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Creole peoples may refer to various ethnic groups around the world. The term's meaning exhibits regional variations, often sparking debate.[1][2]
Creole peoples represent a diverse array of ethnicities, each possessing a distinct cultural identity that has been shaped over time. The emergence ofcreole languages, frequently associated with Creole ethnicity, is a separate phenomenon.[2]
In specific historical contexts, particularly during theEuropean colonial era, the termCreole applies to ethnicities formed throughlarge-scale population movements. These movements involved people from diverselinguistic andcultural backgrounds who converged upon newly establishedcolonial territories.[3][4] Often involuntarily separated from their ancestral homelands, these populations were forced to adapt and create a new way of life. Through a process of cultural amalgamation, they selectively adopted and merged desirable elements from their varied heritages. This resulted in the emergence of novel social norms, languages, and cultural practices that transcended their individual origins.[3][4][5]
This process of cultural amalgamation, termedcreolization, is characterized by rapid social change that ultimately leads to the formation of a distinct Creole identity.[6][7]
The English word creole derives from the Frenchcréole, which in turn came from Portuguesecrioulo, a diminutive ofcria meaning a person raised in one's house.Cria is derived fromcriar, meaning "to raise or bring up", itself derived from the Latincreare, meaning "to make, bring forth, produce, beget"; which is also the source of the English word "create". It originally referred to the descendants of European colonists who had been born in the colony. Creole is also known by cognates in other languages, such ascrioulo,criollo,creolo,kriolu,criol,kreyol,kreol,kriol,krio, andkriyoyo.
InLouisiana, the term Creole has been used since 1792 to represent descendants of African ormixed heritage parents as well as children of French and Spanish descent with no racial mixing.[8][9][10] Its use as in the name for languages started from 1879, while as an adjective for languages, its use began around 1748.[11]
In Spanish-speaking countries, the wordCriollo refers to the descendants of Europeans born in the Americas, but also in some countries, to describe something local or very typical of a particularLatin American region.[12]
In theCaribbean, the term broadly refers to all the people, whatever their class or ancestry — African, East Asian, European, Indian — who are part of the culture of the Caribbean.[13] InTrinidad, the term Creole is used to designate all Trinidadians except those of Asian origin. InSuriname, the term refers only to the descendants of enslaved Africans and in neighboringFrench Guiana the term refers to anyone, regardless of skin colour, who has adopted a European lifestyle.[4][13]
In Africa, the term Creole refers to any ethnic group formed during theEuropeancolonial era, with somemix of African and non-African racial or cultural heritage.[14] Creole communities are found on most African islands and along the continent's coastal regions where indigenous Africans first interacted with Europeans. As a result of these contacts, five major Creole types emerged in Africa:Portuguese,African American,Dutch,French andBritish.[14]
TheCrioulos of African or mixed Portuguese and African descent eventually gave rise to several ethnic groups inCape Verde,Guinea-Bissau,São Tomé e Príncipe,Angola andMozambique.[15] The French-speakingMauritian andSeychellois Creoles are both either African or ethnically mixed andChristianized. OnRéunion, the term Creole applies to all people born on the island,[16] while inSouth Africa, the blending of East African and Southeast Asian slaves withDutch settlers, later produced a creolized population.[17] TheFernandino Creole peoples ofEquatorial Guinea are a mix ofAfro-Cubans withEmancipados and English-speakingLiberated Africans,[18] while theAmerico-Liberians andSierra Leone Creoles resulted from the intermingling ofAfrican Recaptives withAfro-Caribbean people andAfrican Americans.[19][20]
Perhaps due to the range of divergent descriptions and lack of a coherent definition, Norwegian anthropologistT. H. Eriksen concludes:
“A Creole society, in my understanding, is based wholly or partly on the mass displacement of people who were, often involuntarily, uprooted from their original home, shedding the main features of their social and political organisations on the way, brought into sustained contact with people from other linguistic and cultural areas and obliged to develop, in creative and improvisational ways, new social and cultural forms in the new land, drawing simultaneously on traditions from their respective places of origin and on impulses resulting from the encounter.”[4]
The following ethnic groups have been historically characterized as "Creole" peoples:
Alaskan Creole, sometimes colloquially spelled "Kriol" in English (from Russian креол), are a unique people who first came about through the intermingling ofSibero-Russianpromyshlenniki men withAleut andEskimo women in the late 18th century and assumed a prominent position in the economy ofRussian America and the North Pacific Rim.[21][22][23][24]
Arkansas Creoles French roots run deep in Arkansas. It was inArkansas, near the original site ofArkansas Post, in the late seventeenth century, that Sieur de la Salle established what he imagined would be the center of French empire in North America. What actually emerged, did indeed encompass Arkansas: a vast arc of French forts and settlements, linking theGulf of Mexico to theGreat Lakes and beyond, the Northern Atlantic and France itself. French officials hoped this network of settlements and trading posts would serve as a bulwark against the expanding British settlements to the east and those of the Spanish to the south and west.
