For obvious and subtle reasons Africa plays an enormous role in the collective consciousness of a great part of the Caribbean population, although in ways not easily understood. The vast complex changing social, political and geographical nature of the continent contributes to this. Africa is as much a reality as a state of mind.

The history of sugar between the middle of the 17th century and the middle of the 19th century left a legacy of diverse Caribbean societies demographically tinged with numerous descendants of Africans who in many cases comprise the majority of the population. Not all Caribbean black people arrived directly from Africa as slaves. Some came before the commerce in Africans expanded to include the Americas. Others came as freely contracted labourers in the 19th century to help cushion the employment impact of the abolition of the slave trade and slavery. A small number came as voluntary professional immigrants during the 20th century.

The three centuries of coerced African migration to the Americas established a link that would endure beyond the activity of the transatlantic slave trade. The principal purpose of the human trade was to supply American communities with prime work hands. Indeed, as soon as the Spanish realised that the catastrophic decline of the indigenous population would result in a labour crisis, they immediately encouraged the introduction of black servants from southern Spain and when that proved insufficient, legalised direct importation from West Africa. Genaro Rodríguez Morel has done a detailed study of the early sugar plantations of Spanish Hispaniola illustrating the changing ratios of Africans and indigenous members of the workforce over time. Initially, that workforce was overwhelmingly native but by the late 1560s indigenous Indian labour was a rarity.

By the time the unfortunate Cromwellian expedition led by Lieutenant Colonel Robert Venables and Admiral William Penn captured Jamaica in 1655, the Caribbean was already undergoing the centuries-old sugar revolutions introduced via Brazil from the Mediterranean, African Atlantic Islands as well as the Canaries and Madeira. By the end of the transatlantic slave trade, the Caribbean received almost one-half of all Africans sold in the Americas, the solid base for the construction of a new type of Caribbean society and culture.

Despite the erroneous supposition of some writers on the deleterious effect of the notorious Middle Passage between Africa and the Caribbean, Africans survived well and made their mark auspiciously in the New World. Rather than suffer any type of social death, their amazing resilience allowed them to build cities and fortifications, to set up and operate the lucrative tropical export-oriented plantations and against enormous odds, to construct viable and remarkably diverse communities. Marcus Rediker has described the travails of the Middle Passage in his remarkable prize-winning book, The Slave Ship. From Columbus onwards the history of every country of the Americas is a tribute to the valour and creativity of people of African descent.

The millions of Africans who came to the Caribbean had an indelible impact on all aspects of the society, economy and culture. In Jamaica and elsewhere Africans and their descendants adamantly refused to simply ape European ways. In most cases Europeans failed to constitute a sufficient critical mass or a reproducible European culture. This is certainly obvious from the fine studies on Jamaica by Brian Moore and Michele Johnson. The Creole culture that eventually developed over time in the Caribbean would reconstitute eclectically many aspects of actual or imagined African practices, especially in religious forms and culinary practices.

African spiritual beliefs played an important role in many Caribbean societies. Many black Christian sects incorporated African beliefs. Other black or mixed Creole groups practised religions that were manifestly African in origin. Some, like the Muslims and the Rada of Trinidad, simply were continuing familiar West African religions. Others such as Santería in Cuba, Vodun in Haiti, or Myal and Kumina in Jamaica are

African-based.

In his amazing study, Jamaican Food, BW Higman has meticulously examined the various cultigens of African origin that contributed to the Caribbean, and especially Jamaican, cuisine. Several varieties of yams, especially the white yam (dioscorea rotundata) and the yellow yam (dioscorea cayenensis) made famous by Usain Bolt, along with coco, ackee, okra, tamarind, guinea corn, and rice, accompanied the African migration to the New World. No one knows exactly how these plants and vegetables came to the Caribbean, or precisely when they became a standard part of the popular diet. The exotic ackee is not a major component of any West African diet and seems to be fancied only by Jamaicans throughout the Caribbean. Nor did African rice feature among Caribbean slave diets as it did in South Carolina.

Africa has been coherently portrayed in the various black Creole political resistance movements in the Caribbean. The American Colonisation Society founded Liberia in 1822 as refuge for previously enslaved Americans. Similarly, the British exiled some maroons to Sierra Leone in the 19th century. In the 1890s, as Rodolfo Saracino notes in his study, a number of Cuban ex-slaves returned to Africa and established communities within existing Nigerian towns. In all these cases the repatriated Africans flaunted their Americanness and were never accepted by locals as authentic Africans. At the beginning of the 20th century Trinidadian Henry Williams founded the Pan African Congress in London. Marcus Garvey promoted Africa strongly in the Universal Negro Improvement Association but never contemplated permanently headquartering his organisation there. The Ras Tafari equated Ethiopia with Africa.

During the 20th century many distinguished West Indians, including Dudley Thompson and Neville Dawes (born in Nigeria of Jamaican parents) of Jamaica, George Padmore of Trinidad, Walter Rodney of Guyana, and Kamau Brathwaite of Barbados spent professional stints in Africa. Africans, including Peter Abrahams, have migrated to the Caribbean. Nevertheless, Caribbean black people, apart from the Ras Tafari, have never demonstrated a strong sentimental attachment to Africa. They talk about it with less intensity than the black population of the United States. In the Caribbean, Africa remains a curious legacy indeed.