Regions with significant populations | |
---|---|
Bioko Island, São Tomé and Príncipe | |
Languages | |
Fernando Poo Creole English (Pichinglis), Krio, Bube, Igbo, Equatoguinean Spanish, French, Portuguese | |
Religion | |
Christianity | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Bubi, Sierra Leone Creoles, Emancipados, Saros, Americo-Liberian, African Americans, Atlantic Creoles |
The Fernandino people are creoles, multi-ethnic or multi-racial populations who developed in Equatorial Guinea (Spanish Guinea). Their name is derived from the island of Fernando Pó, where many worked. This island was named for the Portuguese explorer Fernão do Pó, credited with discovering the region.
Each population had a distinct ethnic, social, cultural and linguistic history. Members of these communities provided most of the labor that built and expanded the cocoa farming industry on Fernando Pó during the 1880s and 1890s. [1] The Fernandino of Fernando Po were closely related to each other. Because of the history of labor in this area, where workers were recruited, effectively impressed, from Freetown, Cape Coast, and Lagos, the Fernandino also had family ties to those areas. [2] Eventually these ethnically distinct groups intermarried and integrated. In 21st-century Bioko, their differences are considered marginal.
The indigenous group of Fernandinos or Los Fernandinos, were mixed-race descendants of the indigenous population of Spanish Guinea originating from the island of Fernando Pó (modern day Bioko Island), an island discovered by the explorer Fernão do Pó. This group consisted of mulattoes of black female Bubi and white male Spanish parentage, and were part of the emancipados social class. Many children from such unions were not claimed by the father; however, some couples married under Catholic law. Because the Bubi women generally were responsible for rearing and caring for their mixed-race children, they identified with and were generally accepted by the Bubi tribe.
Similarly, the Portuguese-Indigenous descended mulatto population of São Tomé and Príncipe, an island also discovered by explorer Fernão do Pó, were also referred to as Fernandinos, at one point.
Native Fernandinos spoke Equatoguinean Spanish, French, Bube and a form of pidgin English called Pichinglis. Pichinglis was brought to Fernando Pó by Efik settlers from Akwa Akpa State (known during colonial times as Calabar State) in Nigeria. The dialect was used in trade activities, and may have varied slightly per region. In Francoist Spain, this creole dialect was stigmatized.
Most Bubi living on Bioko during the colonial era became Roman Catholic. The mulatto Fernandinos were raised chiefly as Roman Catholic.
The other Fernandinos of Equatorial Guinea were descended from English-speaking freed slaves of Sierra Leone and Liberia. Essentially, Krios are descendants of blacks who were resettled from London, the Caribbean and Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Some were formerly slaves in the United States who had been freed by the British after the American Revolutionary War. They were joined by Africans liberated from the illegal slave trade by British forces after 1808.
In separate actions, supported by the American Colonization Society, groups of free African Americans emigrated to Liberia, established as a US colony in West Africa, in the antebellum years. Their numbers were also added to by Africans liberated from the slave trade along the west coast of Africa.
Workers from both Sierra Leone and especially Liberia were transported as workers to Bioko Island. As English speakers with some Anglo culture, they became a dominant force in the evolution of local society and economy and took on leadership roles. They tended to marry among themselves, as they identified as separate from the local, less educated and/or liberated indigenous peoples. The Krios eventually blended with the local populations, with Krio women and children taking on the surnames of indigenous families. They have contributed to the ethnically/racially mixed peoples who live along the West Coast of Africa.
The Krios arrived from Sierra Leone on the island of Fernando Po in 1827, a year after Great Britain leased the island for 50 years. The Krios joined an influx of several hundred freed Creole African-descended immigrants from Cape Coast and other groups from British colonies in Africa. The Krios began populating the harbor known as Clarence Cove. The first inhabitants purchased dwellings for $3,000 to $5,000, along with a handful of large plantation owners who had engaged in the cocoa and yam farming industry. This was chiefly controlled by English and Spanish factory owners. A nineteenth-century British historian characterized Krios as noted for their scholastic achievement and business acumen. [3]
The group is closely related to other West African Creole communities in Freetown, Cape Coast and Lagos. Endogamy was a common marriage practice, and families aligned themselves in order to maintain, and increase, property ownership as well as social and business alliances outside of the island. Because of this, prior to the 20th century, marriages with non-Creoles, known as bush marriages, were not recognized by the church or in estate claims. However, they were recognized socially.
