Miscegenation - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Miscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation

Cohabitation

Cohabitation usually refers to an arrangement whereby two people decide to live together on a long-term or permanent basis in an emotionally and/or sexually intimate relationship. The term is most frequently applied to couples who are not married...

, sexual relations

Human sexuality

Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...

, and procreation.

The term miscegenation has been used since the 19th century to refer to interracial marriage

Interracial marriage

Interracial marriage occurs when two people of differing racial groups marry. This is a form of exogamy and can be seen in the broader context of miscegenation .-Legality of interracial marriage:In the Western world certain jurisdictions have had regulations...

and interracial sex

Sexual intercourse

Sexual intercourse, also known as copulation or coitus, commonly refers to the act in which a male's penis enters a female's vagina for the purposes of sexual pleasure or reproduction. The entities may be of opposite sexes, or they may be hermaphroditic, as is the case with snails...

, and more generally to the process of racial admixture, which has taken place since ancient history

Ancient history

Ancient history is the study of the written past from the beginning of recorded human history to the Early Middle Ages. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, with Cuneiform script, the oldest discovered form of coherent writing, from the protoliterate period around the 30th century BC...

. The term entered historical records during European colonialism

Colonialism

Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...

and the Age of Discovery

Age of Discovery

The Age of Discovery, also known as the Age of Exploration and the Great Navigations , was a period in history starting in the early 15th century and continuing into the early 17th century during which Europeans engaged in intensive exploration of the world, establishing direct contacts with...

, but societies such as China and Japan also had restrictions on marrying with peoples they considered different. Historically the term has been used in the context of laws banning interracial marriage and sex, so-called anti-miscegenation laws

Anti-miscegenation laws

Anti-miscegenation laws, also known as miscegenation laws, were laws that enforced racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by criminalizing interracial marriage and sometimes also sex between members of different races...

. It is a potentially offensive word.

Usage

Today, the word miscegenation is avoided by many scholars, because the term suggests an actual biological phenomenon, rather than its nature as a categorization imposed on certain relationships. The word is considered offensive by many, and other terms such as "interracial", "interethnic" or "cross-cultural" are more common in contemporary usage. The term remains in use among scholars when referring to past practices concerning multiracial

Multiracial

The terms multiracial and mixed-race describe people whose ancestries come from multiple races. Unlike the term biracial, which often is only used to refer to having parents or grandparents of two different races, the term multiracial may encompass biracial people but can also include people with...

ity, such as anti-miscegenation laws that banned interracial marriages.

In Spanish, Portuguese and French, the words used to describe the mixing of races are mestizaje, mestiçagem and métissage. These words, much older than the term miscegenation, are derived from the Late Latin

Late Latin

Late Latin is the scholarly name for the written Latin of Late Antiquity. The English dictionary definition of Late Latin dates this period from the 3rd to the 6th centuries AD extending in Spain to the 7th. This somewhat ambiguously defined period fits between Classical Latin and Medieval Latin...

mixticius for "mixed", which is also the root of the Spanish word mestizo
Mestizo
Mestizo is a term traditionally used in Latin America, Philippines and Spain for people of mixed European and Native American heritage or descent...

. Portuguese also uses miscigenação, derived from the same Latin root as the English word. These non-English terms for "race-mixing" are not considered as offensive as "miscegenation", although they have historically been tied to the caste system (Casta

Casta

Casta is a Portuguese and Spanish term used in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries mainly in Spanish America to describe as a whole the mixed-race people which appeared in the post-Conquest period...

) that was established during the colonial era in Spanish-speaking Latin America. Some groups in South America, however, consider the use of the word mestizo offensive because it was used during the times of the colony to refer specifically to the mixing between the conquistadores and the indigenous people.

Today, the mixes among races and ethnicities are diverse, so it is considered preferable to use the term "mixed-race" or simply "mixed" (mezcla). In Portuguese-speaking Latin America (i.e., Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

), a milder form of caste system existed, although it also provided for legal and social discrimination among individuals belonging to different races, since slavery

Slavery

Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

for blacks existed until the late 19th century. Miscegenation occurred significantly from the very first settlements, with their descendants achieving high rank in government and society. To this day, the Brazilian class system is drawn mostly around socio-economic lines, not racial ones (in a manner similar to other former Portuguese

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

colonies).

The concept of miscegenation is tied to concepts of racial difference. As the different connotations and etymologies of miscegenation and mestizaje suggest, definitions of race, "race mixing" and multiracial

Multiracial

ity have diverged globally as well as historically, depending on changing social circumstances and cultural perceptions. Mestizo are people of mixed white and indigenous, usually Amerindian ancestry, who do not self-identify as indigenous peoples or Native Americans

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

. In Canada, however, the Métis

Métis people (Canada)

The Métis are one of the Aboriginal peoples in Canada who trace their descent to mixed First Nations parentage. The term was historically a catch-all describing the offspring of any such union, but within generations the culture syncretised into what is today a distinct aboriginal group, with...

, who also have partly Amerindian and partly white, often French-Canadian, ancestry, have identified as an ethnic group and are a constitutionally recognized aboriginal people

Aboriginal peoples in Canada

Aboriginal peoples in Canada comprise the First Nations, Inuit and Métis. The descriptors "Indian" and "Eskimo" have fallen into disuse in Canada and are commonly considered pejorative....

. (In Canada these are referred to as Métis

Métis people (Canada)

. A very famous one was Louis Riel

Louis Riel

Louis David Riel was a Canadian politician, a founder of the province of Manitoba, and a political and spiritual leader of the Métis people of the Canadian prairies. He led two resistance movements against the Canadian government and its first post-Confederation Prime Minister, Sir John A....

.)

The differences between related terms and words which encompass aspects of racial admixture show the impact of different historical and cultural factors leading to changing social interpretations of race

Social interpretations of race

Social interpretations of race regard the common categorizations of people into different races, often with biologist tagging of particular "racial" attributes beyond mere anatomy, as more socially and culturally determined than based upon biology...

and ethnicity. Thus the Comte de Montlosier, in exile during the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

, equated class difference in 18th-century France with racial difference. Borrowing Boulainvilliers' discourse on the "Nordic race" as being the French aristocracy that invaded the plebeian "Gauls", he showed his contempt for the lowest social class

Social class

Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...

, the Third Estate, calling it "this new people born of slaves ... mixture of all races and of all times".

Etymological history

Miscegenation comes from the Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

miscere, "to mix" and genus, "kind". The word was coined in the U.S. in 1863, and the etymology

Etymology

Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...

of the word is tied up with political conflicts during the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

over the abolition

Abolitionism

Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...

of slavery

Slavery

and over the racial segregation

Racial segregation

Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...

of African-Americans. The reference to genus was made to emphasize the supposedly distinct biological differences between whites and non-whites, though all humans belong to the same genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

, Homo, same species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

, Homo sapiens and same subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens.

The word was coined in an anonymous propaganda

Propaganda

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....

pamphlet

Pamphlet

A pamphlet is an unbound booklet . It may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths , or it may consist of a few pages that are folded in half and saddle stapled at the crease to make a simple book...

published in New York City in December 1863, during the American Civil War

American Civil War

. The pamphlet was entitled Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro.
It purported to advocate the intermarriage of whites and blacks until they were indistinguishably mixed, as a desirable goal, and further asserted that this was the goal of the Republican Party

Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

. The pamphlet was a hoax, concocted by Democrats

Democratic Party (United States)

The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

, to discredit the Republicans by imputing to them what were then radical views that offended against the attitudes of the vast majority of whites, including those who opposed slavery. There was already much opposition to the war effort; in New York in particular the opposition reached heights of the Draft Riots, that included numerous lynching

Lynching

Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...

s.

The pamphlet and variations on it were reprinted widely in both the north and south

Confederate States of America

The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...

by Democrats and Confederates. Only in November 1864 was the pamphlet exposed as a hoax. The hoax pamphlet was written by David Goodman Croly

David Goodman Croly

David Goodman Croly was an American journalist, born in New York and educated at New York University. He was associated with the Evening Post and the Herald , and then became an editor and subsequently the managing editor of the World. He married Jane Cunningham, known as "Jennie June", in 1856...

, managing editor of the New York World
New York World
The New York World was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers...

, a Democratic Party paper, and George Wakeman, a World reporter.

By then, the word miscegenation had entered the common language of the day as a popular buzzword

Buzzword

A buzzword is a term of art, salesmanship, politics, or technical jargon that is used in the media and wider society outside of its originally narrow technical context....

in political and social discourse. The issue of miscegenation, raised by the opponents of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

, featured prominently in the election campaign of 1864.

In the United States, miscegenation has referred primarily to the intermarriage between whites and non-whites, especially blacks.

Before the publication of Miscegenation, the word amalgamation

Amalgamation (history)

Amalgamation is a now largely archaic term for the intermarriage and interbreeding of different ethnicities or races. In the English-speaking world, the term was in use into the twentieth century. In the United States, it was partly replaced after 1863 by the term miscegenation...

, borrowed from metallurgy

Metallurgy

Metallurgy is a domain of materials science that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their intermetallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are called alloys. It is also the technology of metals: the way in which science is applied to their practical use...

, had been in use as a general term for ethnic and racial intermixing. A contemporary usage of this metaphor was Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...

's private vision in 1845 of America as an ethnic and racial smelting-pot, a variation on the concept of the melting pot

Melting pot

The melting pot is a metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" into a harmonious whole with a common culture...

. Opinions in the U.S on the desirability of such intermixing, including that between white Protestants and Irish Catholic

Irish Catholic

Irish Catholic is a term used to describe people who are both Roman Catholic and Irish .Note: the term is not used to describe a variant of Catholicism. More particularly, it is not a separate creed or sect in the sense that "Anglo-Catholic", "Old Catholic", "Eastern Orthodox Catholic" might be...

immigrants, were divided. The term miscegenation was coined to refer specifically to the intermarriage of blacks and whites, with the intent of galvanising opposition to the war.

The Concept of Miscegenation

Franz Boas

Franz Boas was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology" and "the Father of Modern Anthropology." Like many such pioneers, he trained in other disciplines; he received his doctorate in physics, and did...

(considered to be the 'father' of American cultural anthropology) as well as many of his students, such as Ashley Montagu

Ashley Montagu

Montague Francis Ashley Montagu was a British-American anthropologist and humanist, of Jewish ancestry, who popularized topics such as race and gender and their relation to politics and development...

, considered race to be an invalid concept. From this point of view, if the concept of race is invalid, then miscegenation as the 'crossing' of races is equally invalid. These ideas are pursued in greater depth in Ashley Montagu's books on the subject.

Laws banning miscegenation

Laws banning "race-mixing" were enforced in Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

(the Nuremberg Laws

Nuremberg Laws

The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany introduced at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. After the takeover of power in 1933 by Hitler, Nazism became an official ideology incorporating scientific racism and antisemitism...

) from 1935 until 1945, in certain U.S. states from the Colonial era until 1967 and in South Africa during the early part of the Apartheid era. All these laws primarily banned marriage between spouses of different racially or ethnically defined groups, which was termed "amalgamation" or "miscegenation" in the U.S. The laws in Nazi Germany and many of the U.S. states, as well as South Africa, also banned sexual relations between such individuals.

In the United States, the various state laws prohibited the marriage of whites and blacks, and in many states also the intermarriage of whites with Native Americans

Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

or Asians

Asian American

Asian Americans are Americans of Asian descent. The U.S. Census Bureau definition of Asians as "Asian” refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan,...

. In the U.S., such laws were known as anti-miscegenation laws

Anti-miscegenation laws

. From 1913 until 1948, 30 out of the then 48 states enforced such laws. Although an "Anti-Miscegenation Amendment" to the United States Constitution

United States Constitution

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...

was proposed in 1871, in 1912–1913, and in 1928, no nation-wide law against racially mixed marriages was ever enacted. In 1967, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Loving v. Virginia
Loving v. Virginia
Loving v. Virginia, , was a landmark civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the "Racial Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional, thereby overturning Pace v...

that anti-miscegenation laws are unconstitutional. With this ruling, these laws were no longer in effect in the remaining 16 states that still had them.

The laws in U.S. states were established to maintain "racial purity" and white supremacy

White supremacy

White supremacy is the belief, and promotion of the belief, that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds. The term is sometimes used specifically to describe a political ideology that advocates the social and political dominance by whites.White supremacy, as with racial...

. Such laws were passed in South Africa because of fears that the white minority would be "bred-out" by the black majority.

The Nazi ban on interracial marriage and interracial sex was enacted in September 1935 as part of the Nuremberg Laws

Nuremberg Laws

, the Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre (The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour). The Nuremberg Laws classified Jews

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

as a race, and forbade marriage and extramarital sexual relations between persons of Jewish origin and persons of "German or related blood". Such intercourse was condemned as Rassenschande
Rassenschande
Rassenschande or Blutschande was the Nazi term for sexual relations between Aryans and non-Aryans, which was punishable by law...

(lit. "race-disgrace") and could be punished by imprisonment (usually followed by deportation to a concentration camp) and even by death.

The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act

Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act

The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, Act No 55 of 1949, was an apartheid law in South Africa that prohibited marriages between people of different races. It was among the first pieces of apartheid legislation to be passed following the National Party's rise to power in 1948...

in South Africa, enacted in 1949, banned intermarriage between different racial groups, including between whites

Whites in South Africa

White South African is a term which refers to people from South Africa who are of European descent and who don't regard themselves, or are not regarded as being part of another racial group, for example, as Coloured...

and non-whites. The Immorality Act

Immorality Act

Immorality Act was the title of two acts of the Parliament of South Africa which prohibited, amongst other things, sexual relations between white people and people of other races. The first Immorality Act, of 1927, prohibited sex between whites and blacks, until amended in 1950 to prohibit sex...

, enacted in 1950, also made it a criminal offense for a white person to have any sexual relations with a person of a different race. Both laws were repealed in 1985.

Africa

Africa has a long history of interracial mixing with Arabs and later European men having sexual relations with black African women as well as taking them as wive

Wife

A wife is a female partner in a marriage. The rights and obligations of the wife regarding her spouse and others, and her status in the community and in law, varies between cultures and has varied over time.-Origin and etymology:...

s. Arabs played a big role in the African slave trade

African slave trade

Systems of servitude and slavery were common in many parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient world. In some African societies, the enslaved people were also indentured servants and fully integrated; in others, they were treated much worse...

and unlike the trans-atlantic trade most of the black African slaves in the Arab slave trade

Arab slave trade

The Arab slave trade was the practice of slavery in the Arab World, mainly Western Asia, North Africa, East Africa and certain parts of Europe during their period of domination by Arab leaders. The trade was focused on the slave markets of the Middle East and North Africa...

were women. Most of them were used as sexual slaves by the Arab men and some were even taken as wives.

Sir Richard Francis Burton

Richard Francis Burton

Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS was a British geographer, explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia, Africa and the Americas as well as his...

writes during his expedition to Africa about relationships between black women and white men. He writes, "The women are well disposed toward strangers of fair complexion, apparently with the permission of their husbands." There are several mulatto populations throughout Africa mostly the results of interracial relationships between Arab and European men and black women. In South Africa there are big mulatto communities like the Coloureds and Griqua formed by White colonists taking native African wives. In Namibia there is a community called the Rehoboth Basters formed by the interracial marriage of Dutch

Dutch people

The Dutch people are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a common culture and speak the Dutch language. Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Suriname, Chile, Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United...

/German men and black African women.

In the former Portuguese Africa (now known as Angola

Angola

Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...

, Mozambique

Mozambique

Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...

and Cape Verde

Cape Verde

The Republic of Cape Verde is an island country, spanning an archipelago of 10 islands located in the central Atlantic Ocean, 570 kilometres off the coast of Western Africa...

) racial mixing between white Portuguese

Portuguese people

The Portuguese are a nation and ethnic group native to the country of Portugal, in the west of the Iberian peninsula of south-west Europe. Their language is Portuguese, and Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion....

and black Africans was fairly common, especially in Cape Verde where the majority of the population is of mixed descent.

There have been some recorded cases of Chinese

Chinese people

The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....

merchants and labourers taking African wives throughout Africa as many Chinese

Chinese people

The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....

workers were employed to build railways and other infrastructural projects in Africa. These labour groups were made up completely of men with very few Chinese women coming to Africa.

In West Africa, especially Nigeria there are many cases of Lebanese men taking African women. Many such mixed people have gained prominent positions in Africa. Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings, who has a Scottish

Scottish people

The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...

father and a black Ghanaian mother became the President and Head of State of Ghana. Jean Ping

Jean Ping

Jean Ping is a Gabonese diplomat and politician who is currently the Chairperson of the Commission of the African Union...

, the son of a Chinese

Chinese people

The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....

trader and a black Gabonese mother, became the Deputy Prime Minister as well as the Foreign minister of Gabon and is currently the Chairperson of the Commission of the African Union in 2009. Ian Khama

Ian Khama

Lieutenant General Seretse Khama Ian Khama is a Botswana politician who has been the President of Botswana since 2008; he is also the Paramount Chief of the Bamangwato tribe...

son of a Botswanian leader and a white mother is the President of Botswana and the paramount chief of the Bamangwato

Bamangwato

The Bamangwato can be said to be one of the eight 'principal' Tswana tribes of Botswana, and just like any other Tswana tribe in Botswana, constitutes a small percent in the central district even in their capital serowe. They ruled over majority Bakalangaand other tribes such as the san,bitwa and...

people.

Indian

Indian South Africans

Indian South Africans are people of Indian descent living in South Africa and mostly live in and around the city of Durban, making it 'the largest 'Indian' city outside India'. Most Indians in South Africa are descendents of migrants from colonial India during late 19th-century through early...

men, who have long been traders in East Africa

East Africa

East Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN scheme of geographic regions, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...

, at times married among local African women. The British Empire

British Empire

The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...

brought many Indian workers into East Africa to build the Uganda Railway

Uganda Railway

The Uganda Railway is a railway system and former railway company linking the interiors of Uganda and Kenya with the Indian Ocean at Mombasa in Kenya.-Origins:...

. Indians eventually populated South Africa, Kenya

Kenya

Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

, Uganda

Uganda

Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...

, Tanzania

Tanzania

The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...

, Malawi

Malawi

The Republic of Malawi is a landlocked country in southeast Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the northwest, Tanzania to the northeast, and Mozambique on the east, south and west. The country is separated from Tanzania and Mozambique by Lake Malawi. Its size...

, Rwanda

Rwanda

Rwanda or , officially the Republic of Rwanda , is a country in central and eastern Africa with a population of approximately 11.4 million . Rwanda is located a few degrees south of the Equator, and is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo...

, Zambia

Zambia

Zambia , officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. The neighbouring countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west....

, Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...

and Zaire

Zaire

The Republic of Zaire was the name of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo between 27 October 1971 and 17 May 1997. The name of Zaire derives from the , itself an adaptation of the Kongo word nzere or nzadi, or "the river that swallows all rivers".-Self-proclaimed Father of the Nation:In...

in small numbers. These interracial unions were mostly unilateral marriages between Indian men and East African women.

Réunion

The majority of the population of Réunion

Réunion

Réunion is a French island with a population of about 800,000 located in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, about south west of Mauritius, the nearest island.Administratively, Réunion is one of the overseas departments of France...

is defined as mixed race. In the last 350 years, various ethnic groups (Africans, Chinese, English, French, Gujuratis, Tamil Indians) have arrived and settled on the island. There have been mixed race people on the island since its first permanent inhabitation in 1665.

Canada

The 2006 Census counted 289,400 mixed unions (marriages and common-law unions) involving a visible minority

Visible minority

A visible minority is a person who is visibly not one of the majority race in a given population.The term is used as a demographic category by Statistics Canada in connection with that country's Employment Equity policies. The qualifier "visible" is important in the Canadian context where...

person with a non-visible minority person or a person from a different visible minority group. This was a 33.1% increase from 2001. Among all mixed unions in 2006, 247,600 couples were in unions involving a visible minority person and someone who was not a visible minority. The groups most likely to be involved in a mixed union were Japanese (74.4%), Latin Americans (47%) and blacks (40.6%).

Jamaica and Haiti

By some estimates, 80,000 North American and European women (most of them over the age of 40) visit Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

and Haiti

Haiti

Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...

every year for sex with young men (mostly in their 20s). They're called "milk bottles". HIV/AIDS infection rates in the Caribbean are much higher than in Canada or the U.S. Even so, female sex tourists in the Caribbean are not especially preoccupied by the risk.

