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.
The majority of Afro-Haitians are descendants of enslaved Africans brought to the island by the Spanish Empire and the Kingdom of France to work on plantations. Since the Haitian Revolution, Afro-Haitians have been the largest racial group in the country, accounting for 95% of the population in the early 21st century. The remaining 5% of the population is made up of mixed persons (mixed African and European descent) and other minor groups (European, Arab, and Asian descent .
History
The Island of Hispaniola was originally inhabited by the Taino, the Arawak and the Ciboney. Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sighted Quisqueya on December 6, 1492, and named the place La Isla Española (“The Spanish Island”), later Anglicized as Hispaniola. The indigenous people died of European diseases and harsh working conditions. The Spanish later left the island and the French later imported African slaves to produce coffee, cacao, indigo, and cotton. France had many colonies in the Caribbean in which slavery supported a plantation economy that produced sugar, coffee, and cotton. The most important was Saint Domingue, which had 500,000 slaves, in which 32,000 were whites, and 28,000 free blacks (which included both blacks and mulattos). Some free blacks owned slaves in Haiti. The slave system in Saint-Domingue was considered the harshest with high levels of both mortality and violence. To supply the plantation system, French slaveholders imported around 800,000 Africans to the colony.
Origins
The African people of Haiti derived from various areas, spanning from Senegal to the Congo. Most of which were brought from West Africa, with a considerable number also brought from Central Africa. Some of these groups include those from the former Kongo kingdom (Kongo),Benin (Ewe ,Yoruba) and Togoland. Many other peoople trace so much of their DNA from the native people. Others in Haiti were brought from Senegal, Guinea (imported by the Spanish since the sixteenth century and then by the French), Sierra Leone, Windward Coast, Angola, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, and Southeast Africa (such as the Bara tribesmen of Madagascar, who were brought to Haiti in the eighteenth century). Haitian culture is very tied to West African culture, especially that of pre-colonialism Benin, Haitian Vodou mostly has origins from the original West African Vodun of Benin and the French-based Haitian Creole language has influences from several African languages including the Fon language. At the time of the Haitian Revolution war, an event that involved the expulsion of many whites (mostly French) in Haiti, many of the blacks in Haiti were African-born and had no non-African admixture. This was because the average African slave in colonial Haiti had a short life span and France continuously imported thousands of Africans yearly to keep the slave population up, by 1790 there were nearly 600,000 slaves, outnumbering whites about 20 to 1.
Demography
Although Haiti averages approximately 250 people per square kilometre (650 per sq mi.), its population is concentrated most heavily in urban areas, coastal plains, and valleys. Haiti's population was about 11 million according to UN 2018 estimates, with half of the population being under 20 years old. The first formal census, taken in 1950, showed a population of 3.1 million.
According to The World Factbook, 95% of Haitians are primarily of African descent; the remaining 5% of the population are mostly of mixed-race and European background, and a number of other ethnicities.