whites. With the passing years the institution of slavery crumbled, not put down by civil war but broken down by its sheer inadequacy to function well; and thereafter, by the ordinary courses of migration, the negro population, moving away from its moorings, spread far over the country. A special study made by the census of 1890 showed negroes and negroid to be present in substantial numbers in all divisions of the country. From the beginning the Portuguese interbred freely with the negroes. Never was there such a feeling of caste or race reluctance as has served in the United States for a pronounced check upon white intermixture with black and has withheld legal sanction from intermarriage. In Brazil, just as in Portuguese Africa, interbreeding began long ago and to this day it has continued without evident restraint. It is, in fact, plain from the figures prepared in 1890 that the number of mulattoes in most states considerably exceed the number of negroes deemed of pure blood. How numerous are the negroes and the mulattoes of Brazil? In 1890 there were only four states (apart from the Federal district containing Rio de Janeiro), Santa Catharina, Sao Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, and Parana, where more than half the population were claimed to be white; and when it is recalled that in these South American figures error takes the primary form of exaggerating the number of whites, it is the more striking that for the whole country less than half the population were claimed in 1890 to be whites. There has been a considerable white immigration into Brazil since 1890, yet not enough to make any pronounced change in this situation. The chief wave of immigration ended between 1890 and 1900 and was followed by a spasmodic exodus of immigrants from the country, so that on the whole, since 1900, there has been no large net foreign white immigration, the increased influx of 1908 to 1912 not much altering the situation. Furthermore, though the statistics of the country show that the pure negroes have a death rate exceeding their own birth rate (both rates are the highest in Brazil) and therefore imply that the population of pure negroes is diminishing somewhat, yet the mulatto birth rate continues to be high and to exceed the mulatto death rate, and the mulatto population, it must be remembered, has long been much larger than the pure negro population." It is reasonable, therefore, to suppose that if the white population of 1890 was less than half the total of that year then the white population of 1920 was either less than half the total of 1920 or certainly not appreciably more than half the total. If out of 30,635,605 stated to be the total poulation in 1920, 2,000,000 are reckoned to be pure Indians, then half the remainder would number 14,000,000. This would embrace the class of mulattoes, the much smaller class of pure negroes and the still smaller yet recognizable class of negro-Indian half breeds. If the total figure for 1920 has to be scaled down then that for the negroid element will have, of course, to be correspondingly scaled down. In 1920 the negroes and mulattoes of the United State numbered 10,463,131. The population of pure and mixed negro stock in Brazil is distinctly larger. This surely is a noteworthy fact when it is remembered that the total population of which the negroid was a part was in the United States at least three and one-half times as numerous as the total population of Brazil. In still other terms, while the negro population of the United States was about onetenth of the whole, that of Brazil was about one-half of the whole; in actual numbers a third larger, in relative terms, four times as large. The mulatto element of Brazil to increase by its own excess of births over deaths. It also continues to increase by the further mingling of white negro blood.18 Any additional increase by immigration of mulattos, on the other hand, is probably negligible. 12 As the legal importation of negro slaves into Brazil ceased in 1831 and the covert importation about 1850, there has not, for the greater part of a century, been any but a vegetative increase of the pure negro stock. a The mixed Indian and white strains not classified with the pure Indian or not merged with other elements and classified with them, constitute a very small class not worthy singling out, in view of the general inaccuracy of Brazilian figures of population. 18 The rapid increase of the mulatto element in the past is shown by the statistics which follow. Whatever be the imperfections of these Government figures they doubtless reflect a real trend. In 1835 the census showed 1,987,000 negroes but only 628,000 mulattoes; 37 years later (1872) the census showed 1,970,509 negroes, about the same number as before, but now 3,833,015 mulattoes, more than six times as many as before; 18 years later still (1890), the census showed 2,097,426 negroes, only slightly more than the negroes of 1872, but it showed 4,638,495 mulattoes or a fifth more than in 1872. (c) European immigration into southern Brazil an important addition to white stock. The white population owes much of its increase during the past century to immigration from abroad. Foreigners resident in Brazil numbered: In 1872. In 1890__. 