United States

Historically, "race mixing" between black and white people was taboo in the United States. So-called anti-miscegenation laws

Anti-miscegenation laws

, barring blacks and whites from marrying or having sex, were established in colonial America

Colonial America

The colonial history of the United States covers the history from the start of European settlement and especially the history of the thirteen colonies of Britain until they declared independence in 1776. In the late 16th century, England, France, Spain and the Netherlands launched major...

as early as 1691. The 1691 Virginia law was amended in 1705 to remove Indian-white intermarriage from the prohibition. Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

's policy proposal for dealing with Native Americans

Native Americans in the United States

was "to let our settlements and theirs meet and blend together, to intermix, and become one people." He regretted in 1813 that white-Indian war had prevented this: “They would have mixed their blood with ours, and been amalgamated and identified with us within no distant period of time.“

The taboo among American whites surrounding white-black intermarriage can be seen as a historical consequence of the oppression and racial segregation

Racial segregation

of African-Americans. In many U.S. states interracial marriage was already illegal when the term miscegenation was invented in 1863. The first laws banning interracial marriage were introduced in the late 17th century in the slave-holding colonies of Virginia (1691) and Maryland (1692). Later these laws also spread to colonies and states where slavery did not exist.

It has also been argued that the first laws banning interracial marriage were a response by the planter elite to the problems they were facing due to the socio-economic dynamics of the plantation system in the Southern colonies. The bans in Virginia and Maryland were established at a time when slavery was not yet fully institutionalized. At the time, most forced laborers on the plantations were indentured servants, and they were mostly white. Some historians have suggested that the at-the-time unprecedented laws banning interracial marriage were originally invented by planters as a divide and rule

Divide and rule

In politics and sociology, divide and rule is a combination of political, military and economic strategy of gaining and maintaining power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into chunks that individually have less power than the one implementing the strategy...

tactic after the uprising of servants in Bacon's Rebellion

Bacon's Rebellion

Bacon's Rebellion was an uprising in 1676 in the Virginia Colony in North America, led by a 29-year-old planter, Nathaniel Bacon.About a thousand Virginians rose because they resented Virginia Governor William Berkeley's friendly policies towards the Native Americans...

. According to this theory, the ban on interracial marriage was issued to split up the racially mixed, increasingly mixed-race labour force into whites, who were given their freedom, and blacks, who were later treated as slaves rather than as indentured servants. By forbidding interracial marriage, it became possible to keep these two new groups separated and prevent a new rebellion.

In 1918, there was considerable controversy in Arizona

Arizona

Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...

when an Indian farmer B. K. Singh married the sixteen year-old daughter of one of his white tenants.
During and after slavery, most American whites regarded interracial marriage between whites and blacks as taboo. However, during slavery many white American men and women did conceive children with black partners. These children automatically became slaves if the mother was a slave or were born free if the mother was free, as slavery was matrilineal. Some children were freed by their slave-holding fathers or bought to be emancipated if the father was not the owner. Many children of these unions formed enclaves under names such as Colored

Colored

Colored is a term once widely used in the United States to describe black people and Native Americans...

and Gens de couleur

Gens de couleur

Gens de couleur is a French term meaning "people of color." The term was commonly used in France's West Indian colonies prior to the abolition of slavery, where it was a short form of gens de couleur libres ....

, etc. Most mixed-raced descendants merged into the African-American ethnic group during Jim Crow

Jim Crow laws

The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...

, while over the centuries a minority of mixed-raced Americans passed and became white, and others exist to this day in small mixed enclaves of Mestees such as the Melungeon

Melungeon

Melungeon is a term traditionally applied to one of a number of "tri-racial isolate" groups of the Southeastern United States, mainly in the Cumberland Gap area of central Appalachia, which includes portions of East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and East Kentucky. Tri-racial describes populations...

s and Lumbee

Lumbee

The Lumbee belong to a state recognized Native American tribe in North Carolina. The Lumbee are concentrated in Robeson County and named for the primary waterway traversing the county...

.

Genetic research suggests that a considerable minority of white Americans (estimated at 1/3 of the population by some geneticists such as Mark Shriver) has some distant African-American ancestry, and that the majority of black Americans have some European ancestry. After the Civil War and the abolition

Abolition of slavery timeline

Abolition of slavery occurred as abolition in specific countries, abolition of the trade in slaves and abolition throughout empires. Each of these steps was usually the result of a separate law or action.-Ancient times:...

of slavery in 1865, the intermarriage of white and black Americans continued to be taboo, especially but not only in the former slave states.
The Motion Picture Production Code

Production Code

The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral censorship guidelines that governed the production of the vast majority of United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Hollywood's chief censor of the...

of 1930, also known as Hays Code, explicitly stated that the depiction of "miscegenation... is forbidden."
One important strategy intended to discourage the marriage of white Americans and Americans of partly African descent was the promulgation of the one-drop theory, which held that any person with any known African ancestry, however remote, must be regarded as "black". This definition of blackness was encoded in the anti-miscegenation laws of various U.S. states, such as Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924

Racial Integrity Act of 1924

On March 20, 1924 the Virginia General Assembly passed two laws that had arisen out of contemporary concerns about eugenics and race: SB 219, entitled "The Racial Integrity Act" and SB 281, "An ACT to provide for the sexual sterilization of inmates of State institutions in certain cases",...

. The plaintiffs in Loving v. Virginia
Loving v. Virginia
Loving v. Virginia, , was a landmark civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the "Racial Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional, thereby overturning Pace v...

, Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving became the historically most prominent interracial couple in the US through their legal struggle against this act.

Accusations of support for miscegenation were commonly made by slavery defenders against Abolitionists before the Civil War. After the War, similar charges were used by white segregationists

Racial segregation

against advocates of equal rights for African Americans. They were said to be secretly plotting the destruction of the white race through miscegenation. In the 1950s, segregationists alleged a Communist

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

plot funded by the Soviet Union with that goal. In 1957, segregationists cite the anti-semitic

Anti-Semitism

Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...

hoax A Racial Program for the Twentieth Century
A Racial Program for the Twentieth Century
A Racial Program for the Twentieth Century is an antisemitic hoax promoted by Eustace Mullins...

as evidence for these claims.

In 1958, the Christian fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell

Jerry Falwell

Jerry Lamon Falwell, Sr. was an evangelical fundamentalist Southern Baptist pastor, televangelist, and a conservative commentator from the United States. He was the founding pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, a megachurch in Lynchburg, Virginia...

, at the time a defender of segregation, in a sermon railed against integration, warning that it would lead to miscegenation, which would "destroy our [white] race eventually.".

Asians were also specifically included in some state laws. California continued to ban Asian/white marriages until the Perez v. Sharp

Perez v. Sharp

In 1948, in the case Perez v. Sharp, also known as Perez v. Lippold and Perez v. Moroney, the Supreme Court of California recognized that interracial bans on marriage violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution....

decision in 1948.

In the United States, segregationists and Christian identity

Christian Identity

Christian Identity is a label applied to a wide variety of loosely affiliated believers and churches with a racialized theology. Many promote a Eurocentric interpretation of Christianity.According to Chester L...

groups have claimed that several passages in the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

, for example the stories of Phinehas

Phinehas, son of Eleazar

Phinehas was a High Priest of Israel in the wilderness, the grandson of Aaron, and son of Eleazar the High Priest , who distinguished himself as a youth at Shittim by his zeal against the Heresy of Peor: the immorality with which the Moabites and Midianites had successfully tempted the people to...

and of the so-called "curse of Ham

Curse of Ham

The Curse of Ham is a possible misnomer, for the Curse of Canaan. The curse refers to Noah cursing Ham's offspring Canaan, for Ham's own transgression against his father, according to Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. The debate regarding upon whom the curse fell has raged for at least two thousand...

", should be understood as referring to miscegenation and that certain verses expressly forbid it. Most theologians read these verses and references as forbidding inter-religious marriage, rather than inter-racial marriage.

Miscegenation has become increasingly accepted in the United States since the Civil Rights movement and up to the present day. The most notable American of mixed race is the current President of the United States

President of the United States

The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

, Barack Obama

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

, who is the product of a "mixed" marriage between a black father and white mother. Nevertheless, as late as 2009, a Louisiana

Louisiana

Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...

justice of the peace

Justice of the Peace

A justice of the peace is a puisne judicial officer elected or appointed by means of a commission to keep the peace. Depending on the jurisdiction, they might dispense summary justice or merely deal with local administrative applications in common law jurisdictions...

refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple, justifying the decision on grounds of concern for any children the couple might have.

In recent years, interracial pornographic films, which most commonly refers to black male/white female films, have increased in popularity, becoming one of the fastest-growing and biggest-selling genres. Interracial films that include black men and white women together have a majority audience of white male viewers.

According to Renée Christine Romano, "Alvin Poussaint

Alvin F. Poussaint

Alvin Francis Poussaint is a noted professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and the author of numerous books on child psychiatry, with a particular focus on the raising of African American children.-Biography:...

, a black psychiatrist who studied Freedom Summer

Freedom Summer

Freedom Summer was a campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African American voters as possible in Mississippi which had historically excluded most blacks from voting...

volunteers, theorized that black men in the movement saw white women more as symbolic conquests than as individuals. The black men he studied viewed “sexual intimacy with the white girls as a weapon of revenge

Revenge

Revenge is a harmful action against a person or group in response to a grievance, be it real or perceived. It is also called payback, retribution, retaliation or vengeance; it may be characterized, justly or unjustly, as a form of justice.-Function in society:Some societies believe that the...

against white society,” Poussaint argued."

Asia

Inter-ethnic marriage in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...

dates back to the spread of Indian culture

Culture of India

India's languages, religions, dance, music, architecture, food and customs differ from place to place within the country, but nevertheless possess a commonality....

, Hinduism

Hinduism

Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...

and Buddhism

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

to the region. From the 1st century onwards, mostly male traders and merchants from the Indian subcontinent

Indian subcontinent

The Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent, Indo-Pak Subcontinent or South Asian Subcontinent is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate from the Hindu Kush or Hindu Koh, Himalayas and including the Kuen Lun and Karakoram ranges, forming a land mass which extends...

frequently intermarried with the local female populations in Cambodia

Cambodia

Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...

, Burma, Champa

Champa

The kingdom of Champa was an Indianized kingdom that controlled what is now southern and central Vietnam from approximately the 7th century through to 1832.The Cham people are remnants...

, central Siam

Central Thailand

Central Thailand is a region of Thailand, covering the broad alluvial plain of the Chao Phraya River. It is separated from North-East Thailand by the Phetchabun mountain range, and another mountain range separates it from Myanmar to the west. In the north it gently changes into the more hilly...

, the Malay Peninsula

Malay Peninsula

The Malay Peninsula or Thai-Malay Peninsula is a peninsula in Southeast Asia. The land mass runs approximately north-south and, at its terminus, is the southern-most point of the Asian mainland...

, and Malay Archipelago

Malay Archipelago

The Malay Archipelago refers to the archipelago between mainland Southeastern Asia and Australia. The name was derived from the anachronistic concept of a Malay race....

. Many Indianized kingdoms arose in Southeast Asia during the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

.

From the 9th century onwards, a large number of mostly male Arab

Arab

Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...

traders from the Middle East settled down in the Malay Peninsula and Malay Archipelago, and they intermarried with the local Malay, Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

n and Filipina

Filipino people

The Filipino people or Filipinos are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the islands of the Philippines. There are about 92 million Filipinos in the Philippines, and about 11 million living outside the Philippines ....

female populations. This contributed to the spread of Islam in Southeast Asia. From the 14th to the 17th centuries, many Chinese

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, Indian

History of India

The history of India begins with evidence of human activity of Homo sapiens as long as 75,000 years ago, or with earlier hominids including Homo erectus from about 500,000 years ago. The Indus Valley Civilization, which spread and flourished in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent from...

and Arab traders settled down within the maritime kingdoms of Southeast Asia and intermarried with the local female populations. This tradition continued among Portuguese

Portuguese people

traders who also intermarried with the local populations. In the 16th and 17th centuries, thousands of Japanese people

Japanese people

The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...

also travelled to Southeast Asia and intermarried with the local women there.

The white men who sailed to Asia in the 16th century left a generation of mixed-race offspring that, at the high point of empire building, was more than one-million strong. Some 100,000 Amerasians stayed in Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

after the fall of Saigon. During and after the Indonesian National Revolution (1945–1965) around 300,000 people, pre-dominantly Eurasians, left Indonesia to go to the Netherlands.

In the 19th century and early 20th century, there was a network of small numbers of Chinese

Han Chinese

Han Chinese are an ethnic group native to China and are the largest single ethnic group in the world.Han Chinese constitute about 92% of the population of the People's Republic of China , 98% of the population of the Republic of China , 78% of the population of Singapore, and about 20% of the...

prostitutes

Prostitution

Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...

being trafficked across Asia, in countries such as China, Japan, Korea

Korea

Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...

, Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

and British India, in what was then known as the ’Yellow Slave Traffic’. There was also a network of prostitutes from continental Europe

Continental Europe

Continental Europe, also referred to as mainland Europe or simply the Continent, is the continent of Europe, explicitly excluding European islands....

being trafficked to India

Prostitution in India

In India, prostitution is legal only in metro cities like Mumbai but illegal in other parts of the country., but a number of related activities, including soliciting in a public place, keeping a brothel, pimping and pandering, are outlawed.-History:In ancient India, there was a practice of having...

, Ceylon

British Ceylon

British Ceylon refers to British rule prior to 1948 of the island territory now known as Sri Lanka.-From the Dutch to the British:Before the beginning of the Dutch governance, the island of Ceylon was divided between the Portuguese Empire and the Kingdom of Kandy, who were in the midst of a war for...

, Singapore, China and Japan at around the same time, in what was then known as the ’White Slave Traffic’.

During World War II, Japanese

Empire of Japan

The Empire of Japan is the name of the state of Japan that existed from the Meiji Restoration on 3 January 1868 to the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of...

soldiers engaged in war rape

War rape

War rapes are rapes committed by soldiers, other combatants or civilians during armed conflict or war, or during military occupation, distinguished from sexual assaults and rape committed amongst troops in military service...

during their invasions across East Asia

East Asia

East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...

and Southeast Asia. The term "comfort women

Comfort women

The term "comfort women" was a euphemism used to describe women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II.Estimates vary as to how many women were involved, with numbers ranging from as low as 20,000 from some Japanese scholars to as high as 410,000 from some Chinese...

" is a euphemism

Euphemism

A euphemism is the substitution of a mild, inoffensive, relatively uncontroversial phrase for another more frank expression that might offend or otherwise suggest something unpleasant to the audience...

for the estimated 200,000, mostly Korean

Korean people

The Korean people are an ethnic group originating in the Korean peninsula and Manchuria. Koreans are one of the most ethnically and linguistically homogeneous groups in the world.-Names:...

and Chinese, women who were forced into prostitution in Japanese military

Imperial Japanese Army

-Foundation:During the Meiji Restoration, the military forces loyal to the Emperor were samurai drawn primarily from the loyalist feudal domains of Satsuma and Chōshū...

brothels during World War II. Some Dutch

Dutch people

women, captured in Dutch colonies in Asia, were also forced into sexual slavery

Sexual slavery

Sexual slavery is when unwilling people are coerced into slavery for sexual exploitation. The incidence of sexual slavery by country has been studied and tabulated by UNESCO, with the cooperation of various international agencies...

.

Sex tourism

Sex tourism

Sex tourism is travel to engage in sexual activity with prostitutes.The World Tourism Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations, defines sex tourism as "trips organized from within the tourism sector, or from outside this sector but using its structures and networks, with the primary...

has emerged in the late 20th century as a controversial aspect of
Western tourism and globalization. Sex tourism is typically undertaken internationally by tourists from wealthier countries. Author Nils Ringdal

Nils Johan Ringdal

Nils Johan Ringdal was a Norwegian author and historian, known mostly for his works on Norwegian occupation history and Norwegian cultural history, and for his controversial book "Nationaltheaterets Historie 1899-1999" ...

alleged that three out of four men between the ages of 20 and 50 who have visited Asia or Africa have paid for sex.

Central asia

Today central asians are a mixed race of various peoples such as Mongols, Turkics, Iranics. The Mongol invasion of Central Asia in 13th century resulted in the massacre of mostly Iranic population and other Indo-European people

Proto-Indo-Europeans

The Proto-Indo-Europeans were the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language , a reconstructed prehistoric language of Eurasia.Knowledge of them comes chiefly from the linguistic reconstruction, along with material evidence from archaeology and archaeogenetics...

as well as large numbers of intermarriage and assimilation. Modern Genetic shows that Central Asian Turkic people and Hazara are an mixture of Northeast asians and Indo-European people. Caucasian ancestry is prevalent in almost all central asian Turkic people. Kazakhs, Hazara, Karakalpaks have more European mtdna than European y-dna, Kyrgyz have mostly European y-dna with substantial European mtdna. Other Turkic people like Uyghurs, Uzbeks, have mostly European y-dna but also an significant high percentages of European mtdna. Turkmen have predominately European y-dna and mtdna.

China

There have been various periods in the history of China

History of China

Chinese civilization originated in various regional centers along both the Yellow River and the Yangtze River valleys in the Neolithic era, but the Yellow River is said to be the Cradle of Chinese Civilization. With thousands of years of continuous history, China is one of the world's oldest...

where large numbers of Arab

Arab

s, Persians

Persian people

The Persian people are part of the Iranian peoples who speak the modern Persian language and closely akin Iranian dialects and languages. The origin of the ethnic Iranian/Persian peoples are traced to the Ancient Iranian peoples, who were part of the ancient Indo-Iranians and themselves part of...

and Turks

Turkic peoples

The Turkic peoples are peoples residing in northern, central and western Asia, southern Siberia and northwestern China and parts of eastern Europe. They speak languages belonging to the Turkic language family. They share, to varying degrees, certain cultural traits and historical backgrounds...

from the "Western Regions

Western Regions

The Western Regions or Xiyu was a historical name specified in the Chinese chronicles between the 3rd century BC to 8th century AD that referred to the regions west of Jade Gate, most often Central Asia or sometimes more specifically the easternmost portion of it The Western Regions or Xiyu was a...

" (Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

and West Asia) migrated to China, beginning with the arrival of Islam during the Tang Dynasty

Islam during the Tang Dynasty

The History of Islam in China goes back to the earliest years of Islam. According to China Muslims' traditional legendary accounts, eighteen years after Muhammad's death, the third Caliph of Islam, Uthman ibn Affan sent a delegation led by Sa`d ibn Abi Waqqas, the maternal uncle of Muhammad, to the...

in the 7th century. Due to the majority of these immigrants being male, some have decided to intermarried with local Chinese

Han Chinese

females. While intermarriage was initially discouraged by the Tang Dynasty

Tang Dynasty

The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...

, it was later encouraged during the Song Dynasty

Song Dynasty

The Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...

, which allowed third-generation immigrants

Immigrant generations

The term first-generation [citizen of a country], e.g., "first-generation Ruritanian" may have either of two different meanings:*A citizen of the country who is a naturalized immigrant.or*A citizen whose parents are naturalized immigrants....

with official titles to intermarry with Chinese imperial princesses. Immigration to China increased under the Mongol Empire

Mongol Empire

The Mongol Empire , initially named as Greater Mongol State was a great empire during the 13th and 14th centuries...

, when large numbers of West and Central Asians were brought over to help govern Yuan China

Yuan Dynasty

The Yuan Dynasty , or Great Yuan Empire was a ruling dynasty founded by the Mongol leader Kublai Khan, who ruled most of present-day China, all of modern Mongolia and its surrounding areas, lasting officially from 1271 to 1368. It is considered both as a division of the Mongol Empire and as an...

in the 13th century.

Iranian, Arab, and Turkic women also migrated to China and mixed with Chinese. From the tenth to twelfth century, Persian

Persian people

women were to be found in Guangzhou

Guangzhou

Guangzhou , known historically as Canton or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of the Guangdong province in the People's Republic of China. Located in southern China on the Pearl River, about north-northwest of Hong Kong, Guangzhou is a key national transportation hub and trading port...

(Canton), some of them in the tenth century like Mei Zhu in the harem of the Emperor Liu Chang

Liu Chang

Liu Chang was the last King of the Kingdom of Southern Han during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period in southern coastal China.-Life:...

, and in the twelfth century large numbers of Persian women lived there, noted for wearing mulitiple earrings and "quarrelsome dispositions". Multiple women originating from the Persian Gulf

Persian Gulf

The Persian Gulf, in Southwest Asia, is an extension of the Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.The Persian Gulf was the focus of the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War, in which each side attacked the other's oil tankers...

lived in Guangzhou's foreign quarter, they were all called "Persian women" (波斯婦 Po-ssu-fu or Bosifu). Iranian women as dancers were in demand in China during this period. During the Sui dynasty, ten young dancing girls were sent from Persia to China. During the Tang dynasty

Tang Dynasty

bars were often attended by Iranian or Sogdian waitresses who performed dances for clients.