French ambitions in North America withinhistoric French Louisianacame to a grinding halt with their loss toGreat Britain in the Seven Years’ War, and although the Spanish takeover of the territory known as la Louisiane preserved many existing cultural, religious, and legal norms, most of the remaining Francophone communities disappeared after the 1803 purchase of theLouisiana Territory by theUnited States opened the door to rapid Anglo-American settlement.
But Creole culture in Arkansas persisted. French-speaking hunters and settlers, many of mixed European and indigenous ancestry, some enslaved or formerly enslaved people of African descent, continued to live and work in this region. New French-speakers continued to arrive as well, albeit in comparatively small numbers, even after Arkansas’s acquisition by the United States and annexation as a territory in 1819.[25]
Atlantic Creole is a term coined by historianIra Berlin to describe a group of people from Angola and Central Africa in the 16th and 17th centuries with cultural or ethnic ties toAfrica,Europe, and sometimes theCaribbean. Some of these people arrived in the Chesapeake Colonies as the Charter Generation ofslaves during theEuropean colonization of the Americas before 1660. Some had lived and worked in Europe or the Caribbean before coming (or being transported) to North America.[15] Examples of such men includedJohn Punch andEmanuel Driggus (his surname was likely derived fromRodrigues). Also, during the early settlement of the colonies, children born of immigrants in the colonies were often referred to as "Creole". This is found more often in the Chesapeake Colonies.[26]
In theUnited States, the words "Louisiana Creole" refers to people of any race or mixture thereof who are descended from colonial FrenchLa Louisiane and colonial SpanishLouisiana (New Spain) settlers before the Louisiana region became part of the United States in 1803 with theLouisiana Purchase. Both the word and the ethnic group derive from a similar usage, beginning in the Caribbean in the 16th century, which distinguished people born in the French, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies from the various new arrivals born in their respective, non-Caribbean homelands. Some writers from other parts of the country have mistakenly assumed the term to refer only to people of mixed racial descent, but this is not the traditionalLouisiana usage.[8][9][10][27]
In Louisiana, the term "Creole" was first used to describe people born in Louisiana, who used the term to distinguish themselves from newly arrived immigrants. It was not a racial or ethnic identifier; it was simply synonymous with "born in the New World," meant to separate native-born people of any ethnic background—white, African, or any mixture thereof—from European immigrants and slaves imported from Africa. Later, the term was racialized after newly arrived Anglo-Americans began to associate créolité, or the quality of being Creole, with racially mixed ancestry. This caused many white Creoles to eventually abandon the label out of fear that the term would lead mainstream Americans to believe them to be of racially mixed descent (and thus endanger their livelihoods or social standing). Later writers occasionally make distinctions among French Creoles (of European ancestry), Creoles of Color (of mixed ethnic ancestry), and occasionally, African Creoles (of primarily African descendant); these categories, however, are later inventions, and most primary documents from the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries make use of the word "Creole" without any additional qualifier. Creoles of Spanish and German descent also exist, and Spanish Creoles survive today asIsleños and Malagueños, both found in southern Louisiana. However, all racial categories of Creoles - from Caucasian, mixed racial, African, to Native American - tended to think and refer to themselves solely as Creole, a commonality in many otherFrancophone andIberoamerican cultures, who tend to lack strict racial separations common inUnited States History and other countries with large populations fromNorthern Europe's various cultures. This racial neutrality persists to the modern day, as many Creoles do not use race as a factor for being a part of the ethno-culture.[8][9][10]
Contemporary usage has again broadened the meaning ofLouisiana Creoles to describe a broad cultural group of people of all races who share a colonial Louisianian background. Louisianians who identify themselves as "Creole" are most commonly from historicallyFrancophone andHispanic communities. Some of their ancestors came to Louisiana directly fromFrance,Spain, orGermany, while others came via the French and Spanish colonies in theCaribbean and Canada. Many Louisiana Creole families arrived in Louisiana fromSaint-Domingue as refugees from theHaitian Revolution, along with other immigrants from Caribbean colonial centers likeSanto Domingo andHavana. The children of slaves brought primarily from Western Africa were also considered Creoles, as were children born of unions between Native Americans and non-Natives. Creole culture in Louisiana thus consists of a unique blend of European, Native American, and African cultures.