Krio Fernandinos were heavily Anglophone and Protestant as well as a cultural arm of British West Africa. They were once noted as being highly xenophobic. A notable example of this was a Krio Fernandino, and son of a Scottish father, named Henry Hugh Gardner. He was beaten by Spanish police after he murdered his African-Catholic Cameroon-born common-law wife, Victoria Castellanos. At the bequest of his mother, Gardner refused to marry Castellanos because she refused religious conversion. She, then, became involved with a Catholic-convert which infuriated Gardener.
Krio Fernandinos were, initially, unimpressed and indifferent to Spanish rule. However, by the late-1800s, as Spanish cultural and religious influence grew on the island, Krio Fernandinos found that exclusively marrying into their traditional identity became less practical for political and economic survival. [4]
Throughout the generations, the Fernandinos maintained their creole language, Fernando Po Creole English (a.k.a.Pichinglis). Krio Fernandinos are exclusively concentrated around Malabo. Although they comprise a distinct ethnic group in Equatorial Guinea, their pidgin dialect is spoken in only six communities (Musola, Las Palmas, Sampaca, Basupu, Fiston and Balueri de Cristo Rey / Bottle Nose). In 1998 it was estimated that the number of fluent speakers of this Equatoguinean language was 5,000. About one-fifth of those 5,000 speakers have this Creole English as their only language. Up to 70,000 Equatoguineans may use it as a trade language. In the 21st century, Fernando Po Creole English and Pichinglis have long been fused into one dialect.
The majority of Krio Fernandinos are Christian. [5] Krios have contributed to development of the Protestant church in Bioko. Descendants of Iberian parentage tend to be Catholic.
Equatorial Guinea, officially the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, is a country on the west coast of Central Africa, with an area of 28,000 square kilometres (11,000 sq mi). Formerly the colony of Spanish Guinea, its post-independence name refers to its location near both the Equator and in the African region of Guinea. As of 2021, the country had a population of 1,468,777, over 85% of whom are members of the Fang people, the country's dominant ethnic group. The Bubi people, indigenous to Bioko, are the second largest group at approximately 6.5% of the population.
The History of Equatorial Guinea is marked by centuries of colonial domination by the Portuguese, British and Spanish colonial empires, and by the local kingdoms.
Demographic features of the population of Equatorial Guinea include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
Malabo is the capital of Equatorial Guinea and the province of Bioko Norte. It is located on the north coast of the island of Bioko. In 2018, the city had a population of approximately 297,000 inhabitants.
A Spanish creole, or Spanish-based creole language, is a creole language for which Spanish serves as its substantial lexifier.
The Bubi people are a Bantu ethnic group of Central Africa who are indigenous to Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea. Once the majority group in the region, the population experienced a sharp decline due to war and disease during Portuguese expeditions. By the end of Spanish colonial rule in the mid 20th century, and after substantial intermarriage with newly introduced populations, such as Afro-Cubans, Krio people, Portuguese people and Spaniards, the Bubi people, again, experienced a great decline in number. Seventy-five percent perished due to tribal/clan rooted political genocide during a civil war that led to Spanish Guinea's independence from Spain. This, too, sparked mass exodus from their homeland with most of the exiles and refugees immigrating into Spain. The indigenous Bubi of Bioko Island have since co-existed with non-indigenous Krio Fernandinos; and members of the Fang ethnic group, who have immigrated in large numbers from Río Muni. Once numbering approximately 3 million, the Bubi currently number around 100,000 worldwide.
Spanish Guinea was a set of insular and continental territories controlled by Spain from 1778 in the Gulf of Guinea and on the Bight of Bonny, in Central Africa. It gained independence in 1968 as Equatorial Guinea.
Sherbro Island is in the Atlantic Ocean, and is included within Bonthe District, Southern Province, Sierra Leone. The island is separated from the African mainland by the Sherbro River in the north and Sherbro Strait in the east. It is 32 miles (51 km) long and up to 15 miles (24 km) wide, covering an area of approximately 230 square miles (600 km2). The western extremity is Cape St. Ann. Bonthe, on the eastern end, is the chief port and commercial centre.
The Sierra Leonean Creole or Krio is an English-based creole language that is lingua franca and de facto national language spoken throughout the West African nation of Sierra Leone. Krio is spoken by 96 percent of the country's population, and it unites the different ethnic groups in the country, especially in their trade and social interaction with each other. Krio is the primary language of communication among Sierra Leoneans at home and abroad, and has also heavily influenced Sierra Leonean English. The language is native to the Sierra Leone Creole people, or Krios, a community of about 104,311 descendants of freed slaves from the West Indies, Canada, United States and the British Empire, and is spoken as a second language by millions of other Sierra Leoneans belonging to the country's indigenous tribes. Krio, along with English, is the official language of Sierra Leone.