During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period(Wudai) (907-960), there are examples of Persian women marrying Chinese emperors. Some Chinese officials from the Song Dynasty era also married women from Dashi (Arabia).

Of the Han Chinese Li family in Quanzhou, Li Nu

Li Nu

Lin Nu was a Chinese scholar and merchant in the early Ming dynasty. He is the ancestor of the philosopher Li Zhi.His father was Lin Lu. In 1376 Lin Nu visited Ormuz in Persia, converted to Islam, and married either a Persian or an Arab girl and brought her back to Quanzhou in Fujian.-References:...

, the son of Li Lu, visited Hormuz

Ormus

The Kingdom of Ormus was a 10th to 17th century kingdom located within the Persian Gulf and extending as far as the Strait of Hormuz...

in Persia in 1376, married a Persian

Persian people

or an Arab

Arab

girl, and brought her back to Quanzhou

Quanzhou

Quanzhou is a prefecture-level city in Fujian province, People's Republic of China. It borders all other prefecture-level cities in Fujian but two and faces the Taiwan Strait...

. He then converted to Islam, Li Nu was the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty reformer Li Chih.

By the 14th century, the total population of Muslims in China

Islam in China

Throughout the history of Islam in China, Chinese Muslims have influenced the course of Chinese history. Chinese Muslims have been in China for the last 1,400 years of continuous interaction with Chinese society...

had grown to 4 million. After Mongol rule had been overthrown by the Ming Dynasty

Ming Dynasty

The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...

in 1368, this led to a violent Chinese backlash against West and Central Asians. In order to contain the violence, the Ming administration instituted a policy where all West and Central Asian males were required to intermarry with native Chinese females, hence assimilating them into the local population. Their descendants are today known as the Hui people

Hui people

The Hui people are an ethnic group in China, defined as Chinese speaking people descended from foreign Muslims. They are typically distinguished by their practice of Islam, however some also practice other religions, and many are direct descendants of Silk Road travelers.In modern People's...

. Caucasian ancestry is also prevalent among the Hui people, 6.7% Hui people's maternal genetics have an Caucasian origin, while slightly over 30% paternal genetics also have an Caucasian origin.

Han women who married Hui men became Hui, and Han men who married Hui women also became Hui.

In the frontier districts of Sichuan

Sichuan

' , known formerly in the West by its postal map spellings of Szechwan or Szechuan is a province in Southwest China with its capital in Chengdu...

, numerous half Chinese-Tibetans were found. Tibetan women were glad to marry Chinese traders and soldiers. Some Chinese traders married Tibetan girls. Traders and officials in ancient times were often forbidden to bring Chinese women with them to Tibet, so they had to marry Tibetan women, the male offspring where considered Chinese and female offspring as Tibetan. Special names were used for these children of Chinese fathers and Tibetan mothers. They are often assimilated into the Tibetan population. Chinese and Nepalese in Tibet married Tibetan women.

In Qinghai

Qinghai

Qinghai ; Oirat Mongolian: ; ; Salar:) is a province of the People's Republic of China, named after Qinghai Lake...

, premarital sex between Tibetan girls and Han Chinese was common, some Tibetan girls boasted of their sexual conquests of Han Chinese boys. Dolkar, a Tibetan girl working as a guard at Drapchi Prison

Drapchi Prison

Drapchi Prison, or Lhasa Prison No. 1 is the largest prison in Tibet, located in Lhasa.Originally built as a Tibetan military garrison, Drapchi was transformed into a prison after the 1959 Tibetan uprising....

married a Chinese.

Chinese men also married Turkic Uyghur

Uyghur people

The Uyghur are a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia. Today, Uyghurs live primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China...

women in Xinjiang from 1880–1949. Sometimes poverty influenced Uyghur women to marry Chinese. These marriages were not recognized by local mullah

Mullah

Mullah is generally used to refer to a Muslim man, educated in Islamic theology and sacred law. The title, given to some Islamic clergy, is derived from the Arabic word مَوْلَى mawlā , meaning "vicar", "master" and "guardian"...

s since Muslims women were not allowed to marry non Muslim men under Islamic law. This did not stop the women because they enjoyed advantages, not being subject to Islamic law and they were not subjected to certain taxes. Uyghur women married to Chinese also did not have to wear a veil

Veil

A veil is an article of clothing, worn almost exclusively by women, that is intended to cover some part of the head or face.One view is that as a religious item, it is intended to show honor to an object or space...

and they received their husband's property upon his death. These women were forbidden from having burial in Muslim graves. The children of Chinese men and Uyghur women were considered as Uyghur. Some Chinese soldiers had Uyghur women as temporary wives, and after the man's military service was up, the wife was left behind or sold, and if it was possible, sons were taken, and daughters were sold.

European travellers noted that many Han Chinese in Xinjiang married Uyghur (who were called turki) women and had children with them. A Chinese was spotted with a "young" and "good looking" Uyghur wife and another Chinese left behind his Uyghur wife and child in Khotan.

After 1950, some intermarriage between Han and Uyghur continued. A Han married a Uyghur woman in 1966 and had three daughters with her, and other cases on intermarriage also continued.

Hong Kong

South Asians have been living in Hong Kong

South Asians in Hong Kong

Hong Kong has a long-established South Asian population. As of the 2006 by-census, there were at least 44,744 persons of South Asian descent in Hong Kong. Many trace their roots in Hong Kong as far back as when most of the Indian subcontinent was still under British colonial rule, and as a legacy...

throughout the colonial period, before the partition of India

Partition of India

The Partition of India was the partition of British India on the basis of religious demographics that led to the creation of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India on 14 and 15...

into the nations of India and Pakistan. They migrated to Hong Kong

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

and worked as police officers as well as army officers during colonial rule. 25,000 of the Muslims in Hong Kong

Islam in Hong Kong

Islam is practiced in Hong Kong by about 250,000 Muslims. About 10,000 of the Muslim families in Hong Kong are 'local boy' families, Muslims of mixed Chinese and South Asian ancestry descended from early Muslim South Asian immigrants who took local Chinese wives and brought their children up as...

trace their roots back to what is now Pakistan. Around half of them belong to 'local boy' families, Muslims of mixed Chinese and South Asian

Chindian

"Chindian" is a compound word used to refer to an Indian restaurant within the village of Chinnor, Oxfordshire. It is formed simply, yet ingeniously, by putting the "ch" from "Chinnor" in front of the word "Indian"....

ancestry, descended from early Indian/Pakistani Muslim immigrants who took local Chinese wives and brought their children up as Muslims.

Indian subcontinent

The Indian subcontinent

Indian subcontinent

has a long history of inter-ethnic marriage dating back to ancient history

Ancient history

. Various groups of people have been intermarrying for millennia in South Asia

South Asia

South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries to the west and the east...

, including groups as diverse as the Dravidian

Dravidian peoples

Dravidian peoples is a term used to refer to the diverse groups of people who natively speak languages belonging to the Dravidian language family. Populations of speakers of around 220 million are found mostly in Southern India. Other Dravidian people are found in parts of central India, Sri Lanka,...

, Indo-Aryan, Austro-Asiatic

Austro-Asiatic languages

The Austro-Asiatic languages, in recent classifications synonymous with Mon–Khmer, are a large language family of Southeast Asia, also scattered throughout India and Bangladesh. The name Austro-Asiatic comes from the Latin words for "south" and "Asia", hence "South Asia"...

and Tibeto-Burman

Tibeto-Burman languages

The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non-Chinese members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken thoughout the highlands of southeast Asia, as well as lowland areas in Burma ....

peoples. Invading Macedonians, Greeks

Classical Greece

Classical Greece was a 200 year period in Greek culture lasting from the 5th through 4th centuries BC. This classical period had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire and greatly influenced the foundation of Western civilizations. Much of modern Western politics, artistic thought, such as...

, Scythians, Huns

Huns

The Huns were a group of nomadic people who, appearing from east of the Volga River, migrated into Europe c. AD 370 and established the vast Hunnic Empire there. Since de Guignes linked them with the Xiongnu, who had been northern neighbours of China 300 years prior to the emergence of the Huns,...

, Persians

Persian people

, Mongols

Mongols

Mongols ) are a Central-East Asian ethnic group that lives mainly in the countries of Mongolia, China, and Russia. In China, ethnic Mongols can be found mainly in the central north region of China such as Inner Mongolia...

(known as Mughals), and Europeans took Indian wives.

3,000–8,000 years ago, Indo-European

Indo-European

Indo-European may refer to:* Indo-European languages** Aryan race, a 19th century and early 20th century term for those peoples who are the native speakers of Indo-European languages...

-speaking nomadic groups from Europe, the Near East, Anatolia, and the Caucasus migrated to India. According to 19th-century British historians, it was these "Aryans" who established the caste system, an elitist form of social organization that separated the "light-skinned" Indo-Aryan conquerors from the "conquered dark-skinned" indigenous Dravidian population through enforcement of "racial endogamy

Endogamy

Endogamy is the practice of marrying within a specific ethnic group, class, or social group, rejecting others on such basis as being unsuitable for marriage or other close personal relationships. A Greek Orthodox Christian endogamist, for example, would require that a marriage be only with another...

". Much of this was simply conjecture

Conjecture

A conjecture is a proposition that is unproven but is thought to be true and has not been disproven. Karl Popper pioneered the use of the term "conjecture" in scientific philosophy. Conjecture is contrasted by hypothesis , which is a testable statement based on accepted grounds...

, fueled by British

British Empire

imperialism

Imperialism

Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...

; British policies of divide and rule

Divide and rule

as well as enumeration of the population into rigid categories during the tenure of British rule in India contributed towards the hardening of these segregated caste identities. Since the independence of India from British rule, the British fantasy

Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

of an "Aryan Invasion and subjugation of the dark skinned Dravidians in India" has become a staple polemic in South Asia

South Asia

n geopolitics, including the propaganda of Indophobia

Indophobia

Indophobia refers to hostility towards Indians and Indian culture. Indophobia is formally defined in the context of anti-Indian prejudice in East Africa and Australia as follows: "Indophobia is a tendency to react negatively towards people of Indian...

in Pakistan. There is no decisive theory as to the origins of the caste system in India, and globally renowned historians and archaeologists like Jim Shaffer, J.P. Mallory, Edwin Bryant, and others, have disputed the claim of "Aryan Invasion".

Some researchers claim that genetic similarities to Europeans were more common in members of the higher ranks. Their findings, published in Genome Research
Genome Research
Genome Research is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. The focus of the journal is on genome-wide studies in any organism, including single gene studies that are placed in a genomic context. This scope includes both experimental and computational...

, supported the idea that members of higher castes are more closely related to Europeans than are the lower castes. According to the research, invading European populations were predominantly male who intermarried with local females and formed the upper castes i.e. the local females had upward mobility in caste which was denied to local males. However, other researchers have criticized and contradicted this claim. A study by Joanna L. Mountain et al. of Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

concluded that there was "no clear separation into three genetically distinct groups along caste lines", although "an inferred tree revealed some clustering according to caste affiliation". A 2006 study by Ismail Thanseem et al. of Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology

Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology

The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology or CCMB is a National level Research laboratory located in Hyderabad, India. CCMB is one of the constituent national laboratories of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research CSIR, the premier multidisciplinary Research & Development...

(India) concluded that the "lower caste groups might have originated with the hierarchical divisions that arose within the tribal groups with the spread of Neolithic

Neolithic

The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...

agriculturalists, much earlier than the arrival of Aryan speakers", and "the Indo-Europeans

Indo-Aryans

Indo-Aryan is an ethno-linguistic term referring to the wide collection of peoples united as native speakers of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian family of Indo-European languages...

established themselves as upper castes among this already developed caste-like class structure within the tribes." A 2006 genetic study by the National Institute of Biologicals in India, testing a sample of men from 32 tribal and 45 caste groups, concluded that the Indians have acquired very few genes from Indo-European

Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...

speakers. More recent studies have also debunked the claims that so-called "Aryans" and "Dravidians" have a "racial divide". A study conducted by the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology

Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology

in 2009 (in collaboration with Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....

, Harvard School of Public Health

Harvard School of Public Health

The Harvard School of Public Health is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University, located in the Longwood Area of the Boston, Massachusetts neighborhood of Mission Hill, which is next to Harvard Medical School. HSPH is considered a significant school focusing on health in the...

and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT) analyzed half a million genetic markers across the genomes of 132 individuals from 25 ethnic groups from 13 states in India across multiple caste groups. The study establishes, based on the impossibility of identifying any genetic indicators across caste lines, that castes in South Asia grew out of traditional tribal organizations during the formation of Indian society, and were not the product of any Aryan invasion and subjugation of Dravidian people.

Rape and enslavement of Hindu

Hindu

Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...

women by invading Islamic armies was very common. For example, according to the Chachnama by Qazi Ismail, during the Arab invasion of Sindh (712 CE), Muhammad bin Qasim

Muhammad bin Qasim

Muhammad bin Qasim Al-Thaqafi was a Umayyad general who, at the age of 17, began the conquest of the Sindh and Punjab regions along the Indus River for the Umayyad Caliphate. He was born in the city of Taif...

first attacked and conquered Debal

Debal

-Introduction:Debal was an ancient port located near modern Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. In Arabic, it was usually called Daybul it is adjacent to the nearby Manora Island and was administered by Mansura, and later Thatta....

. It was situated on the sea-coast (not far from modern Karachi

Karachi

Karachi is the largest city, main seaport and the main financial centre of Pakistan, as well as the capital of the province of Sindh. The city has an estimated population of 13 to 15 million, while the total metropolitan area has a population of over 18 million...

). All males of the age of seventeen and upwards were put to the sword and their women and children were enslaved. 700 Hindu women, who were under the protection of Budh (that is, had taken shelter in the temple), were all captured with their valuable ornaments, and adorned with jewels. Muhammad despatched one-fifth of the legal spoil to Hajjaj which included seventy-five damsels, while the other four-fifths were distributed among the soldiers. Thereafter whichever places he attacked like Rawar, Sehwan, Dhalila, Brahmanabad and Multan

Multan

Multan , is a city in the Punjab Province of Pakistan and capital of Multan District. It is located in the southern part of the province on the east bank of the Chenab River, more or less in the geographic centre of the country and about from Islamabad, from Lahore and from Karachi...

, Hindu soldiers and men with arms were slain, many women of the higher classes immolated themselves in Jauhar

Jauhar

Jauhar and Saka refer to the ancient Indian tradition of honorary self immolation of women and subsequent march of men to the battle field to end their life with respect. It was followed by the Rajput clans in order to avoid capture and dishonour at the hands of their enemies...

. Most others became prize of the victors. These women were enslaved and converted, and batches of them were despatched to the Caliph in regular installments. For example, after Rawar was taken, many women and children were enslaved, of whom 30 were young ladies of royal blood. Muhammad Qasim sent all these to Hajjaj, who forwarded them to Walid the Khalifa. He sold some of these female slaves of royal birth, and some he presented to others. In Northern India, female slaves captured after every campaign of the marching army, were converted and married to Muslim soldiers who settled down in colonies established in places like Mansura, Kuzdar, Mahfuza and Multan. During the Islamic involvement in India, it was normal for kings to possess harems filled with native Hindu women won as booties of war. The most famous one was of Akbar's harem, which had over 5000 women. Most of these Muslim soldiers were Turks

Turkish people

Turkish people, also known as the "Turks" , are an ethnic group primarily living in Turkey and in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire where Turkish minorities had been established in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Romania...

, Afghans

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

, Persians

Persian people

, Mongols

Mongols

(Mughals), other Central Asians and Arabs.

There are even cases of Indian princesses marrying kings abroad. For example, the Korean

Korean language

Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...

text Samguk Yusa about the Gaya

Geumgwan Gaya

Geumgwan Gaya , also known as Bon-Gaya or Garakguk , was the ruling city-state of the Gaya confederacy during the Three Kingdoms Period in Korea. It is believed to have been located around the modern-day city of Gimhae, Southern Gyeongsang province, near the mouth of the Nakdong River...

kingdom (it was absorbed by the kingdom of Silla

Silla

Silla was one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, and one of the longest sustained dynasties in...

later), indicates that in 48 AD, King Kim Suro of Gaya (the progenitor of the Gimhae Kim clan) took a princess (Princess Heo

Heo Hwang-ok

Heo Hwang-ok was a princess who travelled from the ancient kingdom of Ayodhya to Korea. Information about her comes almost entirely from a few short passages in the Samguk Yusa, an 11th-century Korean chronicle. According to that chronicle, she arrived on a boat and married King Suro of Gaya in...

) from the "Ayuta nation" (which is the Korean name for the city of Ayodhya in North India) as his bride and queen. Princess Heo belonged to the Mishra

Mishra

Mishra or Misra is a Hindu Brahmin surname found mostly in the northern and central parts of India.It is one of the most widespread Brahmin surnames in the fertile Gangetic plain region and in the Indian states of Punjab, Delhi, Orissa, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh,...

royal family of Ayodhya. According to the Samguk Yusa, the princess had a dream about a heavenly fair handsome king from a faraway land who was awaiting heaven's anointed ride. After Princess Heo had the dream, she asked her parents, the king and queen of Ayodhya, for permission to set out and seek the foreign prince, which the king and queen urged with the belief that god orchestrated the whole fate. That king was no other than King Kim Suro of the Korean Gaya kingdom.

In Goa

Goa

Goa , a former Portuguese colony, is India's smallest state by area and the fourth smallest by population. Located in South West India in the region known as the Konkan, it is bounded by the state of Maharashtra to the north, and by Karnataka to the east and south, while the Arabian Sea forms its...

, a Portuguese colony in India

Portuguese India

The Portuguese Viceroyalty of India , later the Portuguese State of India , was the aggregate of Portugal's colonial holdings in India.The government started in 1505, six years after the discovery of a sea route to India by Vasco da Gama, with the nomination of the first Viceroy Francisco de...

, during the late 16th century and 17th century, there was a community of over thousand Japanese slaves

Slavery in Japan

During most of the history of the country, the practice of slavery in Japan involved only indigenous Japanese, as the export and import of slaves was significantly restricted by isolation of the group of islands from other areas of Asia...

and traders, who were either Japanese Christians

Christianity in Japan

Christianity is a minority religion in Japan, with less than one percent claiming Christian belief or affiliation. Nearly all known traditional denominations of Christianity, including Roman Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodox Christianity are represented in Japan today.The root of the Japanese...

fleeing persecution in Japan, or young Japanese

Japanese people

women and girls brought or captured as sexual slaves

Sexual slavery

by Portuguese

Portuguese Empire

The Portuguese Empire , also known as the Portuguese Overseas Empire or the Portuguese Colonial Empire , was the first global empire in history...

traders and their South Asian lascar crew members from Japan. In both cases, they often intermarried with the local population in Goa.

Interracial marriages between European men and Indian women were very common during colonial times. Most of these Indian women usually were Muslim belonging to aristocratic families and families with royal ancestry. According to the historian William Dalrymple, about one in three European men had Indian wives in colonial India. This was primarily because the Europeans (mostly Dutch

Dutch people

, British

British people

The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...

, French

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

and Portuguese

Portuguese people

and up to a lesser extent Swedes and Danes) came to India when they were young and there were very few white women available in India. The most famous of such interracial liaisons was between the Hyderabadi

Hyderabad State

-After Indian independence :When India gained independence in 1947 and Pakistan came into existence in 1947, the British left the local rulers of the princely states the choice of whether to join one of the new dominions or to remain independent...

noblewoman Khair-un-Nissa and the Scottish

Scottish people

resident James Achilles Kirkpatrick

James Achilles Kirkpatrick

Lieutenant Colonel James Achilles Kirkpatrick was the British Resident at Hyderabad from 1798 to 1805. He also built the historic Koti Residency in Hyderabad, a landmark and major tourist attraction.-Biography :...

.

The 600,000-strong Anglo-Indian

Anglo-Indian

Anglo-Indians are people who have mixed Indian and British ancestry, or people of British descent born or living in India, now mainly historical in the latter sense. British residents in India used the term "Eurasians" for people of mixed European and Indian descent...

community was formed by British soldiers taking Indian women as wives. Such relationships have had a strong influence on the arts. Lakmé
Lakmé
Lakmé is an opera in three acts by Léo Delibes to a French libretto by Edmond Gondinet and Philippe Gille. Delibes wrote the score during 1881–82 with its first performance on 14 April 1883 at the Opéra Comique in Paris. Set in British India in the mid 19th century, Lakmé is based on the 1880 novel...

, an opera by the Frenchman Léo Delibes

Léo Delibes

Clément Philibert Léo Delibes was a French composer of ballets, operas, and other works for the stage...

