IntroductionTo fully understand the effects of the African diaspora we must understand the meaning of the term African diaspora, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The term diaspora refers to any group of people with a common culture, so the African diaspora should refer to people of African descent who share common languages, religions, cultures and customs, but (as is now recognized) Africa is a continent with many different languages, religions, cultures and customs. The African diaspora is commonly associated with the African slave trade, this was one of the largest dispersals of African peoples but not the only dispersal of Africans from Africa since (as is commonly accepted) human life began in Africa and since humans are nomadic, pack animals eventually left Africa and settled in other parts of the globe, in this opinion, the world's population from its African roots was the first and largest diaspora we have seen. Technically the first African diaspora has not come to an end, but perhaps it never will, as we enter an era where space travel becomes commonplace, perhaps Africans will soon populate space. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The African diaspora I will examine is not the first African diaspora, but the diaspora of the period of the transatlantic slave trade. My aim is to research and record the effects and changes of African people within the diaspora and attitudes towards them in their adopted countries. In recent history many people from all over Africa have migrated (willingly or unwillingly) to other parts of the world, this has created many different lifestyles for black people, this is the area where I will begin my studies. I will choose two separate countries where Africans settled and examine how the majority arrived there, what kind of treatment they received upon arrival, and how, as a people, they formed communities and evolved as members of new societies foreign. The field of the African diaspora would require many years of research, is open to much controversy, and is never done true justice in a brief general overview like this, but my goal is to demonstrate that the African diaspora has had a profound effect on not only among African populations but in most of the Western world. I will therefore limit my documentation to the populations of the Anglo-American parts of America and the British Isles as these were two of the main perpetrators of the slave trade. AFRICAN AMERICA The New World Slavery was (and in some parts of the world still is) one of the most degrading forms of human existence since when a person becomes a slave they become the property of a person who has exchanged money or goods in return for life of that person and that of his or her children. From the 16th to the 19th century African slavery was a large and very profitable business and many European countries took part in this trade in human beings, one country that played a very active role in slavery was England. When parts of America were colonized as British territories, the need for people to build and cultivate the land was great, since taking on European hands was a very expensive affair, a cheaper alternative was sought and slavery became the easiest and most economical to exploit the new lands. . An estimated number of slaves arriving in British America and the United States as a result of the British slave trade is 500,000, this is only a small number of the slaves enslaved by the British, as an overall estimated figure of Africans transportedby the British it is 2,600,000. In fact, Great Britain was not the main transporter of slaves, Portugal made over 30,000 voyages to Africa and transported the impressive figure of 4,650,000 slaves to various colonies (1). Slaves (in America) were generally sent to work on plantations in South America as the climate was warm and the soil was fertile. Many of the slaves on the plantations were of different African origins, had different beliefs, languages ​​and cultures. In the case of African slaves, identification with the homeland varied greatly. In many places, individuals participated in organized communities whose origins in Africa were distinguished by diverse ethnic and religious ideas. White masters and overseers regularly recognized ethnic and religious differences among slaves in the conduct of economic life on the plantations, but usually the masters of these slaves forced them to become Christian, English-speaking people, which gave all slaves a language , a religion and a common language. it formed the foundation of African American communities and the beginning of the end of slavery. Many slaves were brought from East Africa but they were of different ethnic origins, but when they were transported to the colonies and forced to work on plantations they formed communities where they could keep some African traditions alive, singing, dancing, storytelling and religion became very important important to plantation communities as these were the only forms of liberation they had from the devastating reality of slavery. Slaves were treated as property in colonial America, during the mid-1600s a series of laws called slave codes were imposed that prohibited slaves from owning weapons, receiving an education, meeting with each other, moving around without their masters' permission, and even testify against whites in court, slaves also received harsher punishments than whites for the same crimes, many women were raped by their masters and gave birth to bastard children that the fathers had no interest in and treated them as slaves too . During the Revolutionary War in America (1775-1783), many Americans revolted against slavery. These Americans came to believe that slavery had no place in a nation that was formed to protect natural human rights. Opposition to slavery developed most rapidly in the North since slavery was relatively small scale, but some Southerners, including leaders George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, spoke out against slavery. However, the high profits from slavery had far greater influence than any moral argument. Even the many Southerners who did not own slaves accepted the plantation owners' view that the Southern economy would collapse without slavery. The 1800s brought more anti-slavery sentiments as many people both black and white, North and South clamored for an end to slavery, according to the 1790 national census there were 59,000 free blacks living in the United States, former slaves who had been freed by their masters, who bought their freedom, were born to free parents, or had been freed by law or contract. Some free blacks joined the army to fight in the Revolutionary War, one of the most famous African American patriots was Crispus Attucks who died in the Boston Massacre of 1770 while fighting the British. After the revolution against the British, many free blacks were employed in many businesses, including railway companies, shipyards, all kinds of factories, some even were employed in the media, Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm were the two best known editorsof the time as he helped found the first black newspaper FREEDOM S JOURNAL in 1827. There were many people who wanted to make slavery illegal, these people were known as abolitionists, one of the most famous abolitionists was Harriet Tubman (1820?