Fernão do Pó, also known as Fernão Pó, Fernando Pó or Fernando Poo, was a 15th-century Portuguese navigator and explorer of the West African coast. He was the first European to see the islands in the Gulf of Guinea around 1472, one of which until the mid-1900s bore a version of his name, Fernando Pó or Fernando Poo. The island is now named Bioko and is part of Equatorial Guinea. His name had also been given to several other places in nearby Cameroon; the village of Fernando Pó, Portugal; and the village of Fernando Pó, Sierra Leone.
West African Pidgin English, also known as Guinea Coast Creole English, is a West African pidgin language lexified by English and local African languages. It originated as a language of commerce between British and African slave traders during the period of the transatlantic slave trade. As of 2017, about 75 million people in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana and Equatorial Guinea used the language.
William Napoleon Barleycorn (1848–1925), born in Santa Isabel, Fernando Po, Spanish Guinea and a Krio Fernandino of Igbo descent, was a Primitive Methodist missionary who went to Fernando Po in Africa in the early 1880s. From there, he travelled to Edinburgh University.
Equatoguinean Spanish is the variety of Spanish spoken in Equatorial Guinea. This is the only Spanish variety that holds national official status in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is regulated by the Equatoguinean Academy of the Spanish Language and is spoken by about 90% of the population, estimated at 1,170,308 for the year 2010, all of them second-language speakers.
Pichinglis, commonly referred to by its speakers as Pichi and formally known as Fernando Po Creole English (Fernandino), is an Atlantic English-lexicon creole language spoken on the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea. It is an offshoot of the Krio language of Sierra Leone, and was brought to Bioko by Krios who immigrated to the island during the colonial era in the 19th century.
The Spanish diaspora in Equatorial Guinea is made of people of Spanish descent who are residents born or living in Equatorial Guinea. The population from Spain living in Equatorial Guinea numbers an estimated 17,000. This group is closely linked with the Fernandino people, a creole people who developed Spanish Guinea and Equatorial Guinea, mostly in Bioko island.
William Allen Vivour was the single most successful 19th-century planter in Africa due to his substantial and flourishing cocoa plantation in Fernando Po. He was the son of a recaptive of Yoruba ancestry and resettled in Sierra Leone by the British West Africa Squadron, and eventually settled in present day Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria.
Maximiliano Cipriano Jones (1871–1944) was a Fernandino who became the richest black planter of the island Fernando Po, Spanish Guinea in 1929.
Sierra Leonean Americans are an ethnic group of Americans of full or partial Sierra Leonean ancestry. This includes Sierra Leone Creoles whose ancestors were African American Black Loyalists freed after fighting on the side of the British during the American Revolutionary War. Some African Americans trace their roots to indigenous enslaved Sierra Leoneans exported to the United States between the 18th and early 19th century. In particular, the Gullah people of partial Sierra Leonean ancestry, fled their owners and settled in parts of South Carolina, Georgia, and the Sea Islands, where they still retain their cultural heritage. The first wave of Sierra Leoneans to the United States, after the slavery period, was after the Sierra Leone Civil War in the 1990s and early 2000s. According to the American Community Survey, there are 34,161 Sierra Leonean immigrants living in the United States.
The Sierra Leone Creole people are an ethnic group of Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone Creole people are descendants of freed African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and Liberated African slaves who settled in the Western Area of Sierra Leone between 1787 and about 1885. The colony was established by the British, supported by abolitionists, under the Sierra Leone Company as a place for freedmen. The settlers called their new settlement Freetown. Today, the Sierra Leone Creoles are 1.2 percent of the population of Sierra Leone.
Bioko is an island 32 km (20 mi) south of the coast of Cameroon, and 160 km (99 mi) northwest of the northernmost part of mainland Equatorial Guinea. Malabo, on the north coast of the island, is the capital city of Equatorial Guinea. Its population was 335,048 at the 2015 census and it covers an area of 2,017 km2 (779 sq mi). The island is part of the Cameroon line of volcanoes and is located off the Cameroon coast, in the Bight of Biafra portion of the Gulf of Guinea. Its geology is volcanic; its highest peak is Pico Basile at 3,012 m (9,882 ft).