, deals with the romantic relationship between the British officer Gérald and the daughter of a Hindu high priest Lakmé (Laxmi in Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

).

In Ceylon (present day Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

), interracial relationships between Dutch

Dutch people

, British

British people

The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...

and Portuguese

Portuguese people

men and local women were common. The 65,000-strong Burgher community was formed by the interracial marriages of Dutch

Dutch people

and Portuguese

Portuguese people

men with local Sinhalese

Sinhalese people

The Sinhalese are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group,forming the majority of Sri Lanka,constituting 74% of the Sri Lankan population.They number approximately 15 million worldwide.The Sinhalese identity is based on language, heritage and religion. The Sinhalese speak Sinhala, an Indo-Aryan language and the...

and Tamil

Tamil people

Tamil people , also called Tamils or Tamilians, are an ethnic group native to Tamil Nadu, India and the north-eastern region of Sri Lanka. Historic and post 15th century emigrant communities are also found across the world, notably Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, South Africa, Australia, Canada,...

women. In addition to intermarriage, inter-ethnic prostitution in India

Prostitution in India

was also fairly common at the time, when British officers would frequently visit Indian nautch
Nautch
In North India, Nautch is one of several styles of popular dance, performed by girls known as "Nautch girls". The word Nautch is an anglicized version of नाच , a word found in Hindi and Urdu , and several other languages of North India, derived from the Sanskrit, Nritya, via the Prakrit, Nachcha...

dancers. In the mid-19th century, there were around 40,000 British soldiers but fewer than 2,000 British officials present in India. Many British and other European officers had their own harems made up of Indian women similar to those the Nawabs and kings of India had. In the 19th century and early 20th century, thousands of women and girls from continental Europe

Continental Europe

Continental Europe, also referred to as mainland Europe or simply the Continent, is the continent of Europe, explicitly excluding European islands....

were also trafficked

Human trafficking

Human trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings for the purposes of reproductive slavery, commercial sexual exploitation, forced labor, or a modern-day form of slavery...

into British India (and Ceylon

British Ceylon

), where they worked as prostitutes servicing both British soldiers and local Indian (and Ceylonese) men.

As British females began arriving in British India in large numbers from the early-to-mid-19th century, miscegenation became increasingly uncommon in India as British women increasingly disapproved of relationships between local woman and their men. Interracial relationships were also despised after the events of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, also known as "India's First War of Independence

India's First War of Independence (term)

The First War of Indian Independence is a term that is sometimes used, predominantly in India, to describe the Indian Rebellion of 1857, which has been described variously outside of India as "uprising", "revolt" and "mutiny".- History :...

", where some Indian sepoy

Sepoy

A sepoy was formerly the designation given to an Indian soldier in the service of a European power. In the modern Indian Army, Pakistan Army and Bangladesh Army it remains in use for the rank of private soldier.-Etymology and Historical usage:...

s rebelled against the British East India Company.

The idea of protecting British female chastity from the "lustful Indian male" had a significant influence on the policies of the British Raj

British Raj

British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...

in order to prevent racial miscegenation between the British females and the native Indian male population. While some restrictive policies were imposed on British females in order to protect them from miscegenation, most of these policies were directed against native Indian males.

For example, the 1883 Ilbert Bill

Ilbert Bill

The Ilbert Bill was a bill introduced in 1883 for British India by Viceroy Ripon that proposed an amendment for existing laws in the country at the time to allow Indian judges and magistrates the jurisdiction to try British offenders in criminal cases at the District level, something that was...

, which would have granted Indian judges the right to judge British offenders, was opposed by many British colonialists on the grounds that Indian judges cannot be trusted in dealing with cases involving British females. In the aftermath of the 1919 Amritsar Massacre

Jallianwala Bagh massacre

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre , also known as the Amritsar massacre, took place in the Jallianwala Bagh public garden in the northern Indian city of Amritsar, and was ordered by Brigadier-General Reginald E.H. Dyer...

, the long-held stereotype of Indian males as dark-skinned rapists lusting after white British females was challenged by several novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

s such as A Passage to India
A Passage to India
A Passage to India is a novel by E. M. Forster set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. It was selected as one of the 100 great works of English literature by the Modern Library and won the 1924 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Time...

(1924) and The Jewel in the Crown
The Jewel in the Crown (novel)
The Jewel in the Crown is the 1966 novel by Paul Scott that starts his Raj Quartet.-Plot introduction:Much of the novel is written in the form of interviews and reports of conversations and research from the point of view of a narrator. Other portions are in the form of letters from one character...

(1966), both of which involve an Indian male being wrongly accused of raping a British female.

When Burma was ruled under the administration of British India, millions of Indians

Burmese Indians

Burmese Indians are a group of people of Indian subcontinental ethnicity who live in Myanmar . While Indians have lived in Burma for many centuries, most of the ancestors of the current Burmese Indian community emigrated to Burma from the start of British rule in the mid 19th century to the...

, mostly Muslim, migrated there. The small population mixed descendants of Indian males and local Burmese females are called "Zerbadees", often in a pejorative sense implying mixed race.

Japan

Inter-ethnic marriage in Japan

International marriage (Japan)

This article is about marriage between a Japanese and a non-Japanese in accordance with the formalities provided by the law of Japan or of a foreign land....

dates back to the 7th century, when Chinese

China

and Korea

Korea

n immigrants began intermarrying with the local Japanese

Japanese people

population. In the 1590s, over 50,000 Koreans

Korean people

The Korean people are an ethnic group originating in the Korean peninsula and Manchuria. Koreans are one of the most ethnically and linguistically homogeneous groups in the world.-Names:...

were forcibly brought to Japan during Hideyoshi's invasions of Korea, where they intermarried with the local population. In the 16th and 17th centuries, around 58,000 Japanese travelled abroad, many of whom intermarried with the local women in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia

. During the anti-Christian persecutions in 1596, many Japanese Christians

Christianity in Japan

fled to Macau

Macau

Macau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...

and other Portuguese colonies

Portuguese Empire

The Portuguese Empire , also known as the Portuguese Overseas Empire or the Portuguese Colonial Empire , was the first global empire in history...

such as Goa

Goa

, where there was a community of Japanese slaves and traders by the early 17th century. Intermarriage with the local populations in these Portuguese colonies also took place. Portuguese

Portuguese people

traders in Japan also intermarried with the local Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

women.

From the 15th century, Chinese

Han Chinese

, Korean and other Far East

Far East

The Far East is an English term mostly describing East Asia and Southeast Asia, with South Asia sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons.The term came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 19th century,...

ern visitors frequented brothel

Brothel

Brothels are business establishments where patrons can engage in sexual activities with prostitutes. Brothels are known under a variety of names, including bordello, cathouse, knocking shop, whorehouse, strumpet house, sporting house, house of ill repute, house of prostitution, and bawdy house...

s in Japan. This practice later continued among visitors from the "Western Regions

Western Regions

", mainly European traders. This began with the arrival of Portuguese ships to Japan in the 16th century. Portuguese visitors and their South Asian (and sometimes African) crewmembers often engaged in slavery in Japan

Slavery in Japan

, where they brought Japanese slaves who were taken to Macau and other Portuguese colonies in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia

, the Americas

Portuguese colonization of the Americas

Portugal was the leading country in the European exploration of the world in the 15th century. The Treaty of Tordesillas divided the Earth, outside Europe, in 1494 into Spanish and Portuguese global territorial hemispheres for exclusive conquest and colonization...

, and India

Portuguese India

. Later European East India companies

East India Company (disambiguation)

The East India Company, also known as the English East India Company and the British East India Company, was a historical English, and later British, company, founded in 1600, and chartered with the monopoly of trading with Southeast Asia, East Asia, and India.East India Company may also refer to...

, including those of the Dutch

Dutch East India Company

The Dutch East India Company was a chartered company established in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia...

and British

East India Company

The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...

, also engaged in prostitution in Japan

Prostitution in Japan

Prostitution in Japan has existed throughout the country's history.While the Anti-Prostitution Law of 1956 states that "No person may either do prostitution or become the customer of it," various loopholes, liberal interpretations of the law, and loose enforcement have allowed the sex industry to...

.

In the early part of the Shōwa era, Japanese governments executed a eugenic policy to limit the birth of children with inferior traits, as well as aiming to protect the life and health of mothers. Family Center staff also attempted to discourage marriage between Japanese women and Korean men who had been recruited from the peninsula as laborers following its annexation by Japan in 1910. In 1942, a survey report argued that "the Korean laborers brought to Japan, where they have established permanent residency, are of the lower classes and therefore of inferior constitution...By fathering children with Japanese women, these men could lower the caliber of the Yamato minzoku

Yamato people

is a name for the dominant native ethnic group of Japan. It is a term that came to be used around the late 19th century to distinguish the residents of the mainland Japan from other minority ethnic groups who have resided in the peripheral areas of Japan, such as the Ainu, Ryukyuan, Nivkh, Ulta, as...

."

In 1928, journalist Shigenori Ikeda promoted the 21 December as the blood-purity day (junketsu de) and sponsored free blood-test at the Tokyo Hygiene laboratory. By the early 1930s, detailed "eugenic marriage" questionnaires were printed or inserted in popular magazines for public consumption. Promoters like Ikeda were convinced that these marriage surveys would not only insure the eugenic fitness of spouses but also help avoid class differences that could disrupt and even destroy marriage. The goal was to create a database of individuals and their entire households which would enable eugenicists to conduct in-depth surveys of any given family's genealogy.

To prevent venereal diseases and rape by Japanese soldiers and to provide comfort to soldiers and head off espionage, the Imperial Japanese Army

Imperial Japanese Army

-Foundation:During the Meiji Restoration, the military forces loyal to the Emperor were samurai drawn primarily from the loyalist feudal domains of Satsuma and Chōshū...

established "comfort stations" in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was a concept created and promulgated during the Shōwa era by the government and military of the Empire of Japan. It represented the desire to create a self-sufficient "bloc of Asian nations led by the Japanese and free of Western powers"...

where around 200,000 women, mostly from Korea and China, were recruited or kidnapped by the Kempeitai

Kempeitai

The was the military police arm of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1881 to 1945. It was not an English-style military police, but a French-style gendarmerie...

or the Tokeitai

Tokeitai

The was the Imperial Japanese Navy's military police, they were equivalent to the Imperial Japanese Army's Kempeitai. They were also the smallest military police service....

as comfort women

Comfort women

.

One of the last eugenic measures of the Shōwa regime was taken by the Higashikuni government. On 19 August 1945, the Home Ministry ordered local government offices to establish a prostitution service for Allied soldiers

Recreation and Amusement Association

The , or more literally Special Comfort Facility Association, was the official euphemism for the prostitution centers arranged for occupying U.S...

to preserve the "purity" of the "Japanese race". The official declaration stated that : "Through the sacrifice of thousands of "Okichis" of the Shōwa era, we shall construct a dike to hold back the mad frenzy of the occupation troops and cultivate and preserve the purity of our race long into the future...."

According to Peter Schrijvers in "The GI War against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific during World War II", rape "reflects a burning need to establish total dominance of the other" the enemy. According to Xavier Guillaume, US soldiers

United States Army

The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...

' rape of Japanese women was "general practice". Schrijvers states regarding rapes on Okinawa that "The estimate of one Okinawan historian for the entire three-month period of the campaign exceeds 10,000. A figure that does not seem unlikely when one realizes that during the first 10 days of the occupation of Japan there were 1,336 reported cases of rape of Japanese women by American soldiers in Kanagawa prefecture alone".

However, despite being told by the Japanese military that they would suffer rape, torture and murder at the hands of the Americans, Japanese civilians "were often surprised at the comparatively humane treatment they received from the American enemy." According to Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Power by Mark Selden

Mark Selden

Mark Selden is a Coordinator of the open access journal The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, a Senior Research Associate in the East Asia Program at Cornell University, and Bartle Professor of History and Sociology at Binghamton University. He graduated from Amherst College with a major in...

, the Americans "did not pursue a policy of torture, rape, and murder of civilians as Japanese military officials had warned."

Japanese society

Ethnic issues in Japan

- Demographic :About 1.6% of Japan's total legal resident population are foreign nationals. Of these, according to 2008 data from the Japanese government, the principal groups are as follows....

, with its ideology of homogeneity, has traditionally been intolerant of ethnic and other differences. Men or women of mixed ancestry

Multiracial

, foreigners, and members of minority groups faced discrimination

Discrimination

Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. It involves the actual behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group. The term began to be...

in a variety of forms. In 2005, a United Nations

United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

report expressed concerns about racism

Racism

Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...

in Japan and that government recognition of the depth of the problem was not total. In 2005, Japanese Minister Taro Aso

Taro Aso

was the 92nd Prime Minister of Japan serving from September 2008 to September 2009, and was defeated in the August 2009 election.He has served in the House of Representatives since 1979. He was Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2005 to 2007, and was Secretary-General of the LDP briefly in 2007 and...

called Japan a "one race" nation.

Korea

Inter-ethnic marriage in Korea

Korea

dates back to the arrival of Muslims in Korea

Islam in Korea

In South Korea, the Muslim population has been steadily increasing since the introduction of the Islamic faith shortly after the Korean War. The Muslim community is centered around Seoul, where the first large 20th-century mosque was built in 1976 using the funds of the Malaysian Islamic Mission...

during the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

, when Persian

Persian people

and Turkic

Turkic peoples

navigators, traders and slaves settled in Korea and married local Korean

Korean people

The Korean people are an ethnic group originating in the Korean peninsula and Manchuria. Koreans are one of the most ethnically and linguistically homogeneous groups in the world.-Names:...

people. Some assimilation

Cultural assimilation

Cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...

into Buddhism

Korean Buddhism

Korean Buddhism is distinguished from other forms of Buddhism by its attempt to resolve what it sees as inconsistencies in Mahayana Buddhism. Early Korean monks believed that the traditions they received from foreign countries were internally inconsistent. To address this, they developed a new...

and Shamanism

Korean shamanism

Korean shamanism, today known as Muism or sometimes Sinism , encompasses a variety of indigenous religious beliefs and practices of the Korean people and the Korean area...

eventually took place, owing to Korea's geographical isolation from the Muslim world

Muslim world

The term Muslim world has several meanings. In a religious sense, it refers to those who adhere to the teachings of Islam, referred to as Muslims. In a cultural sense, it refers to Islamic civilization, inclusive of non-Muslims living in that civilization...

.

There are several Korean clans that are descended from such intermarriages. For example, the Deoksu Jang clan, claiming some 30,000 Korean members, view Jang Sunnyong, a Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

n who married a Korean female, as their ancestor. Another clan, Gyeongju Seol, claiming at least 2,000 members in Korea, view a Central Asian (probably an Uyghur

Uyghur people

The Uyghur are a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia. Today, Uyghurs live primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China...

) named Seol Son as their ancestor.

There are even cases of Korean kings marrying princesses from abroad. For example, the Korean text Samguk Yusa about the Gaya kingdom (it was absorbed by the kingdom of Silla later), indicate that in 48 AD, King Kim Suro of Gaya (the progenitor of the Gimhae Kim clan) took a princess (Princess Heo) from the "Ayuta nation" (which is the Korean name for the city of Ayodhya in North India) as his bride and queen. Princess Heo belonged to the Mishra royal family of Ayodhya. According to the Samguk Yusa, the princess had a dream about a heavenly fair handsome king from a far away land who was awaiting heaven's anointed ride. After Princess Heo had the dream, she asked her parents, the king and queen of Ayodhya, for permission to set out and seek the foreign prince, which the king and queen urged with the belief that god orchestrated the whole fate. That king was no other than King Kim Suro of the Korean Gaya kingdom.

6,423 Korean women married US military personnel as war brides during and immediately after the Korean War

Korean War

The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...

. The average number of Korean women marrying US military personnel each year was about 1,500 per year in the 1960s and 2,300 per year in the 1970s.

International marriages now make up 13% of all marriages in South Korea

Marriage in South Korea

Marriage in South Korea is similar to that in the West, but has unique features of its own, especially due to the influence of Korean Confucianism.-Eligibility:Marriage in South Korea is a union between a man and a woman...

. Most of these marriages are unions between a Korean male and a foreign female usually from China, Japan, Vietnam

Vietnam

, the Philippines

Philippines

The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

, United States, Mongolia

Mongolia

Mongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator, the capital and largest...

, Thailand

Thailand

Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

, and Russia. On the other hand, Korean females have married foreign males from Japan, China, the United States, Bangladesh

Bangladesh

Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...

, Pakistan, Philippines, and Nepal

Nepal

Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

. Between 1990 and 2005, there have been 159,942 Korean males and 80,813 Korean females married to foreigners.

South Korea

South Korea

The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...

is among the world's most ethnically homogeneous nations. Koreans have traditionally valued an unmixed blood as the most important feature of Korean identity. The term "Kosian", referring to someone who has a Korean father and a non-Korean mother, is considered offensive by some who prefer to identify themselves or their children as Korean. Moreover, the Korean office of Amnesty International

Amnesty International

Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...

has claimed that the word "Kosian" represents racial discrimination. Kosian children, like those of other mixed-race backgrounds in Korea, often face discrimination

Discrimination

. There are an estimated 35,000 mixed-raced South Koreans, most of them half Caucasian, according to the Pearl Buck Foundation. Discrimination is far worse against those who have African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

fathers.

Malaysia and Singapore

In West Malaysia and Singapore

Singapore

, the majority of inter-ethnic marriages are between Chinese

Overseas Chinese

Overseas Chinese are people of Chinese birth or descent who live outside the Greater China Area . People of partial Chinese ancestry living outside the Greater China Area may also consider themselves Overseas Chinese....

and Indians

Non-resident Indian and Person of Indian Origin

A Non-Resident Indian is an Indian citizen who has migrated to another country, a person of Indian origin who is born outside India, or a person of Indian origin who resides permanently outside India. Other terms with the same meaning are overseas Indian and expatriate Indian...

. The offspring of such marriages are informally known as "Chindian

Chindian

", though the Malaysian government only classifies them by their father's ethnicity. As the majority of these intermarriages usually involve an Indian groom and Chinese bride, the majority of Chindians in Malaysia are usually classified as "Indian" by the Malaysian government. As for the Malays, who are predominantly Muslim

Muslim

A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

, legal restrictions in Malaysia make it uncommon for them to intermarry with either the Indians, who are predominantly Hindu

Hindu

, or the Chinese, who are predominantly Buddhist

Buddhism

and Taoist

Taoism

Taoism refers to a philosophical or religious tradition in which the basic concept is to establish harmony with the Tao , which is the mechanism of everything that exists...

. Non-Muslims are required to convert to Islam in order to marry Muslims. However, this has not entirely stopped intermarriage between the Malays and the Chinese and Indians. There are more Indian-Malay marriages than there are Chinese-Malay ones; this has led to the emergence of a large Muslim Indian society that is most famously known for their 24-hour coffee shops and active involvement in the textile industry. The Muslim Chinese community, on the other hand, is small and has only a negligible impact on the socio-economy and demography of the region.

It is common for Arabs in Singapore

Arab Singaporean

The majority of the Arabs in Singapore are Hadhramis tracing their ancestry from the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula called Hadhramaut, which is now part of the Republic of Yemen. The People's Democratic Republic of Yemen PDRY was formed on 30 November 1967 when it achieved independence...

and Malaysia to take local Malay wives, due to a common Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

ic faith. The Chitty

Chitty

The Chitty are a distinctive group of Tamil people found mainly in Malacca and Singapore , who are also known as the Indian Peranakans. As of today, their population stands at 2,000.-Language:...

people, in Singapore and the Malacca

Malacca

Malacca , dubbed The Historic State or Negeri Bersejarah among locals) is the third smallest Malaysian state, after Perlis and Penang. It is located in the southern region of the Malay Peninsula, on the Straits of Malacca. It borders Negeri Sembilan to the north and the state of Johor to the south...

state of Malaysia, are a Tamil people

Tamil people

with considerable Malay descent, which was due to the first Tamil settlers taking local wives, since they did not bring along any of their own women with them. According to government statistics, the population of Singapore as of September 2007 was 4.68 million, of whom multiracial

Multiracial

people, including Chindian

Chindian

s and Eurasians

Eurasian (mixed ancestry)

The word Eurasian refers to people of mixed Asian and European ancestry. It was originally coined in 19th-century British India to refer to Anglo-Indians of mixed British and Indian descent....

, formed 2.4%.

In the East Malaysian states of Sabah

Sabah

Sabah is one of 13 member states of Malaysia. It is located on the northern portion of the island of Borneo. It is the second largest state in the country after Sarawak, which it borders on its southwest. It also shares a border with the province of East Kalimantan of Indonesia in the south...

and Sarawak

Sarawak

Sarawak is one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo. Known as Bumi Kenyalang , Sarawak is situated on the north-west of the island. It is the largest state in Malaysia followed by Sabah, the second largest state located to the North- East.The administrative capital is Kuching, which...

