16 Atlantic African, American, and European Backgrounds to Contact, Commerce, and EnslavementPeninsulares were born on the Iberian Peninsula. Today
in Brazil the term “Creole” refers to blacks. In Nicaragua,
Creoles are native-born blacks and inhabit the east coast
of the country along with Indian and Hispanic groups. Th e
Nicaraguan Creoles originated as shipwrecked or escaped
slaves, or slave laborers used by the British in the 17th cen-
tury to work in the lumber camps and plantations. Some
of them feel a stronger alliance to the British than to fellow
Nicaraguans on the west coast, who tend to regard them as
foreigners. Th e Nicaraguan Creoles speak English. In the
Latin American country of Belize, the identity of Creoles
takes on a racial meaning with a negative attitude among
light-skinned Creoles toward blacks. Both groups, however,
are considered “Creole.”
In North America, when Africans fi rst arrived in the
Chesapeake during the early 17th century, they interacted
culturally and physically with white indentured servants
and American Indians. Interracial sexual contacts (misce-
genation) produced people of mixed race. In New Orleans,
Louisiana, “Creoles” were people of any race or mixture,
descended from settlers in Louisiana before it became part
of the United States in 1803 aft er the Louisiana Purchase.
Th e term also refers to a broader culture. Although people
with African lineage may not have been included in this
defi nition, a broader use of the term was common by the
late 18th century with references to “free Creoles of color”
and to slaves of pure African descent born in Louisiana as
“Creole slaves.” Contemporary usage of the term in New
Orleans encompasses a broad cultural group of people of all
races who share a French or Spanish background.
Creoles in the 18th-century British Empire (those born
and reared within colonial society) were distinguished from
newly arrived Africans. Th e continuing large-scale impor-
tation of Africans created a constant dynamic within slave
communities everywhere—a dynamic that changed as the
population balance shift ed from African to Creole predom-
inance. A growing number of mulattos—off spring of sexual
unions between white and black parents—produced further
complications. Where Africans formed the majority popu-
lation, as they did in the Caribbean for much of the 18th
century and in the Carolina Lowcountry for many years,
Creoles oft en experienced ridicule and exclusion from
community life. As Creoles became the majority, they oft en
looked down on the Africans. By 1740, most colonial slaves
were no longer considered Africans. Th ey had become Cre-
oles, also the contemporary term for American-born blacks.Atlantic Creoles
Th e term “Atlantic Creoles” generally refers to people born
in regions of the Atlantic World (the four continents that
surround the Atlantic Ocean) whose origins lie outside the
areas in which they were born. Th e term “Creole” may also
be associated with a specifi c language and/or culture. Atlan-
tic Creoles developed various Creole languages, which draw
on the vocabulary of modern European languages, but with
a grammatical structure atypical of those languages. For
example, a Portuguese Creole language developed among
the settlers of the Atlantic islands such as Cape Verde and
São Tomé, off the West African coast, as early as the 16th
century. Th e growth and development of American Creole
languages relied heavily on Creole-speaking slaves who
could teach other slaves. Africans probably never spoke the
Creoles as native languages, but soon Americans, the chil-
dren of the fi rst generation of slaves, did. As Africans from
diff erent regions interacted with each other and Europeans,
their New World language gradually emerged as the fi rst, or
“creolized” language of American-born blacks.
Th e term “Creole” takes on various meanings across
time and regions of the Atlantic World. In Sierra Leone,
Creoles are the descendants of slaves who were repatriated
between 1787 and 1870, from all over the West African
coast, and settled with help from philanthropists, mission-
aries, and the British government. Cut off from their own
traditions, the Creoles acquired the cultural ideals of the
British and, aided by missions, gained substantial educa-
tional and professional advantages over the peoples of the
interior and indeed over most West Africans. In the 19th
century, they became clerks, parsons, teachers, lawyers, and
doctors and played an important role in the administra-
tive and educational development of the whole of English-
speaking West Africa. Th e Creoles’ consciousness of their
own superiority and disrespect for the indigenous peoples’
cultures, however, created hostility and deep mistrust be-
tween the Creoles and other Sierra Leoneans. Th ese Creoles
were the elite of African society in Sierra Leone.
In 16th-century-colonial Latin America, Creoles were
individuals of pure Spanish or Portuguese descent born in
America. Th e social hierarchy in the early Spanish empire
distinguished between Creoles and a higher status group
called Peninsulares. Both the Creoles and the Peninsulares
were considered pure Spanish, with one diff erentiation—the