ABSTRACT
A forced African diaspora in Europe originated as early as Roman times, and with a significant number of slaves from North African shores, southern Europe experienced its first blackening in some areas. Another wave of African influence that had a tremendous impact on southern Europe was the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula for several centuries. Europe’s blackening in this specific case of voluntary African diaspora, which ended in 1492 when the last Moorish troops were expelled from Spain, can still be observed today in Spanish culture in such diverse fields as architecture and music. However, the roots for a significant blackening of contemporary Europe go back to the late Middle Ages. In 1444, the first captured Africans from West Africa were brought to Lagos in Portugal; their shipment can be considered the start of the forced African diaspora in modern Europe. Because the majority of western and central European nations were involved in the transatlantic slave trade or in slave-owning colonies during the subsequent centuries, the presence of Africans in European countries became an established fact. Over the centuries, a few free Africans-or later, free African Americans-lived or stayed in Europe, but the majority of African diasporic people in Europe were slaves. During later centuries, nations even as far away as Russia started their own process of being blackened. A small number of Africans already lived in Russia at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and a growing number of African Americans went
to Russia during the second half of the nineteenth century because Russia offered something unique to them: a chance to gain a prosperous life devoid of discrimination based on their color.