, there have been many incidents of intermarriage between Chinese

Overseas Chinese

and native tribes such as the Murut

Murut

Murut may refer to:* Murut people, an ethnic group of the northern inland regions of Borneo* Murutic languages or Murut languages, spoken by those people* Tagol Murut language, the most widely spoken of the Murutic languages* Murut, Azerbaijan, a village...

and Dusun

Dusun

Dusun is the collective name of a tribe or ethnic and linguistic group in the Malaysian state of Sabah of North Borneo. Due to similarities in culture and language with the Kadazan ethnic group, a new unified term called "Kadazan-Dusun" was created. Collectively, they form the largest ethnic group...

in Sabah, and the Iban

Iban

IBAN or Iban may refer to:People* Ibán Espadas , footballer* Iban Iriondo , bicycle racer* Iban Mayo , bicycle racer* Iban Mayoz , bicycle racer* Iban Nokan, anthropologist and ethnographer...

and Bisaya

Bisaya

The Visayans are a Filipino ethnic group whose members are speakers of one or more Visayan languages, the most widely spoken being Cebuano, Hiligaynon, and Waray-Waray. They live in the Visayan island group and in many parts of Mindanao. Some have migrated to other parts of the Philippines,...

in Sarawak. This phenomenon has resulted in a potpourri of cultures in both states where many people claiming to be of native descent have some Chinese blood in them, and many Chinese have native blood in them. The offspring of these mixed marriages are called 'Sino-(name of tribe)', e.g. Sino-Dusun. Normally, if the father is Chinese, the offspring will adopt Chinese culture and if the father is native then native culture will be adopted, but this is not always the case. These Sino-natives are usually fluent in Malay

Malay language

Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...

and English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

. A smaller number are able to speak Chinese dialects and Mandarin, especially those who have received education in vernacular Chinese schools.

Burma

Burmese Muslims

Islam in Burma

Islam is a minority religion in Burma, practiced by 4% of the population, according to the Myanmar official statistics. However, according to a U.S...

are the descendants of Bengalis

Bengali people

The Bengali people are an ethnic community native to the historic region of Bengal in South Asia. They speak Bengali , which is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit and Sanskrit languages. In their native language, they are referred to as বাঙালী...

, Indian Muslims

Islam in India

Islam is the second-most practiced religion in the Republic of India after Hinduism, with more than 13.4% of the country's population ....

, Arabs, Persians

Persian people

, Turks

Turkish people

, Pathans

Pashtun people

Pashtuns or Pathans , also known as ethnic Afghans , are an Eastern Iranic ethnic group with populations primarily between the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan and the Indus River in Pakistan...

, Chinese Muslims

Islam in China

and Malays who settled and intermarried with the local Burmese

Bamar

The Bamar are the dominant ethnic group of Burma , constituting approximately two-thirds of the population. The Bamar live primarily in the Irrawaddy basin, and speak the Burmese language, which is also the official language of Burma. Bamar customs and identity are closely intertwined with general...

population and other Burmese ethnic groups such as the Rakhine

Rakhine people

The Rakhine , is a nationality in Myanmar forming the majority along the coastal region of present day Rakhine State or Arakan State. They possibly constitute 5.53% or more of Myanmar's total population but no accurate census figures exist. Rakhine people also live in the southeastern parts of...

, Shan, Karen

Karen people

The Karen or Kayin people , are a Sino-Tibetan language speaking ethnic group which resides primarily in southern and southeastern Burma . The Karen make up approximately 7 percent of the total Burmese population of approximately 50 million people...

, and Mon

Mon people

The Mon are an ethnic group from Burma , living mostly in Mon State, Bago Division, the Irrawaddy Delta, and along the southern Thai–Burmese border. One of the earliest peoples to reside in Southeast Asia, the Mon were responsible for the spread of Theravada Buddhism in Burma and Thailand...

.

The oldest Muslim group in Burma (Myanmar) are the Rohingya people

Rohingya people

The Rohingya is a predominantly Muslim ethnic group of disputed origin who live in Arakan State, western Burma. The Rohingya population is mostly concentrated to the cities of Maungdaw, Buthidaung, Akyab, Rathedaung and Kyauktaw.-Etymology:...

, who some believed are descended from Bengalis who intermarried with the native females in the Rakhine State

Rakhine State

Rakhine State is a Burmese state. Situated on the western coast, it is bordered by Chin State in the north, Magway Region, Bago Region and Ayeyarwady Region in the east, the Bay of Bengal to the west, and the Chittagong Division of Bangladesh to the northwest. It is located approximately between...

after the 7th century, but this is just an theory. When Burma was ruled by the British India administration, millions of Indians

Burmese Indians

, mostly Muslim, migrated there. The small population of mixed descendants of Indian males and local Burmese females are called "Zerbadees", often in a pejorative sense implying mixed race. The Panthays, a group of Chinese Muslims

Islam in China

descended from West Asians and Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

ns, migrated from China and also intermarried with local Burmese females.

In addition, Burma has an estimated 52,000 Anglo-Burmese people, descended from British

British people

The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...

and Burmese people. Anglo-Burmese people frequently intermarried with Anglo-Indian

Anglo-Indian

immigrants, who eventually assimilated into the Anglo-Burmese community.

Philippines

Historically, admixture has been an ever present and pervading phenomenon in the Philippines. The Philippines

Philippines

were originally settled by Australoid

Australoid

The Australoid race is a broad racial classification. The concept originated with a typological method of racial classification. They were described as having dark skin with wavy hair, in the case of Veddoids from South Asia and Aboriginal Australians, or hair ranging from straight to kinky in the...

peoples called Negritos (different from other australoid groups) which now form the country's aboriginal community. Some Admixture may have occurred between this earlier group and the mainstream Malayo-Polynesian population.

A considerable number of the population in the town of Cainta, Rizal

Cainta, Rizal

The Municipality of Cainta is a first-class urban municipality in the province of Rizal, Philippines. It is one of the oldest , and is the town with the second smallest land area of 26.81 km² next to Angono with 26.22 km².Cainta serves as the secondary gateway to the rest of Rizal...

, are descended from Indian

Indian subcontinent

soldiers who mutinied against the British Indian Army when the British briefly occupied the Philippines in 1762 to 1763. These Indian soldiers called Sepoy

Sepoy

settled in town and intermarried with native females. The Sepoy ancestry of Cainta is very visible today, particularly in Barrio Dayap near Brgy. Sto Nino. Their unique physical characteristics make them distinct from the average Filipinos.

There has been a Chinese

Chinese people

The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....

presence in the Philippines

Philippines

since the 9th century. However, large-scale migrations of Chinese to the Philippines only started during the Spanish colonial era, when the world market was opened to the Philippines. It is estimated that among Filipinos

Filipino people

, 10%–20% have some Chinese ancestry and 1.5% are "full-blooded" Chinese.

According to the American anthropologist

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

Dr. H. Otley Beyer, the ancestry of Filipinos

Filipino people

is 2% Arab

Arab

. This dates back to when Arab traders intermarried with the local Malay

Malay race

The concept of a Malay race was proposed by the German scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach , and classified as the brown race. Since Blumenbach, many anthropologists have rejected his theory of five races, citing the enormous complexity of classifying races...

Filipina female populations during the pre-Spanish history of the Philippines. Major Arab migration to the Philippines coincided with the spread of Islam in the region

Islam in the Philippines

Islam is the oldest recorded monotheistic religion in the Philippines. Islam reached the Philippines between the 12th and 14th century with the arrival of Muslim traders from Persian Gulf and the Malabar Coast in Southern India, and their followers from several sultanate governments in the Malay...

. Filipino-Muslim royal families from the Sultanate of Sulu and the Sultanate of Maguindanao claim Arab descent even going as far as claiming direct lineage from the prophet Mohammad. Such intermarriage mostly took place around the Mindanao

Mindanao

Mindanao is the second largest and easternmost island in the Philippines. It is also the name of one of the three island groups in the country, which consists of the island of Mindanao and smaller surrounding islands. The other two are Luzon and the Visayas. The island of Mindanao is called The...

island area, but the arrival of Spanish

Spanish people

The Spanish are citizens of the Kingdom of Spain. Within Spain, there are also a number of vigorous nationalisms and regionalisms, reflecting the country's complex history....

Conquistadors to the Philippines

Philippines

abruptly halted the spread of Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

further north into the Philippines. Intermarriage with Spanish people

Spanish people

The Spanish are citizens of the Kingdom of Spain. Within Spain, there are also a number of vigorous nationalisms and regionalisms, reflecting the country's complex history....

later became more prevalent after the Philippines

Philippines

was colonized by the Spanish Empire

Spanish Empire

The Spanish Empire comprised territories and colonies administered directly by Spain in Europe, in America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. It originated during the Age of Exploration and was therefore one of the first global empires. At the time of Habsburgs, Spain reached the peak of its world power....

.

When the Spanish colonized the Philippines, a significant portion of the Filipino population mixed with the Spanish. When the United States took the Philippines from Spain during the Spanish-American War

Spanish-American War

The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, effectively the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence...

, much intermixing of Americans, both white

White American

White Americans are people of the United States who are considered or consider themselves White. The United States Census Bureau defines White people as those "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa...

and black, took place on the island of Luzon

Luzon

Luzon is the largest island in the Philippines. It is located in the northernmost region of the archipelago, and is also the name for one of the three primary island groups in the country centered on the Island of Luzon...

where the USA had a Naval Base and Air Force Base even after the USA gave the Philippines independence after World War II. First children and descendants of male Filipino population with Spanish surnames who intermarried with white American female population may be considered Spanish mestizos. The descendants of Filipinos and Europeans are today known as mestizo

Mestizo

Mestizo is a term traditionally used in Latin America, Philippines and Spain for people of mixed European and Native American heritage or descent...

s, following the term used in other former Spanish colonies.

Much mixing with the Japanese

Japanese people

also took place due to the war rape

War rape

s of Filipina women during World War II. Today there is an increasing number of Japanese men marrying Filipina woman and fathering children by them whose family remain behind in the Philippines and are financially supported by their Japanese fathers who make regular visits to the Philippines. Today mixed-race marriages have a mixed reaction in the Philippines, most urban centers like Manila and Cebu are more willing to accept interracial marriages than rural areas, plus there is more approval if the Filipina marries out than a Filipino male.

Germany

During the tempestuous years following World War I, the French Army

French Army

The French Army, officially the Armée de Terre , is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces.As of 2010, the army employs 123,100 regulars, 18,350 part-time reservists and 7,700 Legionnaires. All soldiers are professionals, following the suspension of conscription, voted in...

occupied the Rhineland

Rhineland

Historically, the Rhinelands refers to a loosely-defined region embracing the land on either bank of the River Rhine in central Europe....

, utilising African soldiers amongst their forces. Their children were known as "Rhineland Bastards".

Beginning in 1933, the mainstream Nazi anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism

Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...

considered the Jews as being a group of people bound by close, so-called genetic (blood) ties, to form a unit, which one could not join or secede from. The influence of Jews had been declared to have a detrimental impact on Germany, in order to justify the discriminations and persecutions of Jews. To be spared from those, one had to prove one's affiliation with the group of the Aryan
Aryan
Aryan is an English language loanword derived from Sanskrit ārya and denoting variously*In scholarly usage:**Indo-Iranian languages *in dated usage:**the Indo-European languages more generally and their speakers...

race, as conceived by the Nazis

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

.

It was paradoxical that neither genetic tests nor allegedly racial outward features in one's physiognomy determined one's affiliation, although the Nazis talked a lot about physiognomy, but only the records of the religious affiliations of one's grandparents decided it. However, while earlier the grandparents had still been able to choose their religion, their grandchildren in the Nazi era were compulsorily categorised as Jews, thus non-Aryans, if three or four grandparents had been enrolled as members of a Jewish congregation, regardless of whether the persecuted themselves were Jews according to the Halachah (roughly meaning: Jewish by birth from a Jewish mother or by conversion), apostates, irreligionists or Christians.

The Nuremberg Laws

Nuremberg Laws

of 1935 forbade persons racially regarded as so-called Aryans and non-Aryans to marry; this included all marriages where at least one partner was a German citizen. Non-Aryans comprised mostly Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent. However, Germans of extra-European and especially of African descent and Germans regarded as belonging to the minority group of Sinti

Sinti

Sinti or Sinta or Sinte is the name of a Romani or Gypsy population in Europe. Traditionally nomadic, today only a small percentage of the group remains unsettled...

and Roma were also considered as non-Aryans.

Eventually children – whenever born – within a mixed marriage, as well as children from extramarital mixed relationships born until July 31, 1936, were discriminated against as Mischling

Mischling

Mischling was the German term used during the Third Reich to denote persons deemed to have only partial Aryan ancestry. The word has essentially the same origin as mestee in English, mestizo in Spanish and métis in French...

e. However, children later born to mixed parents, not yet married as at the passing of the Nuremberg Laws, were to be discriminated against as Geltungsjude

Geltungsjude

Geltungsjude was the term for persons that were considered Jews by the first supplementary decree to the Nuremberg Laws from November 14, 1935. The term wasn't used officially, but was coined because the persons were considered Jews rather than exactly belonging to any of the categories of the...

n, regardless of whether the parents had meanwhile married abroad or remained unmarried. Eventually children who were enrolled in a Jewish congregation were also subject to discrimination as Geltungsjuden.

Geltungsjude

Geltungsjude

n were subjected to varying degrees of forced labour in 1940, partly ordered for all Jewish-classified spouses, either only for Jewish-classified husbands or only exempting Jewish-classified wives taking care of minor children. No documents indicate the exemption of a mixed marriage and especially of its Jewish-classified spouse from some persecutions.

Systematic deportations of Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent started on October 18, 1941. German Jews and German Gentiles of Jewish descent living in mixed marriages were in fact mostly spared from deportation. In the event that a mixed marriage ended by the death of the so-called Aryan spouse or the divorce of the Jewish-classified spouse, the Jewish-classified spouse residing within Germany was usually deported soon after unless the couple still had minor children not counted as Geltungsjuden.

In March 1943 an attempt to deport the Berlin-based Jews and Gentiles of Jewish descent, living in non-privileged mixed marriages, failed due to public protest by their in-laws of so-called Aryan kinship (see Rosenstraße protest). Also the Aryan-classified husbands and Mischling-classified children (starting at the age of 16) from mixed marriages were taken by the Organisation Todt

Organisation Todt

The Todt Organisation, was a Third Reich civil and military engineering group in Germany named after its founder, Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior Nazi figure...

for forced labour, starting in autumn 1944.

A last attempt, undertaken in February/March 1945, ended because the extermination camps were already liberated. However, 2,600 from all over the Reich were deported to Theresienstadt, of whom most survived the last months until their liberation.

With the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 the laws banning so-called mixed marriages were lifted again. If couples who had already lived together during the Nazi era had remained unmarried due to the legal restrictions then got married after the war, their date of marriage was legally retroactively backdated if they wished it to the date they formed a couple. Even if one spouse was already dead, the marriage could be retroactively recognised. In the West German Federal Republic of Germany

West Germany

West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

1,823 couples applied for recognition, which was granted in 1,255 cases.

It is estimated that up to 7,000 postwar black German children with black GI fathers and white German mothers were adopted by Americans.

Hungary

The Avars

Eurasian Avars

The Eurasian Avars or Ancient Avars were a highly organized nomadic confederacy of mixed origins. They were ruled by a khagan, who was surrounded by a tight-knit entourage of nomad warriors, an organization characteristic of Turko-Mongol groups...

, Asiatic nomads who during the late 6th and 7th centuries had formed an extensive empire largely inhabited by conquered Slavs, made the agricultural Slavs pay taxes, and used their wives and daughters as concubines.

The Hungarians are thought to have originated in an ancient Finno-Ugric

Finno-Ugric peoples

The Finno-Ugric peoples are any of several peoples of Europe who speak languages of the proposed Finno-Ugric language family, such as the Finns, Estonians, Mordvins, and Hungarians...

population that originally inhabited the forested area between the Volga River

Volga River

The Volga is the largest river in Europe in terms of length, discharge, and watershed. It flows through central Russia, and is widely viewed as the national river of Russia. Out of the twenty largest cities of Russia, eleven, including the capital Moscow, are situated in the Volga's drainage...

and the Ural Mountains

Ural Mountains

The Ural Mountains , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the Ural River and northwestern Kazakhstan. Their eastern side is usually considered the natural boundary between Europe and Asia...

. At the time of the Magyar migration in the 10th century, the present-day Hungary was inhabited by Slavs, numbering about 200,000, who were either assimilated or enslaved by the Magyars.

During the Russian campaign in the 13th century, the Mongols

Mongol Empire

The Mongol Empire , initially named as Greater Mongol State was a great empire during the 13th and 14th centuries...

drove some 40,000 Cuman families, a nomadic tribe, west of the Carpathian Mountains. The Iranian Jassic people

Jassic people

The Jassic people or Jász are an ethnic group of Hungarians who mostly live in the Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county of the Republic of Hungary. They are of Ossetic origin and originally spoke the Jassic dialect of the Ossetic language...

came to Hungary together with the Cumans after they were defeated by the Mongols. Over the centuries they were fully assimilated into the Hungarian population. Rogerius, a monk who survived the Mongol invasion of Hungary, pointed out not only the genocidal element of the occupation, but also that the Mongols especially "found pleasure" in humiliating women.

Iberian Peninsula

In ancient history

Ancient history

, the Iberian Peninsula

Iberian Peninsula

The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...

was frequently invaded by foreigners who intermarried with the native population. One of the earliest foreign groups to arrive in the region were the Indo-European

Indo-European languages

Celts who intermarried with the pre-Indo-European Iberians

Iberians

The Iberians were a set of peoples that Greek and Roman sources identified with that name in the eastern and southern coasts of the Iberian peninsula at least from the 6th century BC...

in prehistoric Iberia

Prehistoric Iberia

The prehistory of the Iberian peninsula begins with the arrival of the first hominins 1.2 million years ago and ends with the Punic Wars, when the territory enters the domains of written history...

. They were later followed by the Semitic

Semitic

In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages...

Phoenicia

Phoenicia , was an ancient civilization in Canaan which covered most of the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. Several major Phoenician cities were built on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550...

ns and Carthaginians

Carthage

Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...

and the Indo-European Romans who intermarried with the pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula

Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula

This is a list of the Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian peninsula .-Non-Indo-European:*Aquitanians**Aquitani**Autrigones - some consider them Celtic .**Caristii - some consider them Celtic ....

during Classical Antiquity

Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...

.

They were in turn followed by the Germanic

Germanic peoples

The Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...

Visigoths, Suebi

Suebi

The Suebi or Suevi were a group of Germanic peoples who were first mentioned by Julius Caesar in connection with Ariovistus' campaign, c...

and Vandals

Vandals

The Vandals were an East Germanic tribe that entered the late Roman Empire during the 5th century. The Vandals under king Genseric entered Africa in 429 and by 439 established a kingdom which included the Roman Africa province, besides the islands of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and the Balearics....

and the Iranic

Iranian peoples

The Iranian peoples are an Indo-European ethnic-linguistic group, consisting of the speakers of Iranian languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, as such forming a branch of Indo-European-speaking peoples...

Sarmatians

The Iron Age Sarmatians were an Iranian people in Classical Antiquity, flourishing from about the 5th century BC to the 4th century AD....

and Alans

Alans

The Alans, or the Alani, occasionally termed Alauni or Halani, were a group of Sarmatian tribes, nomadic pastoralists of the 1st millennium AD who spoke an Eastern Iranian language which derived from Scytho-Sarmatian and which in turn evolved into modern Ossetian.-Name:The various forms of Alan —...

who also intermarried with the local population in Hispania

Hispania

Another theory holds that the name derives from Ezpanna, the Basque word for "border" or "edge", thus meaning the farthest area or place. Isidore of Sevilla considered Hispania derived from Hispalis....

during late Antiquity

Late Antiquity

Late Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the time of transition from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world. Precise boundaries for the period are a matter of debate, but noted historian of the period Peter Brown proposed...

. In the 6th century, the region was reconquered by the Byzantine Empire

Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...

(Eastern Roman Empire

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

), when Byzantine Greeks

Byzantine Greeks

Byzantine Greeks or Byzantines is a conventional term used by modern historians to refer to the medieval Greek or Hellenised citizens of the Byzantine Empire, centered mainly in Constantinople, the southern Balkans, the Greek islands, Asia Minor , Cyprus and the large urban centres of the Near East...

also settled there, before the region was lost again to the Visigothic Kingdom

Visigothic Kingdom

The Visigothic Kingdom was a kingdom which occupied southwestern France and the Iberian Peninsula from the 5th to 8th century AD. One of the Germanic successor states to the Western Roman Empire, it was originally created by the settlement of the Visigoths under King Wallia in the province of...

less than a century later.