Louisianians descended from the FrenchAcadians of Canada are also Creoles in a strict sense, and there are many historical examples of people of full European ancestry and with Acadian surnames, such as the influential Alexandre and Alfred Mouton,[28] being explicitly described as "Creoles."[29] Today, however, the descendants of the Acadians are more commonly referred to as, and identify as, 'Cajuns'—a derivation of the word Acadian, indicating French Canadian settlers as ancestors. The distinction between "Cajuns" and "Creoles" is stronger today than it was in the past because American racial ideologies have strongly influenced the meaning of the word "Creole" to the extent that there is no longer unanimous agreement among Louisianians on the word's precise definition. Today, many assume that any francophone person of European descent is Cajun and any francophone of African descent is Creole—a false assumption that would not have been recognized in the nineteenth century[citation needed]. Some assert that "Creole" refers to aristocratic urbanites whereas "Cajuns" are agrarian members of the francophone working class, but this is another relatively recent distinction. Creoles may be of any race and live in any area, rural or urban[citation needed]. The Creole culture of Southwest Louisiana is thus more similar to the culture dominant in Acadiana than it is to the Creole culture of New Orleans[citation needed]. Though the land areas overlap around New Orleans and down river, Cajun/Creole culture and language extend westward all along the southern coast of Louisiana, concentrating in areas southwest of New Orleans around Lafayette, and as far as Crowley, Abbeville, and into the rice belt of Louisiana nearer Lake Charles and the Texas border.
Louisiana Creoles historically spoke a variety of languages; today, the most prominent include Louisiana French andLouisiana Creole. (There is a distinction between "Creole" people and the "creole" language. Not all Creoles speak creole—many speak French, Spanish, or English as primary languages.) Spoken creole is dying with continued 'Americanization' in the area. Most remaining Creolelexemes have drifted into popular culture. Traditional creole is spoken among those families determined to keep the language alive or in regions below New Orleans around St. James and St. John Parishes where German immigrants originally settled (also known as 'the German Coast', or La Côte des Allemands) and cultivated the land, keeping the ill-equipped French Colonists from starvation during the Colonial Period and adopting commonly spoken French and creole (arriving with the exiles) as a language of trade.
Creoles are largely Roman Catholic and influenced by traditional French and Spanish culture left from the first Colonial Period, officially beginning in 1722 with the arrival of theUrsuline Nuns, who were preceded by another order, the sisters of the Sacred Heart, with whom they lived until their first convent could be built with monies from the French Crown. (Both orders still educate girls in 2010). The "fiery Latin temperament" described by early scholars on New Orleans culture made sweeping generalizations to accommodate Creoles of Spanish heritage as well as the original French. The mixed-race Creoles, descendants of mixing of European colonists, slaves, and Native Americans or sometimesGens de Couleur (free men and women of colour), first appeared during the colonial periods with the arrival of slave populations. Most Creoles, regardless of race, generally consider themselves to share a collective culture. Non-Louisianans often fail to appreciate this and assume that all Creoles are of mixed race, which is historically inaccurate.
Louisiane Creoles were also referred to ascriollos, a word from the Spanish language meaning "created" and used in the post-French governance period to distinguish the two groups of New Orleans area and down river Creoles. Both mixed race and European Creole groups share many traditions and language, but their socio-economic roots differed in the original period of Louisiana history. Actually, the French word Créole is derived from the Portuguese wordCrioulo, which described people born in the Americas as opposed to Spain.