-1931) who escaped from slavery in 1849 and helped over 300 slaves escape on 19 voyages until 1861 when she joined the Union Army as a nurse and in a single mission helped free over 750 slaves from the South. After the civil war (1861-1865) the law changed, the 13th amendment was passed which made slavery illegal which made both slaves and abolitionists happy but the life of a former slave was not easy in fact they still had no rights that could be used to apply, if a white man stole or committed a crime against a black man the police always took the white man's side and sometimes the result was that the black man was beaten by the police. Many groups such as the Ku Klux Klan arose after the freedom of slaves who lynched and killed innocent blacks, most of these groups are still active today and pose just as much of a threat as they did 150 years ago. Even in the 20th century blacks were segregated from whites until the 1950s when the civil rights movement reached its peak, many great activists like Rosa Parks who, as simple as it may seem, sat on a bus and didn't they moved so that a The white man could sit, this inspired minister Martin Luther King headed the Montgomery improvement association and many other people who achieved equal rights for blacks. Throughout the United States communities came together during the civil rights movement and white protests that ended in violence were not uncommon, but even under the stress of white violence against blacks peaceful demonstrations continued and they were ultimately successful, unfortunately to this day there are still harsh feelings towards blacks throughout the United States, but attitudes are slowly changing. BRITAIN Land of hope and glory Although Britain was the second most slave-owning nation in the world, their black presence has never been strongly documented in Britain, although blacks have been in Britain for hundreds of years, Liverpool was the largest slave port in Europe from the 16th to 18th centuries, but most slaves never saw British shores as they were transported to America or other colonies to be sold. Some Africans were brought to Britain as slaves and were generally sold to rich people as maids and servants, by 1550 hundreds of blacks were living in England as slaves for wealthy landowners working as servants, maids, cooks, butlers etc. Slavery was outlawed in Britain in the early 19th century but, as William Blackstone argued in his book Commentaries on the Laws of England in 1765, the spirit of liberty is so rooted in our constitution and rooted in our very soil, that a slave or negro the moment he lands in England falls under the protection of the laws and immediately becomes a free man. (2) this would suggest that since the mid 18th century slavery has been illegal in England but not in the British colonies, another argument suggesting that slavery was outlawed in England before the law was passed in parliament in 1833 was in 1771 Granville Sharpe, the Quaker anti-slavery activist, obtained an arrest warrant for a master who had attempted to drag an unwilling slave to a waiting boat on the Thames, so as to take him back to the West Indies. At the trial, judge Lord Mansfield, who a year later presided over the famousSomerset case, opened the proceedings by noting that he himself had always respected the right of ownership of slaves. This did not impress the jury. Mansfield insisted that the only question for the jury to consider was whether or not the evidence of ownership was conclusive. The jury ignored Mansfield's statements. When the foreman announced that they did not believe the servant was the defendant's property, the jury collectively shouted, "No property!", no property: this was the sentiment of the British working class for much of the slave trade era. , some of which the upper class believed it was a useful and necessary business as some of the upper class thought it was inhuman to own someone as Alexis de Tocqueville did when he said in 1839 Man never had the right to own man and the fact of possession has always been and still is illegitimate. If the Negroes have the right to become free it is undeniable that the colonials have the right not to be ruined by the freedom of the Negroes. The rights of slave owners included the perception of an indemnity representing the market value of the freed slaves and the temporary interdiction of the right of blacks to become owners (4). He says that slaves have no real rights, after all they should be free but not the same. After freedom many black men became sailors and many traveled and stayed in Liverpool as it had a large black community (3,000 in Liverpool in 1911) and absorbed new people more easily than in other places, as an American journalist wrote in the 1930s Nineteenth century, speaking of blacks, recalls the interested glances with which black sailors are looked at when they walk through the streets of Liverpool. In Liverpool indeed the negro walks with a prouder step and raises his head like a man; because here there are no such exaggerated feelings towards him as in America. Three or four times I met our black steward, very well dressed and walking arm in arm with a beautiful woman. In New York such a couple would have been attacked in three minutes and the steward would have been lucky enough to escape with his limbs intact (5). Many slaves traveled to Liverpool because they thought they would be able to escape to Africa or at least hide from their masters in the local black community. Even white West Indian plantation owners sent their black-born children to study in Liverpool as they received a better education and were treated more like people in England (6). Of course not all black people came to Britain because of slavery, but some people came to study as privileged Africans (e.g. African royalty or businessmen) or to set up a business as free people. Britain, even after freedom, still had a big racist problem, even Liverpool, which has a large multicultural background, suffered from so-called race riots in both 1919 and the early 1980s. During World War I and World War II the British relied on the help of black soldiers and black labor. They were praised and many black traders moved to England to help rebuild what had been destroyed, but once the work was done the governments turned on them again. Even British politicians are sometimes racist, for example Margaret Thatcher warned in 1978 that Britain was in danger of being swamped by black culture and in 1981, 1987 and 1992 introduced new laws preventing Commonwealth blacks from entering Britain without visa. Even some people in the British Armed Forces are still racist, as the handling of the Stephen Lawrence case has shown. In areas where blacks and whites live together there is always attention on the part.