After the Umayyad conquest of Hispania

Umayyad conquest of Hispania

The Umayyad conquest of Hispania is the initial Islamic Ummayad Caliphate's conquest, between 711 and 718, of the Christian Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania, centered in the Iberian Peninsula, which was known to them under the Arabic name al-Andalus....

in the 8th century, the Islamic state

Islamic State

An Islamic state is a type of government, in which the primary basis for government is Islamic religious law...

of Al-Andalus

Al-Andalus

Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to a nation and territorial region also commonly referred to as Moorish Iberia. The name describes parts of the Iberian Peninsula and Septimania governed by Muslims , at various times in the period between 711 and 1492, although the territorial boundaries...

was established in the Iberian Peninsula. Islamic marital law

Islamic marital jurisprudence

In Islamic law , marriage is a legal bond and social contract between a man and a woman. Islam commends marriage, with the age of marriage being whenever the individuals feel ready, financially and emotionally...

is by itself an anti-miscegenation law, since it allows a Muslim

Muslim

male to marry Christian

Christian

and Jewish females but not a Muslim

Muslim

female to marry a Christian

Christian

or Jewish male.

The offspring of such marriages were known as Muladi
Muladi
The Muladi were Muslims of ethnic Iberian descent or of mixed Arab, Berber and European origin, who lived in Al-Andalus during the Middle Ages. They were also called "Musalima" .-Etymology:...

or Muwallad, an Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

term still used in the modern Arab world

Arab world

The Arab world refers to Arabic-speaking states, territories and populations in North Africa, Western Asia and elsewhere.The standard definition of the Arab world comprises the 22 states and territories of the Arab League stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the...

to refer to people with Arab fathers and non-Arab

Ajam

Ajam is a word used in Persian and Arabic literature but with different concepts. Ajam in Arabic has two primary meanings: "non-Arab" and "Persian".literally it has other meaning "one who is illiterate in language", "silent", or "mute", and refers to non-Arabs in general, or people of Southern...

mothers. Some sources consider this term the origin for the Spanish word Mulato
Mulatto
Mulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent, or more broadly, a person of mixed black and white ancestry. Contemporary usage of the term varies greatly, and the broader sense of the term makes its application rather subjective, as not all people of mixed white and black...

. However, the Real Academia Española does not endorse such etymology. In addition, many Muladi were also descended from Saqaliba
Saqaliba
Saqaliba refers to the Slavs, particularly Slavic slaves and mercenaries in the medieval Arab world, in the Middle East, North Africa, Sicily and Al-Andalus. It is generally thought that the Arabic term is a Byzantine loanword: saqlab, siklab, saqlabi etc. is a corruption of Greek Sklavinoi for...

(Slavic

Slavic peoples

The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...

) slaves taken from Eastern Europe via the Arab slave trade

Arab slave trade

.

After the Reconquista

Reconquista

The Reconquista was a period of almost 800 years in the Middle Ages during which several Christian kingdoms succeeded in retaking the Muslim-controlled areas of the Iberian Peninsula broadly known as Al-Andalus...

, which was completed in 1492, most of the Moors were forced to either flee to Morocco

Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

or convert to Christianity

Conversion to Christianity

Conversion to Christianity is the religious conversion of a previously non-Christian person to some form of Christianity. It has been called the foundational experience of Christian life...

. The ones who converted to Christianity were known as Morisco

Morisco

Moriscos or Mouriscos , meaning "Moorish", were the converted Christian inhabitants of Spain and Portugal of Muslim heritage. Over time the term was used in a pejorative sense applied to those nominal Catholics who were suspected of secretly practicing Islam.-Demographics:By the beginning of the...

es, and they were often persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition

Spanish Inquisition

The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition , commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition , was a tribunal established in 1480 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms, and to replace the Medieval...

as suspects of heresy

Heresy

Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...

on the basis of the Limpieza de sangre
Limpieza de sangre
Limpieza de sangre , Limpeza de sangue or Neteja de sang , meaning "cleanliness of blood", played an important role in modern Iberian history....

("Cleanliness of blood") doctrine, under which anti-miscegenation laws were implemented in the Iberian Peninsula

Iberian Peninsula

.

Anyone whose ancestors had miscegenated with the Moors or Jews were suspicious of secretly practicing Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

or Judaism

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

, so were often particularly monitored by the Inquisition. The claim to universal hidalguía
Hidalgo (Spanish nobility)
A hidalgo or fidalgo is a member of the Spanish and Portuguese nobility. In popular usage it has come to mean the non-titled nobility. Hidalgos were exempt from paying taxes, but did not necessarily own real property...

(lowest nobility) of the Basques

Basque people

The Basques as an ethnic group, primarily inhabit an area traditionally known as the Basque Country , a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.The Basques are known in the...

was justified by erudites like Manuel de Larramendi (1690–1766) because the Arab invasion had not reached the Basque territories, so it was believed that Basques had maintained their original purity, while the rest of Spain was suspect of miscegenation. In fact, the Arab invasion also reached the Basque country and there had been a significant Jewish minority in Navarre, but the hidalguía helped many Basques to official positions in the administration. In December 2008, an important genetic study revealed that the religious conversions of Jews and Muslims have had a profound impact on the population of the Iberian Peninsula. This study indicated a Sephardic Jewish mean admixture of about 20% and a North African admixture of about 11%.

Italian Peninsula

As was the case in other regions conquered by Muslims

Muslim conquests

Muslim conquests also referred to as the Islamic conquests or Arab conquests, began with the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He established a new unified polity in the Arabian Peninsula which under the subsequent Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates saw a century of rapid expansion of Muslim power.They...

, it was acceptable in Islamic marital law

Islamic marital jurisprudence

for a Muslim

Muslim

male to marry Christian

Christian

and Jewish females in southern Italy when under Islamic rule

History of Islam in southern Italy

The history of Islam in southern Italy begins with the Islamic conquest and subsequent rule of Sicily and Malta, a process that started in the 9th century. Islamic rule over Sicily was effective from 902, and the complete rule of the island lasted from 965 until 1061...

between the 8th and 11th centuries. In this case, most intermarriages were between Arab

Arab

and Berber

Berber people

Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are continuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River. Historically they spoke the Berber language or varieties of it, which together form a branch...

males from North Africa and the local Greek

Greeks

The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....

, Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

and Italian females of Sicily

Sicily

Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

and southern Italy. Such intermarriages were particularly common in the Emirate of Sicily

Emirate of Sicily

The Emirate of Sicily was an Islamic state on the island of Sicily , which existed from 965 to 1072.-First Arab invasions of Sicily:...

, where one writer visiting the place in the 970s expressed shock at how common it was in rural areas. After the Norman conquest of southern Italy

Norman conquest of southern Italy

The Norman conquest of southern Italy spanned the late eleventh and much of the twelfth centuries, involving many battles and many independent players conquering territories of their own...

, all Muslim citizens (whether foreign, native or mixed) of the Kingdom of Sicily

Kingdom of Sicily

The Kingdom of Sicily was a state that existed in the south of Italy from its founding by Roger II in 1130 until 1816. It was a successor state of the County of Sicily, which had been founded in 1071 during the Norman conquest of southern Italy...

were known as "Moors

Moors

The description Moors has referred to several historic and modern populations of the Maghreb region who are predominately of Berber and Arab descent. They came to conquer and rule the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years. At that time they were Muslim, although earlier the people had followed...

". After a brief period of Arab-Norman culture

Arab-Norman culture

The term Norman-Arab-Byzantine culture, Norman-Sicilian culture or, less inclusive, Arab-Norman culture respectively Norman-Arab culture, refers to the interaction of the Norman, Arab and Byzantine culture following the Norman conquest of Sicily from 1061, to around 1250...

had flourished under the reign of Roger II of Sicily

Roger II of Sicily

Roger II was King of Sicily, son of Roger I of Sicily and successor to his brother Simon. He began his rule as Count of Sicily in 1105, later became Duke of Apulia and Calabria , then King of Sicily...

, later rulers had forced the Moors to either convert to Christianity

Conversion to Christianity

Conversion to Christianity is the religious conversion of a previously non-Christian person to some form of Christianity. It has been called the foundational experience of Christian life...

or be expelled from the kingdom.

In Malta

Malta

Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...

, Arabs and Italians from neighbouring Sicily and Calabria

Calabria

Calabria , in antiquity known as Bruttium, is a region in southern Italy, south of Naples, located at the "toe" of the Italian Peninsula. The capital city of Calabria is Catanzaro....

intermarried with the local inhabitants, who were descended from Phoenicia

Phoenicia

ns, Greeks

Greeks

, Romans

Ancient Rome

and Vandals

Vandals

. The Maltese people

Maltese people

The Maltese are an ethnic group indigenous to the Southern European nation of Malta, and identified with the Maltese language. Malta is an island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea...

are descended from such unions, and the Maltese language

Maltese language

Maltese is the national language of Malta, and a co-official language of the country alongside English,while also serving as an official language of the European Union, the only Semitic language so distinguished. Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic...

is descended from Siculo-Arabic

Siculo-Arabic

Siculo-Arabic was a variety of Arabic spoken in Sicily and Malta between the ninth and the fourteenth centuries. It is extinct in Sicily, but it has developed into what is now the Maltese language on the islands of Malta....

.

In the Republic of Venice

Republic of Venice

The Republic of Venice or Venetian Republic was a state originating from the city of Venice in Northeastern Italy. It existed for over a millennium, from the late 7th century until 1797. It was formally known as the Most Serene Republic of Venice and is often referred to as La Serenissima, in...

in northern Italy, it was common for foreign Arab and Berber traders, known to Europeans as the "Moors", to take local Italian

Italian people

The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...

wives. This became a subject matter in several William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

plays, most notably Othello
Othello
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...

, involving an inter-ethnic relationship between a Moorish Othello and his Venetian wife Desdemona

Desdemona (Othello)

Desdemona is a character in William Shakespeare's play Othello . Shakespeare's Desdemona is a Venetian beauty who enrages and disappoints her father, a Venetian senator, when she elopes with Othello, a man several years her senior. When her husband is deployed to Cyprus in the service of the...

, based on Giovanni Battista Giraldi

Giovanni Battista Giraldi

Giovanni Battista Giraldi was an Italian novelist and poet. He appended the nickname Cinthio to his name and is commonly referred to by that name .Born at Ferrara, he was educated at the university there, and in 1525 became its professor of natural philosophy...

's "Un Capitano Moro" which was itself inspired by an actual incident that occurred in Venice around 1508. At times, the Italian city-states also played an active role in the Arab slave trade

Arab slave trade

, where Moorish and Italian traders occasionally exchanged slaves. Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...

's mother Caterina, for example, was most likely a slave from the Middle East.

During World War II, France's Moroccan

Morocco

troops known as Goumier

Goumier

Moroccan Goumiers were soldiers who served in auxiliary units attached to the French Army of Africa, between 1908 and 1956. The term Goumier was also occasionally used to designate native soldiers in the French army of the French Sudan and Upper Volta during the colonial era.-Description:The word...

s committed war rape

War rape

s in Italy after the Battle of Monte Cassino

Battle of Monte Cassino

The Battle of Monte Cassino was a costly series of four battles during World War II, fought by the Allies against Germans and Italians with the intention of breaking through the Winter Line and seizing Rome.In the beginning of 1944, the western half of the Winter Line was being anchored by Germans...

and in Germany. In Italy, victims of the mass rape

Rape

Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...

committed after the Battle of Monte Cassino by Goumiers are known as Marocchinate
Marocchinate
Marocchinate is a term applied to the mass rape and killings committed during World War II after the Battle of Monte Cassino in Italy by Goumiers, Moroccan colonial troops of the French Expeditionary Corps ), commanded by General Alphonse Juin.- Background :Goumiers were colonial irregular...

. According to Italian sources, more than 7,000 Italian civilians, including women and children, were raped by Goumiers.

Southeastern and Eastern Europe

Vikings explored and eventually settled in territories in Slavic

Slavic peoples

-dominated areas of Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

. By 950 AD these settlements were largely Slavicized through intermarriage with the local population. Eastern Europe was also an important source for the Arab slave trade

Arab slave trade

at the time, when Saqaliba
Saqaliba
Saqaliba refers to the Slavs, particularly Slavic slaves and mercenaries in the medieval Arab world, in the Middle East, North Africa, Sicily and Al-Andalus. It is generally thought that the Arabic term is a Byzantine loanword: saqlab, siklab, saqlabi etc. is a corruption of Greek Sklavinoi for...

(Slavic) slaves were taken to the Arab World

Arab world

, where the women and girls often served in harem

Harem

Harem refers to the sphere of women in what is usually a polygynous household and their enclosed quarters which are forbidden to men...

s, some of whom married their Arab

Arab

masters. When the Mongol Empire

Mongol Empire

The Mongol Empire , initially named as Greater Mongol State was a great empire during the 13th and 14th centuries...

annexed much of Eastern Europe in the 13th century, the Mongols

Mongols

also intermarried with the local population and often engaged in war rape

War rape

during the Mongol invasion of Europe

Mongol invasion of Europe

The resumption of the Mongol invasion of Europe, during which the Mongols attacked medieval Rus' principalities and the powers of Poland and Hungary, was marked by the Mongol invasion of Rus starting in 21 December 1237...

.

In the 11th century, the Byzantine

Byzantine Empire

territory of Anatolia

Anatolia

Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...

was conquered by the Seljuq Turks

Seljuq dynasty

The Seljuq ; were a Turco-Persian Sunni Muslim dynasty that ruled parts of Central Asia and the Middle East from the 11th to 14th centuries...

, who came from Turkestan

Turkestan

Turkestan, spelled also as Turkistan, literally means "Land of the Turks".The term Turkestan is of Persian origin and has never been in use to denote a single nation. It was first used by Persian geographers to describe the place of Turkish peoples...

in Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

. Their Ottoman Turkish

Ottoman Turks

The Ottoman Turks were the Turkish-speaking population of the Ottoman Empire who formed the base of the state's military and ruling classes. Reliable information about the early history of Ottoman Turks is scarce, but they take their Turkish name, Osmanlı , from the house of Osman I The Ottoman...

descendants went on to annex the Balkans

Balkans

The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...

and much of Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

in the 15th and 16th centuries. Due to Islamic marital law

Islamic marital jurisprudence

allowing a Muslim

Muslim

male to marry Christian

Christian

and Jewish females, it was common in the Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

for Turkish males to intermarry with European females. For example, various sultan

Sultan

Sultan is a title with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", and "dictatorship", derived from the masdar سلطة , meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be used as the title of certain rulers who...

s of the Ottoman Dynasty

Ottoman Dynasty

The Ottoman Dynasty ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1299 to 1922, beginning with Osman I , though the dynasty was not proclaimed until Orhan Bey declared himself sultan...

often had Greek

Greeks

(Rûm
Rûm
Rûm, also Roum or Rhum , an indefinite term used at different times in the Muslim world to refer to the Balkans and Anatolia generally, and for the Byzantine Empire in particular, for the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm in Asia Minor, and referring to Greeks living outside of Greece or non-muslims...

), Slavic

Slavic peoples

(Saqaliba
Saqaliba
Saqaliba refers to the Slavs, particularly Slavic slaves and mercenaries in the medieval Arab world, in the Middle East, North Africa, Sicily and Al-Andalus. It is generally thought that the Arabic term is a Byzantine loanword: saqlab, siklab, saqlabi etc. is a corruption of Greek Sklavinoi for...

), Venetian

Republic of Venice

, Northcaucasian

North Caucasus

The North Caucasus is the northern part of the Caucasus region between the Black and Caspian Seas and within European Russia. The term is also used as a synonym for the North Caucasus economic region of Russia....

and French wives.

Some of these European wives exerted great influence upon the empire as Valide Sultan
Valide Sultan
Valide Sultan was the title held by the mother of a ruling Sultan in the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish pronunciation of the word Valide is . The title is sometimes translated as Queen Mother, although the position of Valide Sultan was quite different.The position was perhaps the most important...

("Mother-Sultan"), some famous examples including Roxelana

Roxelana

Haseki Hürrem Sultan was the wife of Süleyman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire.-Names:Sixteenth-century sources are silent as to her maiden name, but much later traditions, for example Ukrainian folk traditions first recorded in the 19th century, give it as "Anastasia" , and Polish...

, a Slavic harem slave who later became Suleiman the Magnificent

Suleiman the Magnificent

Suleiman I was the tenth and longest-reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, from 1520 to his death in 1566. He is known in the West as Suleiman the Magnificent and in the East, as "The Lawgiver" , for his complete reconstruction of the Ottoman legal system...

's favourite wife, and Aimée du Buc de Rivéry

Aimée du Buc de Rivéry

Aimée du Buc de Rivéry was a French heiress, a cousin of Empress Josephine, who went missing at sea at the age of eleven...

, wife of Abdul Hamid I and cousin of French Empress Josephine

Joséphine de Beauharnais

Joséphine de Beauharnais was the first wife of Napoléon Bonaparte, and thus the first Empress of the French. Her first husband Alexandre de Beauharnais had been guillotined during the Reign of Terror, and she had been imprisoned in the Carmes prison until her release five days after Alexandre's...

. Due to the common occurrence of such intermarriages in the Ottoman Empire, they have had a significant impact on the ethnic makeup of the modern Turkish

Turkish people

population in Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

, which now differs from that of the Turkic

Turkic peoples

population in Central Asia. In addition to intermarriage, the large harems of Ottoman sultans often consisted almost entirely of female concubines

Concubinage

Concubinage is the state of a woman or man in an ongoing, usually matrimonially oriented, relationship with somebody to whom they cannot be married, often because of a difference in social status or economic condition.-Concubinage:...

who were of Christian European origin.

The degree of miscegenation is very high in the former Soviet Union. Interethnic marriages made up about 22% of all marriages in Moscow, according to the figures from 1995. The majority of such marriages consist among Russian, Ukrainians, Byelorussians and other Slavic.

Annually, many Russian women end up as prostitutes in India, China, Japan, or South Korea

South Korea

. Bars in major Chinese cities now offer blond, blue-eyed Russian "hostesses", while in Tokyo, Russian girls are the latest addition to the menu in fancy "hostess" bars. Russian prostitutes are found everywhere in Macau

Macau

Macau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...

. Their customers are almost exclusively wealthy Chinese, Japanese and Korean businessmen. Eastern European women also end up in Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

and the United Arab Emirates

United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates, abbreviated as the UAE, or shortened to "the Emirates", is a state situated in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia on the Persian Gulf, bordering Oman, and Saudi Arabia, and sharing sea borders with Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Iran.The UAE is a...

.

Low levels of mixed ancestry are, in some areas (especially urban), almost universal, and generally go entirely ignored and unnoticed unless persons wish to identify themselves with ethnic minorities. Highly visible divergence from the local ethnic majority is also treated differently, depending on whether the individual identifies with the local culture or not. In modern times, attitudes towards miscegenation in the former Soviet Union vary greatly, depending on the race and gender of each partner. For example, unions between Slavic males and Oriental (Asian) or Turkic, Northcaucasian, Southcaucasian and Finno-Ugric

Finno-Ugric peoples

The Finno-Ugric peoples are any of several peoples of Europe who speak languages of the proposed Finno-Ugric language family, such as the Finns, Estonians, Mordvins, and Hungarians...

women are almost universally tolerated, and their children are generally identified and treated as members of the local ethnic majority.

However, unions between Slavic women and visibly non-Slavic men may meet varying degrees of discrimination, from light to none for Asian men (depending also on origin, whether they are immigrants or were born in the Soviet Union, and where in the Soviet Union they were born), to some hostility for Finno-Ugric

Finno-Ugric peoples

The Finno-Ugric peoples are any of several peoples of Europe who speak languages of the proposed Finno-Ugric language family, such as the Finns, Estonians, Mordvins, and Hungarians...

, Turkic

Turkic peoples

and Northcaucasian

North Caucasus

men (although much of this is due to the assumption of their faith as Muslim) and Jews, and quite high intolerance towards those who marry blacks or have children by them (young African-Russians in Moscow are often scornfully called 'Children of the Olympics', under the assumption that they were conceived by visiting tourists during the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games). The situation is also highly affected by self-identification, since many people of Asian or Turkic blood have assimilated to the point where they identify themselves as Russian

Russians

The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....

/Ukrainian

Ukrainians

Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...

/etc. and are socially accepted as such.

