The Commonwealth diaspora is the group of people whose ancestry traces back to countries in the Commonwealth of Nations, a group mainly consisting of former British colonies. [a]
The Commonwealth diaspora is the group of people whose ancestry traces back to countries in the Commonwealth of Nations, a group mainly consisting of former British colonies. [a]
The British Empire enabled a substantial amount of commercial migration; for example, 1.5 million Indian merchants are estimated to have gone abroad in the 19th century. [2] Preferential access to trade with other British colonies, as well as new commercial opportunities unlocked within India by railways and markets established by the British, influenced this migration flow. [3] Indian migrants played a significant role in the expansion of the British Empire, though at times involuntarily, as in the case of many indentured servants or exiled criminals. [4]
In the aftermath of World War 2 and the rapid breakup of the British Empire, Britain invited Commonwealth citizens to immigrate to Britain as part of the post-war rebuilding of the nation. [5] Many of these immigrants faced significant racism. [6] [7] Restrictions on Commonwealth migration to Britain later emerged with the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962. [8]
Inter-Commonwealth migration began to slow down in general, as recently liberated countries began to develop a greater sense of national identity and desire to limit foreign influences in general. [9]
The Commonwealth diaspora in Britain in particular has been identified as a potential asset, allowing Britain to make economic and other connections to other Commonwealth countries, which has been a particularly relevant topic of discussion as Britain charts its post-Brexit future and decides which groupings of countries to focus on working with (such as with the European Union). [10] [11] [12]
Immigration between Commonwealth countries, which makes up half of all Commonwealth migration, has played a significant role in linking Commonwealth countries together economically and culturally. [13]
The British royalty have previously hosted events commemorating this diaspora. [14]
The English language has played a role in facilitating migration within the Commonwealth. [15]
Various groups in the Commonwealth diaspora, such as Caribbean diasporas, [16] [17] have been noted for being bound together by the sport of cricket, [18] [19] as well as introducing cricket to a number of countries, such as Canada and the United States. [20] [21]
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was the largest empire in history and, for a century, was the foremost global power. By 1913, the British Empire held sway over 412 million people, 23 percent of the world population at the time, and by 1920, it covered 35.5 million km2 (13.7 million sq mi), 24 per cent of the Earth's total land area. As a result, its constitutional, legal, linguistic, and cultural legacy is widespread. At the peak of its power, it was described as "the empire on which the sun never sets", as the sun was always shining on at least one of its territories.
A diaspora is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of origin. The word is used in reference to people who identify with a specific geographic location, but currently reside elsewhere.
The globalAfrican diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from people from Africa, predominantly in the Americas. The African populations in the Americas are descended from haplogroup L genetic groups of native Africans. The term most commonly refers to the descendants of the native West and Central Africans who were enslaved and shipped to the Americas via the Atlantic slave trade between the 16th and 19th centuries, with their largest populations in Brazil, the United States, Colombia and Haiti. However, the term can also be used to refer to African descendants who immigrated to other parts of the world. Scholars identify "four circulatory phases" of this migration out of Africa. The phrase African diaspora gradually entered common usage at the turn of the 21st century. The term diaspora originates from the Greek διασπορά which gained popularity in English in reference to the Jewish diaspora before being more broadly applied to other populations.
Desi also Deshi, is a loose term used to describe the peoples, cultures, and products of the Indian subcontinent and their diaspora, derived from Sanskrit देश, meaning 'land' or 'country'. Desi traces its origin to the people from the South Asian republics of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, and may also sometimes include people from Afghanistan, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.
The Anglosphere, also known as the Anglo-American world, is the Anglo-American sphere of influence, with a core group of nations that today maintain close political, diplomatic and military co-operation. While the nations included in different sources vary, the Anglosphere is usually not considered to include all countries where English is an official language, so it is not synonymous with the sphere of anglophones, though commonly included nations are those that were formerly part of the British Empire and retained the English language and English common law.
The British West Indies (BWI) were the territories in the West Indies under British rule, including Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Montserrat, the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, British Honduras, British Guiana and Trinidad and Tobago.
Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract called an "indenture", may be entered voluntarily for a prepaid lump sum, as payment for some good or service, purported eventual compensation, or debt repayment. An indenture may also be imposed involuntarily as a judicial punishment. The practice has been compared to the similar institution of slavery, although there are differences.
Anglicisation or anglicization is a form of cultural assimilation whereby something non-English becomes assimilated into or influenced by the culture of England. It can be sociocultural, in which a non-English or place adopts the English language or culture; institutional, in which institutions are influenced by those of England or the United Kingdom; or linguistic, in which a non-English term or name is altered due to the cultural influence of the English language. It can also refer to the influence of English soft power, which includes media, cuisine, popular culture, technology, business practices, laws and political systems.
African diaspora religions, also described as Afro-American religions, are a number of related beliefs that developed in the Americas in various areas of the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Southern United States. They derive from traditional African religions with some influence from other religious traditions, notably Christianity and Islam.
Indian nationality law details the conditions by which a person holds Indian nationality. The two primary pieces of legislation governing these requirements are the Constitution of the Republic of India and the Citizenship Act, 1955.
Indo-Caribbean people or Indian-Caribbean people are people in the Caribbean who trace their ancestry to the Indian subcontinent. They are descendants of the Jahaji indentured laborers from British India, who were brought by the British, Dutch, and French during the colonial era from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century. A minority of them are descendants from people who immigrated as entrepreneurs, businesspeople, merchants, engineers, doctors, religious leaders, students, and other professional occupations beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to the present.
Since 1945, immigration to the United Kingdom, controlled by British immigration law and to an extent by British nationality law, has been significant, in particular from the former territories of the British Empire and the European Union.
The Indian indenture system was a system of indentured servitude, by which more than 1.6 million workers from British India were transported to labour in European colonies, as a substitute for slave labour, following the abolition of the trade in the early 19th century. The system expanded after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833, in the French colonies in 1848, and in the Dutch Empire in 1863. British Indian indentureship lasted till the 1920s. This resulted in the development of a large South Asian diaspora in the Caribbean, Natal, East Africa, Réunion, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Fiji, as well as the growth of Indo-Caribbean, Indo-African, Indo-Mauritian, Indo-Fijian, Indo-Sri Lankan, Indo-Malaysian, and Indo-Singaporean populations.
The British diaspora consists of people of English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish, Cornish, Manx and Channel Islands ancestral descent who live outside of the United Kingdom and its Crown Dependencies.
The Commonwealth of Nations, often simply referred to as the Commonwealth, is an international association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former territories of the British Empire from which it developed. They are connected through their use of the English language and historical-cultural ties. The chief institutions of the organisation are the Commonwealth Secretariat, which focuses on intergovernmental relations, and the Commonwealth Foundation, which focuses on non-governmental relations between member nations. Numerous organisations are associated with and operate within the Commonwealth. It is known colloquially as the British Commonwealth.
The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures is a 1989 non-fiction book on postcolonialism, penned by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back was the first major theoretical account of a wide range of postcolonial texts and their relationship with bigger issues of postcolonial culture, and is said to be one of the most significant and important works published in the field of postcolonialism. The writers debate on the relationships within postcolonial works, study the mighty forces acting on words in the postcolonial text, and prove how these texts constitute a radical critique of Eurocentric notions of language and literature. First released in 1989, this book had a second edition published in 2002.
The South Asian diaspora, also known as the Desi diaspora, is the group of people whose ancestral origins lie in South Asia, but who live outside the region. There are over 44 million people in this diaspora.
Vijay Chandra Mishra is an academic, author and cultural theorist from Fiji. He is currently a professor at Murdoch University, Australia.
The Asian diaspora is the diasporic group of Asian people who live outside of the continent. There are several prominent groups within the Asian diaspora.
A colonial diaspora is a group of people that live outside of their ancestral homeland because their ancestors migrated as part of a colonial-era practice. Depending on the source, the term refers to either people originating from the colonizing group or those whose ancestors were shifted under colonial pressure.
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