385, 459 In 1900- 1, 256, 806 1,565, 961 Among these foreigners Portuguese (born in Portugal) were especially numerous; in 1920 they were the second largest foreign element, numbering 433,577. It is natural to suppose that they would show much the same readiness to fuse with the negroes as the Portuguese had shown who in early years came to Brazil; or at least that, speaking Portuguese and therefore easily identifying themselves with the Brazilian Portuguese, they would accept the traditions and ways of that class. Probably the other white immigrants have offered more resistance to breeding with the negroes. They would be less likely to take on the Portuguese traditions; and coming to Brazil with their women, unlike the earlier strains of Portuguese, they would be less likely to set up a tradition of intermarriage with other races. Italians, the largest stock of all, numbered 558,405 in 1920. Next after the Portuguese came the Spaniards, of whom there were 219,142; Germans numbered 52,870; Austrians, 26,354; French, 11,894; English, 9,637; Belgians, 1,937; all other Europeans, 77,698. There were also many immigrants from neighboring countries of South America, besides 50,251 from Asiatic Turkey and 27,976 from Japan. The Italians lived mainly in Sao Paulo, in Rio Grande do Sul, in Minas Geraes, in the Federal district, and Sao Paulo. The Spanish and the Japanese were chiefly in Sao Paulo. For the most part, then, these foreigners dwelt in a few southern States and were rather more concentrated than the Portuguese stock. By their very presence they have increased the strength of the white factor in Brazil and have greatly helped to mark off the southern tier of States from the negroid States to the north. Some of them, especially the Italians, began to come many years ago and are to-day represented by the second, the third, and even the fourth generations. The Brazilian Italians, like the Argentine Italians, originated in the north of Italy and are a factor of great value to their new country. The living representatives of their stock, whether born in Italy or Brazil, are to-day a substantial fraction of the population of the southern States.14 Physically speaking, Brazil is a country of amazing abundance and diversity of natural resources. Racially it can be regarded as two countries. The southern States are progressive white communities. The most populous of them, Sao Paulo, chief source of coffee in the world, contains one great modern city. There is a Portuguese aristocracy in Sao Paulo, and an Italian population playing an important part in the city and long the chief labor force on the coffee plantations; but there are also some negroes and a good many Japanese, whose value as an ethnic element in such a community as compared, for example, with the Italians, is not yet established. Above the southern tier of States with a less favorable climate, negro, Indian, and half-breed elements are the dominant types, the whites counting for much less. Here, toward the north, lies by far the greater portion of Brazil. 21. GUIANA In 1921, according to a census, the inhabitants of British Guiana numbered 297,691, not, however, including the Indians, who were estimated to number 9,700, belonging to nine tribes. The population has grown slowly, birth rates and death rates being nearly equal and immigration not recently large. It is an extraordinarily heterogeneous population that lives in British Guiana. Even the Indians vary from the fighting Caribs to the peace-loving and amiable tribes that wear the clothes of civilization. Negroes numbered 117,169 in 1921, of whom a few thousand were born elsewhere than in British Guiana; East (Asiatic) Indians numbered 124,938, of whom a third were not born in British Guiana; Chinese were 3,722; those of mixed races were 30,587, nearly all born in British Guiana. 14 The Italians of Brazil have commonly married with other Italians. Sometimes they are said to marry with Brazilians," but there is much to warrant the inference that these "Brazilians" are usually only the Brazil-born children of Italian parents, reckoned Brazilian by the law of the country. The population history of British Guiana has been dictated by a desire for laborers. Indians proving unsatisfactory, recourse was had at different periods to negroes, Chinese, and East Indians. Of whites of any type, there is the merest sprinkling in British Guiana. Negroes and East Indians of pure blood are four-fifths of the population, the remaining fifth consisting chiefly of crosses of these two. The population of Dutch Guiana was put at 84,103 in 1907. Indians were not included in this figure, but they probably did not number more than 2,000 or 3,000. Whites were included, but they in turn numbered only about 2,000. Nearly all the rest were of Far Eastern origin, some from China, some from Java, some from India. Slavery was abolished in Dutch Guiana in 1863. It was the consequent want of laborers for gold mining and for sugar production that gave rise to the importation of coolies. The people of French Guiana are about a third as numerous as those of Dutch Guiana and likewise contain diverse race elements. 