United Kingdom

Even though 80 percent of the genetic characteristics of most indigenous Britons today have been passed down from a few thousand Ice Age hunters and the genetic makeup of today's indigenous population is much the same as it was 12,000 years ago, Britain has a fairly long history of inter-ethnic marriage among the various European populations that inhabited the island, including the Celtic, Roman

Roman Britain

Roman Britain was the part of the island of Great Britain controlled by the Roman Empire from AD 43 until ca. AD 410.The Romans referred to the imperial province as Britannia, which eventually comprised all of the island of Great Britain south of the fluid frontier with Caledonia...

, Anglo-Saxon

Anglo-Saxons

Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of...

and Anglo-Norman

Anglo-Norman

The Anglo-Normans were mainly the descendants of the Normans who ruled England following the Norman conquest by William the Conqueror in 1066. A small number of Normans were already settled in England prior to the conquest...

peoples. Although it is debatable whether these can be described as ethnic groups with distinct cultural identities. The Celts cannot be described with a single ethnic identity and various tribal names were used and a 'Celtic' culture was shared in Europe despite the variety of languages. Norman and Vikings people rarely held onto an identity and allegiances were more to leaders and family rather than an ethnic group, there is no evidence the Vikings for example acted as an distinct ethnic group in Britain and so called Scandinavian markers may have been in Britain thousands of years in the Neolithic. Also there were Scandinavians and pre-Viking Scandinavian influence amongst the Anglo-Saxons as shown in Beowulf and Sutton Hoo. There is no evidence the Anglo-Saxons used that term or indeed forced their languages or culture on local Britons, indeed there is no evidence the majority of local Britons used the term Celt or even spoke a Celtic language, indeed a Germanic language which evolved into English may have been spoke in large parts of Britain as Oppenheimer suggests. The numbers of Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, Romans may be widely exaggerated, Viking, Anglo-Saxons armies may have been small. Intermarriage with non-European populations began in the late 15th century, with the arrival of the Romani people, who have Indian

Indian subcontinent

origins. The Romani in Britain intermarried with the local population and became known to the Romani as the Romanichal. In India, the British East India Company

East India Company

and other European soldiers intermarried with Indian women. The offspring of these mixed marriages between the British and Indians were known as Anglo-Indian

Anglo-Indian

s. Indian wives sometimes accompanied their husbands back to Britain.

Inter-ethnic relationships have become increasingly accepted over the last several decades. As of 2001, 2% of all marriages in Britain are inter-ethnic. Despite having a much lower non-white population (9%), mixed marriages in the United Kingdom are as common as in the United States, although America has many fewer specific definitions of race (four racial definitions as opposed to the United Kingdom's 86). As of 2005, it is estimated that nearly half of British-born African-Caribbean

British African-Caribbean community

The British African Caribbean communities are residents of the United Kingdom who are of West Indian background and whose ancestors were primarily indigenous to Africa...

males, a third of British-born African-Caribbean females, and a fifth of Indian

British Indian

The term British Indian refers to citizens of the United Kingdom whose ancestral roots lie in India. This includes people born in the UK who are of Indian descent, and Indian-born people who have migrated to the UK...

and African males, have white partners. As of 2009, one in 10 children in the UK lives in a mixed-race family and two out of five Chinese

British Chinese

British Chinese , including British-born Chinese are people of Chinese ancestry who were born in, or have migrated to, the United Kingdom. They are part of the Chinese diaspora, or overseas Chinese...

women have partners of a different race.

Middle East

A Stanford team found the greatest diversity outside Africa among people living in the wide crescent of land stretching from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean to northern India. Not only was the region among the first colonized by the African migrants, they theorize, but the large number of European and East Asian genes among the population indicates that it has long been a human highway, with large numbers of migrants from both directions conquering, trading and generally reproducing along its entire length. The same team also found out that the Bedouin nomads of the Middle East actually have some European and South Asian blood.

In ancient times a Celtic people known as Galatians settled in what is present day Turkey and thus interbred with the people there. During the empire of Alexander the Great, many Greek

Greeks

/Macedonian soldiers had inter-ethnic relationships with women throughout the Middle East all the way to northwestern India

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

. Later, coastal North Africa and parts of the Middle East were part of the Roman Empire

Roman Empire

and many Roman men were posted as soldiers there. Many of them had inter-ethnic relationships with local Middle-Eastern women. The Germanic

Germanic peoples

people known as the Vandals

Vandals

also conquered parts of coastal North Africa during the great migration period which led to opportunities of inter-ethnic relationships between Germanic

Germanic peoples

men and local North African women.

Inter-ethnic sexual slavery

Sexual slavery

was common during the Arab slave trade

Arab slave trade

throughout the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

and early modern period

Early modern period

In history, the early modern period of modern history follows the late Middle Ages. Although the chronological limits of the period are open to debate, the timeframe spans the period after the late portion of the Middle Ages through the beginning of the Age of Revolutions...

, when women and girls captured from non-Arab lands often ended up as sexual slaves in the harem

Harem

Harem refers to the sphere of women in what is usually a polygynous household and their enclosed quarters which are forbidden to men...

s of the Arab World

Arab world

. Most of these slaves came from places such as Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa as a geographical term refers to the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara. A political definition of Sub-Saharan Africa, instead, covers all African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara...

(mainly Zanj
Zanj
Zanj was a name used by medieval Arab geographers to refer to both a certain portion of the coast of East Africa and its inhabitants, Bantu-speaking peoples called the Zanj...

), South Asia (Hindus), the North Caucasus

North Caucasus

(mainly Circassians), Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

(mainly Tartars

Tartary

Tartary or Great Tartary was a name used by Europeans from the Middle Ages until the twentieth century to designate the Great Steppe, that is the great tract of northern and central Asia stretching from the Caspian Sea and the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean inhabited mostly by Turkic, Mongol...

), and Central

Central Europe

Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...

and Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

(mainly Saqaliba
Saqaliba
Saqaliba refers to the Slavs, particularly Slavic slaves and mercenaries in the medieval Arab world, in the Middle East, North Africa, Sicily and Al-Andalus. It is generally thought that the Arabic term is a Byzantine loanword: saqlab, siklab, saqlabi etc. is a corruption of Greek Sklavinoi for...

). The Barbary pirates also captured 1,250,000 slaves from Western Europe

Western Europe

Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...

and North America between the 16th and 19th centuries. It was also common for Arab conquerors

Muslim conquests

, traders

Islamic economics in the world

Islamic economics in practice, or economic policies supported by self-identified Islamic groups, has varied throughout its long history. Traditional Islamic concepts having to do with economics included...

and explorers to marry local females in the lands they conquered or traded with, in various parts of Africa, Asia (see Asia section) and Europe (see Europe section).

Inter-ethnic relationships were generally accepted in Arabic society and formed a fairly common theme in medieval Arabic literature

Arabic literature

Arabic literature is the writing produced, both prose and poetry, by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is adab which is derived from a meaning of etiquette, and implies politeness, culture and enrichment....

and Persian literature

Persian literature

Persian literature spans two-and-a-half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. Its sources have been within historical Persia including present-day Iran as well as regions of Central Asia where the Persian language has historically been the national language...

. For example, the Kurdish

Kurdish people

The Kurdish people, or Kurds , are an Iranian people native to the Middle East, mostly inhabiting a region known as Kurdistan, which includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey...

poet Nizami, who had himself married his Kipchak

Kipchaks

Kipchaks were a Turkic tribal confederation...

slave girl, wrote The Seven Beauties (1196). Its frame story

Frame story

A frame story is a literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, whereby an introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage either for a more emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories...

involves a Persian prince marrying seven foreign princesses, including Byzantine

Byzantine Empire

, Chinese, Indian, Khwarezm

Khwarezm

Khwarezm, or Chorasmia, is a large oasis region on the Amu Darya river delta in western Central Asia, which borders to the north the Aral Sea, to the east the Kyzylkum desert, to the south the Karakum desert and to the west the Ustyurt Plateau...

ian, Maghreb

Maghreb

The Maghreb is the region of Northwest Africa, west of Egypt. It includes five countries: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania and the disputed territory of Western Sahara...

ian, Slavic

Slavic peoples

and Tartar

Tartar

Tartar may refer to: *An alternative spelling of the name Tatars, an ethnic group in present-day Russia.* Tartars, the name of the athletic teams from 1927–1999 at Wayne State University in Detroit.*Tartar sauce*Tartar on teeth, hardened dental plaque...

princesses. Hadith Bayad wa Riyad
Hadith Bayad wa Riyad
Hadith Bayāḍ wa Riyāḍ or Qissat Bayad wa Riyad is a 13th-century Arabic love story...

, a 12th-century Arabic tale from Al-Andalus

Al-Andalus

, was a love story involving an Iberian

Caucasian Iberia

Iberia , also known as Iveria , was a name given by the ancient Greeks and Romans to the ancient Georgian kingdom of Kartli , corresponding roughly to the eastern and southern parts of the present day Georgia...

girl and a Damascene

Damascus

Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...

man. The One Thousand and One Nights tale of "The Man of Al-Yaman and His Six Slave-Girls" involves a Yemen

Yemen

The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....

i man's relationship with foreign slave girls, four of which are white

White people

White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...

, black

Black people

The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...

, brown

Brown people

Brown people or brown race is a political, racial, ethnic, societal, and cultural classification, similar to black people and white people. Like these, it is a metaphor for race based on human skin color, reflecting the fact that there are shades of skin colour intermediate between "Mediterranean" ...

and yellow. Another One Thousand and One Nights tale, "The Ebony Horse", involves the Prince of Persia

Prince of Persia (disambiguation)

Prince of Persia may refer to these video games:*Prince of Persia, the video game franchise*Prince of Persia *Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame, a 1993 video game*Prince of Persia 3D, a 1999 video game...

, Qamar al-Aqmar, rescuing his lover, the Princess of Sana'a

Sana'a

-Districts:*Al Wahdah District*As Sabain District*Assafi'yah District*At Tahrir District*Ath'thaorah District*Az'zal District*Bani Al Harith District*Ma'ain District*Old City District*Shu'aub District-Old City:...

, from the Byzantine Emperor

Byzantine Empire

who also wishes to marry her.

One study found that some Arabic-speaking populations—Palestinians, Jordan

Jordan

Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...

ians, Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

ns, Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

is, and Bedouin

Bedouin

The Bedouin are a part of a predominantly desert-dwelling Arab ethnic group traditionally divided into tribes or clans, known in Arabic as ..-Etymology:...

s—have what appears to be substantial mtDNA gene flow from sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa

, amounting to 10–15% of lineages within the past three millennia. In the case of Yemenites

Yemenites

Yemenites can be either:* Citizens of Yemen or persons residing in Yemen* Yemenite Jews, a minority group within Israel...

, the average is higher at 35%. Of particular historic interest might be the finding that with almost no exceptions the sub-Saharan gene flow was exclusively female, at least in part as a result of the Arab slave trade

Arab slave trade

.

Between the 11th and 13th centuries, medieval Western Asia

Southwest Asia

Western Asia, West Asia, Southwest Asia or Southwestern Asia are terms that describe the westernmost portion of Asia. The terms are partly coterminous with the Middle East, which describes a geographical position in relation to Western Europe rather than its location within Asia...

was repeatedly invaded by Europeans (Crusades

Crusades

The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...

) and Mongols

Mongols

(Mongol Empire

Mongol Empire

The Mongol Empire , initially named as Greater Mongol State was a great empire during the 13th and 14th centuries...

) which led to opportunities for inter-ethnic relationships between European, Mongol

Mongols

and Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

n soldiers with local Arab women. As well as many Europeans, there were North Africans, South Asia

South Asia

ns and Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

ns who worked as mercenaries and traders in the area, most of them converting to Islam and taking local women as wives. From 839 AD, Viking Varangian mercenaries who were in the service of the Byzantine Empire

Byzantine Empire

, notably Harald Sigurdsson, campaigned in North Africa, Jerusalem and other places in the Middle East during the Byzantine-Arab Wars

Byzantine-Arab Wars

The Byzantine–Arab Wars were a series of wars between the Arab Caliphates and the East Roman or Byzantine Empire between the 7th and 12th centuries AD. These started during the initial Muslim conquests under the expansionist Rashidun and Umayyad caliphs and continued in the form of an enduring...

, and interbred with the local population as spoils of warfare or through eventual settling with many Scandinavian

Scandinavians

Scandinavians are a group of Germanic peoples, inhabiting Scandinavia and to a lesser extent countries associated with Scandinavia, and speaking Scandinavian languages. The group includes Danes, Norwegians and Swedes, and additionally the descendants of Scandinavian settlers such as the Icelandic...

and Slavic Viking

Viking

The term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.These Norsemen used their famed longships to...

men taking Arab or Anatolian

Anatolians

Anatolian peoples were a group of distinct ethnic groups which spoke related languages. They shared cultural traits and traditional religion. The Anatolian languages were one branch of the larger Indo-European language family.-Extinction:...

women as wives. There is archaeological evidence these Vikings had established contact with the city of Baghdad

Baghdad

Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...

, at the time the center of the Islamic Empire

Caliphate

The term caliphate, "dominion of a caliph " , refers to the first system of government established in Islam and represented the political unity of the Muslim Ummah...

, and connected with the populace there.

A genetic anthropological study known as The Genographic Project has found what is believed to be faint genetic traces left by medieval Crusaders

Crusaders

The Crusaders are a New Zealand professional rugby union team based in Christchurch that competes in the Super Rugby competition. They are the most successful team in Super Rugby history with seven titles...

in the Middle East. The team has uncovered a specific DNA signature in Lebanon that is probably linked to the Christian crusades of the 7th and 8th centuries. It is believed the Crusaders were welcomed by Christian Arabs long suffering under Islamic rule and many offered their daughters in marriage to the European Crusaders who originated from European kingdoms mostly France, England and the Holy Roman Empire

Holy Roman Empire

The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...

.

In the Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

, in addition to the Ottoman elites often taking large numbers of European wives and concubines (see Southeastern and Eastern Europe section), there were also opportunities for the reverse, when the empire recruited young Christian boys (mostly Europeans in addition to Christian Arabs) to become the elite troop of the Turkish Empire, the Janissaries. These Janissaries were stationed throughout the Turkish empire including the Middle-East and North Africa leading to inter-ethnic relationships between European men and women from the Middle East and North Africa. Further inter-ethnic marriages took place during the European colonial age when Great Britain, France and Italy ruled various parts of this region. The majority of these marriages were between European men and local Arab and Berber

Berber people

women.

The concubines of the Ottoman Sultan

Imperial Harem

The Imperial Harem of the Ottoman Empire was one of the most important elements of the Ottoman court. It was known in the West as "the Seraglio", an Italian term.- Harem quarters:...

consisted chiefly of purchased slaves. Because Islamic law forbade Muslims to enslave fellow Muslims, the Sultan's concubines were generally of Christian origin. The mother of a Sultan, though technically a slave, received the extremely powerful title of Valide Sultan, and at times became effective ruler of the Empire (see Sultanate of women

Sultanate of Women

The Sultanate of Women was the near 130-year period during the 16th and 17th centuries when the women of the Imperial Harem of the Ottoman Empire exerted extraordinary political influence. Many of the Sultans during this time were minors and it was their mothers, leaders of the Harem, who...

). One notable example was Kösem Sultan, daughter of a Greek Christian priest, who dominated the Ottoman Empire during the early decades of the 17th century. Another notable example was Roxelana

Roxelana

, the favourite wife of Suleiman the Magnificent

Suleiman the Magnificent

.

Inter-ethnic sexual slavery still continues today in a smaller form in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf

Arab states of the Persian Gulf

"Arab states of the Persian Gulf" or "Arab Persian Gulf states" or "Persian Gulf Arab states" or "Arabic Persian Gulf states" or "Arab States of The Gulf", are terms that refer to the six Arab states of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, bordering the Persian Gulf....

, where women and children are trafficked

Human trafficking

Human trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings for the purposes of reproductive slavery, commercial sexual exploitation, forced labor, or a modern-day form of slavery...

from the post-Soviet states

Post-Soviet states

The post-Soviet states, also commonly known as the Former Soviet Union or former Soviet republics, are the 15 independent states that split off from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in its dissolution in December 1991...

, Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

, Far East

Far East

, Africa, South Asia

South Asia

and other parts of the Middle East.

Israel

The modern State of Israel was established as a nation-state for the Jewish people. The Jewish identity contains elements of religion (Judaism), ethnicity, and a sense of a common lineage.

In this sense, Jewish miscegenation could be viewed on two levels; one based on belonging to the Jewish ethnic group or Jewish people, and the other based on the race of a given Jew. Jewish miscegenation based on Jewishness (belonging to the Jewish ethnic group or Jewish people) would be defined on whether one parent is not Jewish, independent of whether either the Jewish or non-Jewish parent are of the same or different races. Racial miscegenation would be defined as the union between a Jew of a given race with a person of a different race, be the other person a Jew or not. Two Jewish people may still be considered "interracial" if those two Jews are of different races, although it would not be considered exogamous in the context of Jewish ethnicity, as both are still Jews.

In Israel, all marriages must be approved by religious celebrants, while civil marriages are legally recognized if performed abroad. Rules governing marriage are based on strict religious guidelines of each religion. By Israeli law, authority over all issues related to Judaism in Israel, including marriage, falls under the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate of Israel. Orthodox Judaism is the only form of Judaism recognized by the state, and marriages performed in Israel by non-Orthodox Rabbis are not recognized.

The Rabbinate prohibits marriage in Israel of halakhic Jews (i.e. people born to a Jewish mother or Jewish by conversion), whether they are Orthodox Jews or not, to partners who are non-Jewish or who are of Jewish descent that runs through the paternal line (i.e. not Jewish according to halakha). As a result, in the state of Israel, people of differing religious traditions cannot legally marry someone in another religion and multi-faith couples must leave the country to get married, most often to Central and Northern Greece.

The only other option in Israel for the marriage of a halakhic Jew (Orthodox or not) to a non-Jew, or for that matter, a Christian to a non-Christian or Muslim to a non-Muslim, is for one partner to formally convert to the other's religion, be it to Judaism (Orthodox only), a Christian denomination (such as Eastern Orthodox or Maronite) or a denomination of Islam (such as Sunni or Shia). As for persons with patrilineal Jewish descent (i.e. not recognized as Jewish according to halakha) who wish to marry a halakhic Jew (i.e. born to a Jewish mother or is Jewish by Orthodox conversion) who is Orthodox or otherwise, is also required to formally convert to Judaism (Orthodox only) or they cannot legally marry.
According to a Haaretz article "Justice Ministry drafts civil marriage law for ‘refuseniks’" 300,000 people, or 150,000 couples, are affected by marriage restrictions based on the partners' disparate religious traditions or non-halakhic Jewish status.

Israeli law concerns itself with miscegenation based on Jewish ethnicity, not miscegenation based on race. Therefore, there are no restrictions on interracial marriages between Jews of different Jewish ethnic divisions, or between other co-religionists of different races, although social stigma may still exist.

Many Israeli Jews oppose mixed relationships between Jewish women and Arab men. A 2007 opinion survey found that more than half of Israeli Jews believed intermarriage is equivalent to "national treason". A group of 35 Jewish men, known as "Fire for Judaism", in Pisgat Ze'ev

Pisgat Ze'ev

Pisgat Ze'ev , is an Israeli settlement and a residential neighborhood with a population of 50,000 located in northern East Jerusalem. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, although the Israeli government disputes this...

have started patrolling the town in an effort to stop Jewish women from dating Arab men. The municipality of Petah Tikva

Petah Tikva

Petah Tikva known as Em HaMoshavot , is a city in the Center District of Israel, east of Tel Aviv.According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 2009, the city's population stood at 209,600. The population density is approximately...

has also announced an initiative to prevent interracial relationships, providing a telephone hotline for friends and family to "inform" on Jewish girls who date Arab men as well as psychologists to provide counselling. The town of Kiryat Gat launched a school programme in schools to warn Jewish girls against dating local Bedouin men.

In February 2010 Maariv

Maariv

Maariv is a Hebrew language daily newspaper published in Israel. It is second in sales after Yedioth Ahronoth and third in readership after Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel HaYom. In a TGI survey comparing the last half of 2009 with the same period in 2008, Maariv saw its market share fall slightly...

has reported that the Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...

municipality has instituted an official, government-sponsored "counselling program" to discourage Jewish girls from dating and marrying Arab boys. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

has also reported on a vigilante parents’ group policing the Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Ze'ev

Pisgat Ze'ev

to intimidate and discourage local Arab-Jewish couples. The Jewish anti-missionary group Yad L'achim

Yad L'Achim

Yad L'Achim is an Orthodox Jewish organization operating in Israel focusing on outreach, counter-missionary and anti-religious intermarriage activity...

has also performed paramilitary "rescue operations" of Jewish women from non-Jewish husbands and celebrates the "rescued women" on their website.
However, according to Halakha, descendants from a Jewish mother are always defined to be Jewish.

