a and L3e, which are sourced from populations spread from Central-West to South-East Africa. These lineages represent less than 5% of the mtDNA lineages of blacks in the United States and the English-speaking West Indies. They are, however, common in Brazil and the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America. L3e, by example, is typical of !Kung-speaking populations of the Kalahari, as well as of parts of Mozambique and Nigeria. The modern nation where it represents the highest percentage of the population is actually Brazil, where it represents 21% of mtDNA lineages. 31% of the mtDNA lineages of blacks in Bermuda are West Eurasian (European), with J1c being the most common. 1% were Native American.[citation needed]
For NRY (paternal) haplogroups among black Bermudians, the study found about a third were made up of three African ones (of which E1b1a, the most common NRY haplogroup in West and Central African populations, "accounted for the vast majority of the African NRY samples (83%)" ), with the remainder (about 64.79%) being West Eurasian excepting one individual (1.88%) with a Native American NRY haplogroup Q1a3a. Of the individuals with European NRY haplogroups, more than half had R1b1b2, which is common in Europe and is found at frequencies over 75% in England and Wales. None of these percentages can be taken as equivalent to the percentage of ancestry in the black population from the specific regions as genetic drift tends to erase minority haplogroups over generations. This explains the near absence of Native American haplogroups despite the hundreds of Native Americans known to have been involuntarily brought to Bermuda in the seventeenth century.[citation needed]
↑ Smith, James E. (1976). Slavery in Bermuda. USA: Vantage Press. ISBN978-0533020430.
↑ Hollis Hallett, A. C.; Hollis Hallett, C. F. E. (2005). 19th Century Church Registers of Bermuda. Bermuda: Juniperhill Press and Bermuda Maritime Museum Press (now the National Museum of Bermuda Press). p.x. ISBN0-921992-23-8. Coloured and White: Today, the term Coloured as a racial distinction referring to the Black population is no longer used, but in the period covered by this index it was the usual term and has been retained. It is extremely doubtful that in these registers the terms Coloured and White were used exclusively for racial distinction. There are a few entries where the term Mulatto is used and one which describes the individual as a Quadroon; the ministers using those terms must have had experience in the West Indies before coming to Bermuda because the terms were frequently used there but not here. There is also an entry of the burial of a Chinese seaman which is in a Coloured register. We suspect that while the practice of trying to identify Coloured and White was in vogue, the clergy had many agonising decisions to make; it was probably to avoid these that the distinctions were abandoned later in our period. We suspect that the clergy generally made a decision whether they would describe a person as White, and the Coloured designation was used for everyone not described as White. Users of this index should not confine themselves to White or Coloured registers (where they are separated) but should look at both. They should also not take too seriously the indication 'Col.' or 'Wh.' that appears often under Comments; these were occasionally written into the margins of the register by the clergyman or parish clerk.
↑ "Genetic Ancestry and Indigenous Heritage in a Native American Descendant Community in Bermuda". By Jill B. Gaieski,1 Amanda C. Owings,1 Miguel G. Vilar,1 Matthew C. Dulik,1 David F. Gaieski,2 Rachel M. Gittelman,1 John Lindo,1 Lydia Gau,1 Theodore G. Schurr1* and The Genographic Consortium (1 = Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104; 2 = Department of Emergency Medicine, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104). AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 000:000–000 (2011). doi:10.1002/ajpa.21588 Published online in Wiley Online Library ().
Bermuda is a West Indian British Overseas Territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. The closest land outside the territory is in the American state of North Carolina, about 1,035 km (643 mi) to the west-northwest.
Black is a racialized classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid- to dark brown complexion. Not all people considered "black" have dark skin; in certain countries, often in socially based systems of racial classification in the Western world, the term "black" is used to describe persons who are perceived as dark-skinned compared to other populations. It is most commonly used for people of sub-Saharan African ancestry, Indigenous Australians and Melanesians, though it has been applied in many contexts to other groups, and is no indicator of any close ancestral relationship whatsoever. Indigenous African societies do not use the term black as a racial identity outside of influences brought by Western cultures.
Bermuda was first documented by a European in 1503 by Spanish explorer Juan de Bermúdez. In 1609, the English Virginia Company, which had established Jamestown in Virginia two years earlier, permanently settled Bermuda in the aftermath of a hurricane, when the crew and passengers of Sea Venture steered the ship onto the surrounding reef to prevent it from sinking, then landed ashore. Bermuda's first capital, St. George's, was established in 1612.
The British colonization of the Americas is the history of establishment of control, settlement, and colonization of the continents of the Americas by England, Scotland, and, after 1707, Great Britain. Colonization efforts began in the late 16th century with failed attempts by England to establish permanent colonies in the North. The first of the permanent English colonies in the Americas was established in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Colonies were established in North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Though most British colonies in the Americas eventually gained independence, some colonies have remained under Britain's jurisdiction as British Overseas Territories.