22. WEST INDIES Nearly, if not quite, 8,000,000 of people to-day inhabit the islands of the West Indies. They resemble but little the aborigines who were present when Columbus made his first landing in the New World. Whereas the race stock of Mexico, Central America, and most of South America is largely composed of elements anciently present in America, the stock of the West Indies is almost in its entirety new. When the Europeans first appeared, the Greater Antilles were inhabited by the Arawak Indians, a mild race of people little disposed to warfare. The Spanish reduced them to slavery, forcing them to work on the plantations and in the mines of Cuba and Hispaniola under conditions which destroyed them. It required, in fact, but a very short time to extinguish the race almost entirely. The Lesser Antilles were inhabited by the Carib Indians, a fighting race. They contested every advance of the invaders and were not so soonyet in the end quite as surely-exterminated. There are to-day almost no pure-blooded Indians living in the West Indies, and of Indians of mixed blood with the Indian element pronounced enough to be still recognizable, there are extremely few. A substantial majority of the people of the West Indies to-day are African negroes of pure blood, though born in the New World. In It was in 1503 that the first negroes were brought to the West Indies. Not long thereafter they were brought direct from the Guinea Coast, kidnapped or purchased there and sold after landing in America. The Portuguese first imported them; the British came to have the largest share in the business. 1802, four years before the introduction of slaves was abolished by law, 155 English vessels were in the trade, of which 122 operated in connection with the British West Indies only; the average lot of slaves carried by them has been calculated at 260. Emancipation of the slaves (in 1834 in the British islands) was followed by a quick deterioration of the labor force. The negroes were deemed to be lazy and under a free system not good workers. The white elements in the islands have been Spanish, British, French, Danish, and Dutch, to name but the principal groups. They do not, however, constitute the next largest element in the population after the African negroes, for, next after the negroes of pure strain the largest class is that of the mulattoes, the offspring of unions of European and African stocks. When negro workers were declared to be inadequate for the work required, a movement began for the importation of Asiatic coolie workmen. In 1844 immigration was permitted from India to Trinidad and Jamaica and for many years there was an annual influx into these islands (likewise, as already indicated, into British Guiana) and somewhat later into other British islands. These Indian workers derived from Bengal, from Agra and Oudh, southern Punjab, Ajmere, and elsewhere. Chinese coolies were brought to Cuba in 1847. In 1853 importation began into the British islands. In 1859-1866 12,000 were received in these islands alone; but while the immigration into these islands virtually ceased after 1866, it continued into other parts of the West Indies until a number of years later. The volume of Chinese immigration to Cuba was substantially larger than that into the British island possessions. With this introduction a survey may be made of the population conditions in the principal islands. 23. CUBA The population of Cuba was calculated as of December 31, 1923, to amount to 3,143,210. Coming soon after the census of 1919, which was carefully taken and showed a population of 2,889,004, and making careful use of the statistics for immigration, for births, and for deaths, this figure of 1923 is doubtless substantially correct. The quick growth of the population has been recent. The census of 1841, one of the more credible of the old censuses, returned a total of 1,007,624, of whom 40 per cent were held to be white persons, the rest being negro or mulatto. In 1899 the census conducted by the War Department of the United States returned 1,572,797. It was between this date and 1907, when another census was taken, and between 1907 and the present, that the great growth of the population of Cuba took place; in 24 years the population has doubled. In these years of general growth, the negro element has lost ground. From being in 1841 about 60 per cent of the population it had fallen by 1923 to about 25 per cent. In 1923 there were 806,983 persons described as colored. In the census year 1919 there had been 800,957; of these 40 per cent were rated as pure negroes, 58 per cent as of mixed strains and 2 per cent (16,146) as Chinese. The last named were largely the survivors of the coolie immigration of the previous century which arrived mainly in the period 1847-1871; at the end of that period there were three times as many Chinese as in 1919. The negro population, it will be seen, has increased but slowly. In 1861 there were 603,046 negroes (less than two-thirds of them were slaves, the rest having gradually won their freedom). In the ensuing 60 years the negro population increased by only one-third. This comparatively slow growth of the negro population is one of the principal aspects of the Cuban development. What it signifies is that a large death rate has concurrently removed an important part of the increase of the negro population which came by births. But it also signifies that negroes have been relatively few in the large increase of the population of the island which has come during the present century by immigration. This immigration has chiefly added to the white stocks. Ever since the last years of the ninteenth century, large numbers of Spanish have settled in Cuba. The Spanish-born residents of the island in 1919 numbered 245,644 or nearly three-quarters of all foreigners. Other Europeans were few among these foreigners, but immigrants from the West Indies, Mexico, Central and South America numbered approximately 55,000 and doubtless introduced an appreciable mestizo