The term is often used to mean simply "pertaining to theNew Orleans area," but this, too, is not historically accurate. People all across the Louisiana territory, including thepays des Illinois, identified as Creoles, as evidenced by the continued existence of the termCréole in the critically endangeredMissouri French.
TheMississippi Gulf Coast region has a significant population of Creoles—especially inPass Christian,Bay St. LouisNatchezMoss PointGulfport,Biloxi, andPascagoula. A community known as Creoletown is located in Pascagoula, with its history on record.[30] Many in this location are Catholic and have also used the Creole, French, and English languages.
In colonial Texas, the term "Creole" (criollo) distinguished old-world Africans and Europeans from their descendants born in the new world, Creoles; they composed the citizen class ofNew Spain's Tejas province.[31][32][33]
Texas Creole culture revolved around "'ranchos" (Creole ranches), attended mostly byvaqueros (cowboys) of African, Spaniard, or Mestizo descent, andTlaxcalan Nahuatl settlers, who established a number of settlements in southeastern Texas and western Louisiana (e.g.Los Adaes).[31][32][34][35]
Black Texas Creoles have been present in Texas ever since the 1600s; they served as soldiers in Spanish garrisons of eastern Texas. Generations of Black Texas Creoles, also known as "Black Tejanos", played a role in later phases of Texas history: Mexican Texas, Republic of Texas, and American Texas.[33]
Unlike the Americas, the term coloured is preferred in Southern Africa to refer to mixed people of African and European descent. The colonisation of theCape Colony by theDutch East India Company led to the importation of Indonesian, East African and Southeast Asian slaves, who intermingled with Dutch settlers and the indigenous population leading to the development of a creolized population in the early 1700s. Additionally, Portuguese traders mixed with African communities, in what is now present day Mozambique and Zimbabwe, to create thePrazeros andLuso-Africans, who were loyal to the Portuguese crown and served to advance its interests insoutheastern Africa. A legacy of this era are the numerous Portuguese words that have enteredShona,Tsonga and Makonde. Today, mixed race communities exist across the region, notably so in South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe. In colonial era Zambia, the termEurafrican was often used though it has largely fallen out of use in the modern era and is no longer recognized at the national level.[17] Today, South AfricanColoureds andCape Malay form the majority of the population in theWestern Cape and a plurality in theNorthern Cape.
In addition to Coloured people, the termmestiço is used in Angola and Mozambique to refer to mixed race people, who enjoyed a certain privilege during the Portuguese era.
InSierra Leone, the mingling of newly freed Africans andmixed heritageNova Scotians andJamaican Maroons from the Western hemisphere andLiberated Africans - such as theAkan,Igbo people, andYoruba people - over several generations in the late 18th and early 19th centuries led to the eventual creation of thearistocraticethnic group now known as theCreoles. Thoroughlywesternized in their manners andbourgeois in their methods, the Creoles established a comfortable dominance in the country through a combination ofBritish colonial favouritism and political and economic activity. Their influence in the modern republic remains considerable, and their languageKrio - anEnglish-based creole language - is thelingua franca andde factonational language spoken throughout the country.
The extension of these Sierra Leoneans' business and religious activities to neighbouringNigeria in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - where many of them had ancestral ties - subsequently caused the creation of an offshoot in that country, theSaros. Now often considered to be part of the wider Yoruba ethnicity, the Saros have been prominent in politics, the law, religion, the arts, and journalism.
Atlantic Creole is a term coined by historianIra Berlin to describe a group of people from Angola and Central Africa in the 16th and 17th centuries with cultural or ethnic ties toAfrica,Europe, and sometimes theCaribbean. They often had Portuguese names and were sometimes mixed race. Their knowledge of different cultures made them skilled traders and negotiators, but some were enslaved and arrived in the Chesapeake Colonies as the Charter Generation ofslaves during theTransatlantic Slave Trade before 1660.[15]
TheCrioulos of mixed Portuguese and African descent eventually gave rise to several major ethnic groups in Africa, especially inCape Verde,Guinea-Bissau,São Tomé e Príncipe,Equatorial Guinea (especiallyAnnobón Province),Ziguinchor (Casamance),Angola,Mozambique. Only a few of these groups have retained the namecrioulo or variations of it:
The usage of creole in the islands of the southwest of the Indian Ocean varies according to the island. InMauritius, Mauritian Creoles will be identified based on both ethnicity and religion. Mauritian Creoles being eitherpeople who are of Mauritian ancestry or those who are both racially mixed and Christian. The Mauritian Constitution identifies four communities namely, Hindu, Muslim, Chinese and the General Population. Creoles are included in the General Population category along with white Christians.