This is a demography of the population of Bermuda including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population, including changes in the demographic make-up of Bermuda over the centuries of its permanent settlement.
Miscegenation is marriage or admixture between people who are members of different races. The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms miscere and genus. The word first appeared in Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro, an anti-abolitionist pamphlet David Goodman Croly and others published anonymously in advance of the 1864 presidential election in the United States. The term came to be associated with laws that banned interracial marriage and sex, which were known as anti-miscegenation laws. These laws were overruled federally in 1967, and by the year 2000, all states had removed them from their laws, with Alabama being the last to do so on November 7, 2000. In the 21st century, newer scientific data shows that human populations are actually genetically quite similar. Studies show that races are more of an arbitrary social construct, and do not actually have a major genetic delineation.
White is a racial classification of people generally used for those of mostly European ancestry. It is also a skin color specifier, although the definition can vary depending on context, nationality, ethnicity and point of view.
Mulatto is a racial classification that refers to people of mixed African and European ancestry only, beginning in the United States of America. Its use is considered to be outdated and offensive in some countries and languages, such as English with the exceptions of some Anglophone Caribbean or West Indian countries and Dutch, but it does not have the same associations in languages such as Spanish and Portuguese. Among Latin Americans in the US, for instance, the term can be a source of pride. A mulatta is a female mulatto.
The Bermuda sloop is a historical type of fore-and-aft rigged single-masted sailing vessel developed on the islands of Bermuda in the 17th century. Such vessels originally had gaff rigs with quadrilateral sails, but evolved to use the Bermuda rig with triangular sails. Although the Bermuda sloop is often described as a development of the narrower-beamed Jamaica sloop, which dates from the 1670s, the high, raked masts and triangular sails of the Bermuda rig are rooted in a tradition of Bermudian boat design dating from the earliest decades of the 17th century. It is distinguished from other vessels with the triangular Bermuda rig, which may have multiple masts or may not have evolved in hull form from the traditional designs.
Coloureds refers to members of multiracial ethnic communities in South Africa, Namibia and to a lesser extent, Zimbabwe and Zambia who have ancestry from African, European, and Asian people. The intermixing of different races began in the Cape province of South Africa, with European settlers intermixing with the indigenous Khoi tribes, and Asian slaves of the region. Later various other European nationals also contributed to the growing mixed race people, who would later be officially classified as coloured by the apartheid government in the 1950s.
The United States has a racially and ethnically diverse population. At the federal level, race and ethnicity have been categorized separately. The most recent United States census recognized five racial categories, as well as people who belong to two or more of the racial categories. The United States also recognizes the broader notion of ethnicity. The 2000 census and 2010 American Community Survey inquired about the "ancestry" of residents, while the 2020 census allowed people to enter their "origins". The Census Bureau also classified respondents as either Hispanic or Latino, identifying as an ethnicity, which comprises the minority group in the nation.
The Gombey is an iconic symbol of Bermuda, a unique performance art full of colorful and intricate masquerade, dance and drumming. This folk tradition reflects the island's blend of Native American, African, Caribbean and British cultures.
White Latin Americans or European Latin Americans are Latin Americans of European descent.
Caribbean Americans or West Indian Americans are Americans who trace their ancestry to the Caribbean. Caribbean Americans are a multi-ethnic and multi-racial group that trace their ancestry further in time mostly to Africa, as well as Asia, the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, and to Europe. As of 2016, about 13 million — about 4% of the total U.S. population — have Caribbean ancestry.
Afro-Argentines, also known as Black Argentines, are Argentines who have predominantly or total Sub-Saharan African ancestry. The Afro-Argentine population is the result of people being brought over during the transatlantic slave trade during the centuries of Spanish domination in the region and immigration.
White Bahamians are Bahamian citizens of European ancestry, most of whom trace their ancestry back to England, Scotland and Ireland. Bahamians of European descent are sometimes called "Conchs", a term that is also applied to people of White Bahamian descent in Florida. White Bahamians were a majority in the 18th century, but now constitute less than 10% of the Bahamian population.
General Sir Reginald John Thoroton Hildyard, was a British Army officer who saw active service in the Second Boer War and the First World War. He was Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Bermuda from 1936 to 1939.
White Bermudians are Bermudians whose ancestry lies within the continent of Europe, most notably the British Isles and Portugal. At the 2016 census the number of Bermudians who identify as white was 19,466 or 31 percent of the total population.
Afro-Haitians or Black Haitians are Haitians who trace their full or partial ancestry to Sub-Saharan Africa. They form the largest racial group in Haiti and together with other Afro-Caribbean groups, the largest racial group in the region.
White Jamaicans are Jamaican people whose ancestry lies within the continent of Europe, most notably Great Britain and Ireland. There are also communities of people who are descendants of people who arrived from Spain, Germany and Portugal.
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