or part-Indian element. The negroid portion of the Cuban population has, in comparison with the white, been a backward element. The slow increase of its numbers, while the whites increased fast, may be taken as one index of backwardness. Of the entire population, 10 years or more of age in 1919, 40 per cent could not read; of the negro population alone of the same years nearly half could not read. About one-quarter of the entire population were of illegitimate birth in 1919; of the native whites one-eighth were; of the colored more than half were illegitimate. Against every 100 legal marriages of white persons, there were 13 consensual marriages; but against every 100 legal marriages of colored persons there were 95 consensual marriages. Consensual marriages are generally more abundant in rural than in urban districts and the negroes chiefly live in the rural districts; even there, however, the proportion of consensual marriages is much higher among negroes than among whites. The mixture of races in Cuba, while it was greatest in the period which antedated emancipation of the slaves, has not ceased. It is too early to speculate on the continuance of the more rapid growth of the whites than of the colored factor in the population. There is no social disparity of white and black in Cuba and it is likely that the negro will always be a factor in the blood of the Cuban people. 24. JAMAICA Less than 2 per cent of the 858,118 inhabitants of Jamaica, as enumerated in the census of 1921, are white. The following figures succinctly give the picture: Black Colored (mixed) East Indian____ 660, 420 157, 223 18, 610 Though the white persons of Jamaica are mainly of English origin, it is impressive, as evidence of miscogenation in the past, that the mixed stocks in which one factor is commonly white are now more than ten times as numerous as the whites. But it should be remembered in this connection that the white stock has had a longer history of residence in the islands than any other stock. The white population to-day lives in the cities. There appear to be no general statistics of illiteracy but from the fact that in the period 1916-1922 about 30 per cent of bridegrooms and brides signed their legal papers by a mark, it can be inferred that illiteracy continues to be very common. Illegitimate births are likewise high in number. Year in and year out they are between 60 and 70 per cent of all recorded births. 25. HAITI AND SANTO DOMINGO The population of the island seat of the Republic of Haiti and Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) is overwhelmingly negro or negroid. Haiti, the westerly country, has not less than 2,000,000 inhabitants; Santo Domingo doubtless has more than 900,000 (a census of 1920 gave 894,665). The people of Haiti are almost entirely full-blooded negroes. There are very few whites and the number of mulattoes is estimated to be less than 10 per cent of the population. The white element is mainly descended from the early French settlers. Economically and socially the people have been backward. Of schooling there has been very little. The forms of marriage are usually neglected. In Santo Domingo, according to the latest census, about one-fourth of the people are white (223,144), another fourth are negro (226,934), while half are of mixed stock (444,587). There is little doubt that those described as white include a larger number of persons who have some negro blood. The white stock is mainly old Spanish (creole). There is much illiteracy; what education exists is very limited. Unions without marriage are probably less frequent than in Haiti yet appear to be more numerous than unions with marriage. Also, as in Haiti, backward methods of industry and agriculture prevail and the pace of labor is slow and intermittent. The white population has generally dominated the political life of Santo Domingo. Neither Haiti nor Santo Domingo has attracted white immigrants in any considerable numbers. By the last census the foreigners of the Dominican Republic numbered 49,520 or over 5 per cent of the population; but they consisted almost entirely of Haitians (the largest class), Porto Ricans and other West Indian elements; Spanish numbered only 1,443; there were 255 Chinese. The current statistics on immigration classify a minority of newcomers as white and this minority doubtless includes many persons of mixed race. 26. PORTO RICO Porto Rico had in 1920, according to the census of that year, a population of 1,299,809. Of these 948,709 were classified as white, 49,246 as black, and 301,816 as mulatto. The negroid population has for some years been losing ground both absolutely and relatively. In 1899 the negroes were about 6 per cent of all and the mulattoes about 30 per cent; by 1920 the percentages had fallen to 4 and 25. While no pure Indian stock has survived until to-day, the Indian blood is not extinct and Indian features can still be observed, especially in the more isolated highlands. The original Indian stock died out; other Indians brought from other islands also died out; but before these stocks had disappeared there' had been interbreeding with them both by Spanish and negroes. Foreigners have been few in Porto Rico and until recently at least have been declining in number. Of 8,167 present in 1920 (3,610 fewer than in 1910), 4,975 had been born in Spain; many of the rest were from the West Indies. Nearly half the foreigners of 1920 had come to the country 20 years or more before. |