The term also indicates the same to the people ofSeychelles. OnRéunion the term creole applies to all people born on the island.[16]
In all three societies, creole also refers to the newlanguages derived from French and incorporating other languages.
In regions that were formerly colonies ofSpain, theSpanish wordcriollo (implying "native born") historically denoted a class in thecolonial caste system comprising people born in the colonies with total or mostly European, mainlySpanish, descent. Those with mostly European descent were considered on the basis of their “passing” for white. For example, manycastizos could've gotten away with passing as criollo because their features would be strikingly European and so many of them would assume such identity in passing, mainly for economic reasons. "Criollo" came to refer to things distinctive of the region, as it is used today, in expressions such as "comida criolla" ("country" food from the area).
In the latter period of settlement of Latin America calledLa Colonia, the Bourbon Spanish Crown preferred Spanish-bornPeninsulares (literally "born in theIberian Peninsula") over Criollos for the top military, administrative, and religious offices due to the former mismanagement of the colonies on a previous Habsburg era.[36]
InArgentina, in an ambiguous ethnoracial way,criollo currently is used for people whose ancestors were already present in the territory in the colonial period, regardless of their ethnicity. The exception are dark-skinned African people and current indigenous groups.
The wordcriollo is the origin and cognate of the French wordcreole.
The racially-based caste system was in force throughout theSpanish viceroyalties in the Americas, since the 16th century. During the early Spanish colonial period the Spaniards had a policy selecting promising assimilationist Indigenous to educate and indoctrinate. They were accepted into the colonial leadership but sometimes remained in Spain. Among the descendants of these assimilated sons of chiefs are the Aztec descendedMoctezuma de Tultengo. By the 19th century, this discrimination and the example of theAmerican Revolution and the ideals ofthe Enlightenment eventually led the Spanish American Criollo elite to rebel against the Spanish rule. With the support of the lower classes, they engaged Spain in theSpanish American wars of independence (1810–1826), which ended with the break-up of the former Spanish Empire in the Americas into a number of independent republics.
Persons of pure Spanish descent born in the islands of theSpanish Philippines were called Insulares ("islanders")[37] or Criollos.
Although many of the Spanish Americans in the islands were also persons of pure Spanish descent, they, along with many Mestizos and Castizos from Spanish America living in the East Indies were also classified as "Americanos".
In many parts of the Southern Caribbean, the term Creole people is used to refer to the mixed-race descendants of Europeans and Africans born in the islands. Over time, there was intermarriage with Amerindians and residents from Asia, the Middle East and Latin America as well. They eventually formed a common culture based on their experience of living together in countries colonized by the French, Spanish, Dutch, and British.
A typical Creole person from the Caribbean has French, Spanish, Portuguese, British, or Dutch ancestry, mixed with sub-Saharan African ethnicities, and sometimes mixed with Native Indigenous peoples of the Americas. As workers from Asia entered the Caribbean, Creole people of colour intermarried with Arabs, Indians, Chinese, Javanese, Filipinos, Koreans, and Hmongs. The latter combinations were especially common in Guadeloupe. The foods and cultures are the result of creolization of these influences.[3]
"Kreyòl" or "Kwéyòl" or "Patois/Patwa" refers to the French-lexiconCreole languages in the Caribbean, includingAntillean French Creole,Haitian Creole, andTrinidadian Creole. Creole also refers toBajan Creole,Bahamian Creole,Belizean Creole,Guyanese Creole,Jamaican Patois,Tobagonian Creole,Trinidadian Creole andSranan Tongo (Surinamese Creole), among others.
People speak French-lexiconAntillean Creole in the following islands:[38][39][40][41]
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