Oceania

Australia

Analysis of the 2006 census reveals that 52% of Aboriginal men and 55% of Aboriginal women were married to non-Aboriginal Australians.

New Zealand

Most people who are entitled to call themselves Maori under the Maori Affairs Amendment Act 1974 are less than half Maori. Two-thirds of Maori babies, half of Pacific babies, and a third of white and Asian babies belonged to more than one ethnic group.

Portuguese colonies

According to Gilberto Freyre

Gilberto Freyre

Gilberto de Mello Freyre was a Brazilian sociologist, anthropologist, historian, writer, painter and congressman. His best-known work is a sociological treatise named Casa-Grande & Senzala...

, a Brazilian sociologist, miscegenation was commonplace in the Portuguese colonies

Portuguese Empire

The Portuguese Empire , also known as the Portuguese Overseas Empire or the Portuguese Colonial Empire , was the first global empire in history...

, and was even supported by the court as a way to boost low populations and guarantee a successful and cohesive settlement. Thus, settlers often released African slaves to become their wives. The children were guaranteed full Portuguese citizenship, provided the parents were married. Some former Portuguese colonies have large mixed-race

Multiracial

populations, for instance, Brazil

Brazil

, Cape Verde

Cape Verde

The Republic of Cape Verde is an island country, spanning an archipelago of 10 islands located in the central Atlantic Ocean, 570 kilometres off the coast of Western Africa...

, Mozambique

Mozambique

, Timor Leste, Macau

Macau

Macau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...

and São Tomé and Príncipe

São Tomé and Príncipe

São Tomé and Príncipe, officially the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe, is a Portuguese-speaking island nation in the Gulf of Guinea, off the western equatorial coast of Central Africa. It consists of two islands: São Tomé and Príncipe, located about apart and about , respectively, off...

. In the case of Brazil, the influential "Indianist" novels of José de Alencar

José de Alencar

José Martiniano de Alencar was a Brazilian lawyer, politician, orator, novelist and dramatist. He is one of the most famous writers of the first generation of Brazilian Romanticism, writing historical, regionalist and Indianist romances — being the most famous The Guarani...

(O Guarany

O Guarany

The Guarani: Brazilian Novel is a 1857 Brazilian novel written by José de Alencar. It first came out as a feuilleton in the newspaper Diário do Rio de Janeiro, but due to its enormous success Alencar decided to compile his writing in a volume...

, Iracema

Iracema

Iracema is one of the three indigenous novels by José de Alencar. It was first published in 1865.-Plot introduction:The story revolves around the relationship between the Tabajara indigenous woman, Iracema; and the Portuguese colonist, Martim, who was allied with the Tabajara nation's enemies, the...

, and Ubirajara

Ubirajara (novel)

Ubirajara is one of the indigenous novels by José de Alencar. It was first published in 1874. This name means lord of spear or lancer in English, from ubira - spear, e jara - lord; it accorded José de Alencar....

) perhaps went farther than in the other colonies, advocating miscegenation in order to create a truly Brazilian race. Mixed marriages between Portuguese

Portuguese people

and locals in former colonies were very common in all Portuguese colonies. Miscegenation was still common in Africa until the independence of the former Portuguese colonies in the mid-1970s.

U.S.

According to the U.S. Census

Census

A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...

, in 2000 there were 504,119 Asian-white marriages, 287,576 black-white marriages, and 31,271 Asian-black marriages. The black-white marriages increased from 65,000 in 1970 to 558,000 in 2010, according to Census Bureau figures.

In the United States, rates of interracial cohabitation

Cohabitation

are significantly higher than those of marriage. Although only 7% of married African American men have Caucasian American wives, 13% of cohabitating African American men have Caucasian American partners. 25% of married Asian American women have Caucasian spouses, but 45% of cohabitating Asian American women are with Caucasian American men. Of cohabiting Asian men, slightly over 37 percent of Asian men have white female partners. In 2006, 41% of Asian American-born women were registered as having White husbands. Almost 30% of Asians and Latinos outmarry, with 86.8 and 90% of these intermarriages, respectively, being to a white person. According to Karyn Langhorne Folan, "...although the most recent census available reported that 70% of African American women are single, African American women have the greatest resistance to marrying 'out' of the race."

One study on college students noted that, while 90% of the 80 black men reported experiences in interracial dating, only 12% of the 140 white men reported such experiences. Some studies have shown as many as 45% of white women have dated men outside their race. The massive sexual survey revealed that 19% of black males had engaged in sexual activity with white women. A Gallup poll on interracial dating in June 2006 found that 95% of 18- to 29-year-olds approve of blacks' and whites' dating each other. About 60% of that age group said they have dated someone of another race. In 1980, just 17% said they had dated someone from a different racial background.

According to the 2010 Census, the number of interracial marriages in the U.S. is up 20% since 2000, to around 4.5 million. "A record 14.6% of all new marriages in the United States in 2008 were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from one another. ... Rates more than doubled among whites and nearly tripled among blacks. But for both Hispanics and Asians, rates were nearly identical in 2008 and 1980.", according to a Pew Research Center

Pew Research Center

The Pew Research Center is an American think tank organization based in Washington, D.C. that provides information on issues, attitudes and trends shaping the United States and the world. The Center and its projects receive funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts. In 1990, Donald S...

analysis of demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

According to studies by Jenifer L. Bratter and Rosalind B. King made publicly available on the Education Resources Information Center

Education Resources Information Center

ERIC - the Education Resources Information Center - is an online digital library of education research and information. ERIC is sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education...

, White female-Black male and White female-Asian male marriages are more prone to divorce

Divorce

Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...

than White-White pairings. Conversely, unions between White males and non-White females (and between Hispanics and non-Hispanic persons) have similar or lower risks of divorce than White-White marriages, unions between white-black female last longer than white-white pairings or white-Asian pairings.

Brazil

Multiracial

Brazilians make up 42.6% of Brazil's population

Mixed-race Brazilian

Brazilian censuses do not use a "multiracial" category. Instead, the censuses use skin colour categories, with a Pardo one, that may include people of varied "mixed racial" ancestry, but probably also accounts for non-mixed acculturated Amerindians...

, 79.782 million people, and they live in all regions of Brazil

Brazil

. Multiracial Brazilians are mainly people of mixed European, African, East Asian (mostly Japanese) and Amerindian ancestry.

Genetic studies of racial admixture

Miscegenation between two populations reduces the genetic distance between the populations. During the Age of Discovery

Age of Discovery

which began in the early 15th century, European explorers sailed all across the globe reaching all the major continents. In the process they came into contact with many populations that had been isolated for thousands of years. The Tasmanian aboriginals were one of the most isolated groups on the planet. They were driven to extinction by European explorers, however a number of their descendants survive today as a result of admixture

Admixture

Admixture can refer to:* Genetic admixture, the result of interbreeding between two or more previously isolated populations within a species.* Racial admixture, admixture between humans, also referred to as Miscegenation* Hybrid...

with Europeans. This is an example of how modern migrations have begun to reduce the genetic divergence of the human race.

The demographic

Demographics

Demographics are the most recent statistical characteristics of a population. These types of data are used widely in sociology , public policy, and marketing. Commonly examined demographics include gender, race, age, disabilities, mobility, home ownership, employment status, and even location...

composition of the old world

Old World

The Old World consists of those parts of the world known to classical antiquity and the European Middle Ages. It is used in the context of, and contrast with, the "New World" ....

has not changed significantly since the age of discovery. However, the new world

New World

The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...

demographics were radically changed within a short time following the voyage of Columbus

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...

. The colonization of Americas brought Native Americans into contact with the distant populations of Europe, Africa and Asia. As a result many countries in the Americas have significant and complex multiracial

Multiracial

populations. Furthermore many who identify themselves by only one race still have multiracial ancestry.

Admixture in the United States

Admixture in European-American population
% European admixture	Frequency
90–100	68%
80–89.9	22%
70–79.9	8%
60–69.9	< 1%
50–59.9	< 1%
40–49.9	< 1%
0–39.9	0

Some claim the vast majority of African-Americans possess varying degrees of European admixture (the average Black American is 20% European) although studies suggest the Native American admixture in Black Americans is highly exaggerated; some estimates put average African-American possession of European admixture at 25% with figures as high as 50% in the Northeast and less than 10% in the south. A recent study by Mark D. Shriver of a European-American sample found that the average admixture in the white population is 0.7% African and 3.2% Native American. However, 70% of the sample had no African admixture. The other 30% had African admixture ranging from 2% to 20% with an average of 2.3%. By extrapolating these figures to the whole population some scholars suggest that up to 74 million European-Americans may have African admixture in the same range (2–20%).

Dr Mark Shriver, the team leader of the study, found that he had 11% West African ancestry though he identifies as white. Studies based on skin reflectance have shown the color line in the US applied selective pressure on genes that code for skin color but did not apply any selective pressure on other invisible African genes. Since there are an estimated 6 genetic loci involved in skin color determination it is possible for someone to have 15–20% African admixture and not possess any of alleles that code for dark skin. This is the basis of the passing

Passing (racial identity)

Racial passing refers to a person classified as a member of one racial group attempting to be accepted as a member of a different racial group...

phenomenon. Thus African admixture amongst white Americans can increase without any significant change in skin tone. Conversely amongst African-Americans, an amount of African Admixture is directly correlated with darker skin since no selective pressure is applied; as a result, African-Americans may have a much wider range of African admixture (>0–100%), whereas European-Americans have a lower range (2–20%). A small overlap exists so that it is possible that someone who identifies himself as white

White people

White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...

may have more African admixture than a person who identifies himself as black

Black people

.

A statistical analysis done in 1958 using historical census data and historical data on immigration and birth rates, concluded that 21 percent of the white population had black ancestors. The growth in the white population could not be attributed to births in the white population and immigration from Europe alone, but had received significant contribution from the African American population as well.
The author states in 1958:
In the United States intermarriage among Filipinos with other races is common. They have the largest number of interracial marriages among Asian immigrant groups, as documented in California. It is also noted that 21.8% of Filipino Americans are of mixed blood, second among Asian Americans, and is the fastest growing.

Background

Prior to the European conquest of the Americas

Americas

The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...

the demographics of Latin America was naturally 100% American Indian

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

. Today those who identify themselves as Native Americans are small minorities in many countries. For example the CIA lists Argentina's native population at 0.9%, Brazil's

Indigenous peoples in Brazil

The Indigenous peoples in Brazil comprise a large number of distinct ethnic groups who inhabited the country prior to the European invasion around 1500...

at 0.4%, and Uruguay

Uruguay

Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...

's at 0%.

The early conquest of Latin America was primarily carried out by male soldiers and sailors from Spain and Portugal. Since they carried very few European women on their journeys the new settlers married and fathered children with Amerindian women and also with women imported from Africa. This process of miscegenation was even encouraged by the Spanish monarchy

Spanish monarchy

The Monarchy of Spain, constitutionally referred to as The Crown and commonly referred to as the Spanish monarchy or Hispanic Monarchy, is a constitutional institution and an historic office of Spain...

and it led to the system of stratification known as the Casta

Casta

. This system had Europeans (Spaniards

Spanish people

The Spanish are citizens of the Kingdom of Spain. Within Spain, there are also a number of vigorous nationalisms and regionalisms, reflecting the country's complex history....

and Portuguese

Portuguese people

) at the top of the hierarchy followed by those of mixed race. Unmixed Blacks and Native Americans were at the bottom. A philosophy of whitening

Racial whitening

Racial Whitening or "Whitening" is an ideology that was widely accepted in Brazil between 1889 and 1914, as the solution to the "Negro problem." Supporters of the Whitening ideology believed that the Negro race would advance culturally and genetically, or even disappear totally, within several...

emerged in which Amerindian and African culture was stigmatized in favor of European values. Many Amerindian languages were lost as mixed race offspring adopted Spanish and Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

as their first languages. Only towards the end of the 19th Century and beginning of the 20th century did large numbers of Europeans begin to migrate to South America and consequently altering its demographics.

In addition many Africans

African people

African people refers to natives, inhabitants, or citizen of Africa and to people of African descent.-Etymology:Many etymological hypotheses that have been postulated for the ancient name "Africa":...

were shipped to regions all over the Americas and were present in many of the early voyages of the conquistador

Conquistador

Conquistadors were Spanish soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under the control of Spain in the 15th to 16th centuries, following Europe's discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492...

s. Brazil

Brazil

has the largest population of African descendants outside Africa. Other countries such as Jamaica

Jamaica

, Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

, Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

, Dominican Republic

Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...

, Haiti

Haiti

, Venezuela

Venezuela

Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...

, Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

, and Ecuador

Ecuador

Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...

still have sizeable populations identified as Black

Black people

. However countries such as Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

and Chile

Chile

Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

do not have a visible African presence today. Census information from the early 19th century shows that people categorized as Black made up to 30% of the population, or around 400,000 people. Though almost completely absent today, their contribution to Argentine culture is significant include the tango

Argentine tango

Argentine tango is a musical genre of simple quadruple metre and binary musical form, and the social dance that accompanies it. Its lyrics and music are marked by nostalgia, expressed through melodic instruments including the bandoneon. Originated at the ending of the 19th century in the suburbs of...

, the milonga

Milonga

Milonga can refer to an Argentine, Uruguayan, and Southern Brazilian form of music which preceded the tango and the dance form which accompanies it, or to the term for places or events where the tango or Milonga are danced...

and the zamba, words of Bantu

Bantu languages

The Bantu languages constitute a traditional sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and Ethnologue counts 535 languages...

origin.

Demographics of Brazil in 1835, 1940, 2000 and 2008
Year	White	Brown	Black
1835	24.4%	18.2%	51.4%
1940	64%	21%	14%
2000	53.7%	38.5%	6.2%
2008	48.8%	43.8%	6.5%

The ideology of whitening encouraged non-whites to seek white or lighter skinned partners. This dilution of non-white admixture would be beneficial to their offspring as they would face less stigmatization and find it easier to assimilate into mainstream society. After successive generations of European gene flow, non-white admixture levels would drop below levels at which skin color or physical appearance is not affected thus allowing individuals to identify as white. In many regions, the native and black populations were simply overwhelmed by a succession of waves of European immigration.

Historians and scientists are thus interested in tracing the fate of Native Americans and Africans from the past to the future. The questions remain about what proportion of these populations simply died out and what proportion still has descendants alive today including those who do not racially identify themselves as their ancestors would have. Admixture testing has thus become a useful objective tool in shedding light on the demographic history of Latin America.

Recent studies

Unlike in the United States, there were no anti-miscegenation policies in Latin America. Though still a racially stratified society there were no significant barriers to gene flow between the three populations. As a result admixture profiles are a reflection of the colonial populations of Africans, Europeans and Amerindians. The pattern is also sex biased in that the African and Amerindian maternal lines are found in significantly higher proportions than African or Amerindian Y chromosomal lines. This is an indication that the primary mating pattern was that of European males with Amerindian or African females. According to the study more than half the white populations of the Latin American countries studied have some degree of either native American or African admixture (MtDNA or Y Chromosome

Y chromosome

The Y chromosome is one of the two sex-determining chromosomes in most mammals, including humans. In mammals, it contains the gene SRY, which triggers testis development if present. The human Y chromosome is composed of about 60 million base pairs...

). In countries such as Chile and Colombia almost the entire white population was shown to have some non-white admixture

Following the dispersal of Humans from Africa 50,000 – 70,000 years ago South America was the last continent to be occupied by humans. Thus the largest geographic distance between continents is between Africa and South America. Since genetic distance increases with geographic distance the two most genetically divergent groups are Africans and Native Americans based on distance. The arrival of Africans in Brazil and subsequent mixing with native South Americans entails the creation of intermediate populations, such as the Zambo

Zambo

Zambo or Cafuzo are racial terms used in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires and occasionally today to identify individuals in the Americas who are of mixed African and Amerindian ancestry...

or Garifuna between the two divergent groups.

Frank Moya Pons, a Dominican

Dominican Republic

historian documented that Spanish colonists intermarried with Taíno women, and, over time, these mestizo descendants intermarried with Africans, creating a tri-racial Creole culture. 1514 census records reveal that 40% of Spanish men in the colony of Santo Domingo had Taíno wives. A recent study conducted in Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico

suggests that over 61% of the population possess Amerindian mtDNA.

Admixture in the Philippines

Historically, admixture has been an ever present and pervading phenomenon in the Philippines. The Philippines was originally settled by Australoid

Australoid

peoples called Negritos which now form the country's aboriginal community. Admixture occurred between this earlier group and the mainstream Malayo-Polynesian population.

There has been Indian migration to and influence in the Philippines since the precolonial era. About 25% of the words in the Tagalog language are Sanskrit terms and about 5% of the country's population possess Indian ancestry from antiquity. There has been a Chinese

Chinese people

The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....

presence in the Philippines

Philippines

Filipino people

, 10%–20% have some Chinese ancestry and 1.5% are "full-blooded" Chinese.

According to the American anthropologist

Anthropology

Dr. H. Otley Beyer, the ancestry of Filipinos

Filipino people

is 2% Arab

Arab

. This dates back to when Arab traders intermarried with the local Malay

Malay race

Filipina female populations during the pre-Spanish history of the Philippines. A recent genetic study by Stanford University

Stanford University

indicates that at least 3.6% of the population are European

European ethnic groups

The ethnic groups in Europe are the various ethnic groups that reside in the nations of Europe. European ethnology is the field of anthropology focusing on Europe....

or of part European descent from both Spanish

Spanish Empire

and United States colonization.

Admixture among the Romani people

Genetic evidence has shown that the Romani people ("Gypsies

Names of the Romani people

The Romani people are also known by a variety of other names, in English as Roma and Gypsies, in Greek as . In Central and Eastern Europe as Tsigani , in France as gitans besides the dated bohémiens and manouches....

") originated from the Indian subcontinent

Indian subcontinent

and mixed with the local populations in Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

, the Middle East, and Europe. In the 1990s, it was discovered that Romani populations carried large frequencies of particular Y chromosome

Y chromosome

s (inherited paternally) that otherwise exist only in populations from South Asia

South Asia

, in addition to fairly significant frequencies of particular mitochondrial DNA

Mitochondrial DNA

Mitochondrial DNA is the DNA located in organelles called mitochondria, structures within eukaryotic cells that convert the chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, adenosine triphosphate...

(inherited maternally) that is rare outside South Asia.

47.3% of Romani males carry Y chromosomes of haplogroup H-M82

Haplogroup H (Y-DNA)

In human genetics, Haplogroup H is a Y-chromosome haplogroup.This haplogroup is found at a high frequency in South Asia. It is generally rare outside of the South Asia but is common among the Romani people, particularly the H-M82 subgroup.-Origins:...

which is rare outside of the Indian subcontinent. Mitochondrial haplogroup M

Haplogroup M (mtDNA)

In human mitochondrial genetics, Haplogroup M is a human mitochondrial DNA haplogroup. An enormous haplogroup spanning all the continents, the macro-haplogroup M, like its sibling N, is a descendant of haplogroup L3....

, most common in Indian subjects and rare outside Southern Asia, accounts for nearly 30% of Romani people. A more detailed study of Polish Roma shows this to be of the M5 lineage, which is specific to India. Moreover, a form of the inherited disorder congenital myasthenia

Myasthenia gravis

Myasthenia gravis is an autoimmune neuromuscular disease leading to fluctuating muscle weakness and fatiguability...

is found in Romani subjects. This form of the disorder, caused by the 1267delG mutation, is otherwise only known in subjects of Indian ancestry. This is considered to be the best evidence of the Indian ancestry of the Romanies.

The Romanis have been described as "a conglomerate of genetically isolated founder populations", while a number of common Mendelian disorders among Romanies from all over Europe indicates "a common origin and founder effect". See also this table:

A study from 2001 by Gresham et al. suggests "a limited number of related founders, compatible with a small group of migrants splitting from a distinct caste or tribal group". Also the study pointed out that "genetic drift and different levels and sources of admixture, appear to have played a role in the subsequent differentiation of populations". The same study found that "a single lineage ... found across Romani populations, accounts for almost one-third of Romani males. A similar preservation of a highly resolved male lineage has been reported elsewhere only for Jewish priests". See also the Cohen Modal Haplotype

Y-chromosomal Aaron

Y-chromosomal Aaron is the name given to the hypothesised most recent common ancestor of many of the patrilineal Jewish priestly caste known as Kohanim . In the Torah, this ancestor is identified as Aaron, the brother of Moses...

.

A 2004 study by Morar et al. concluded that the Romani are "a founder population of common origins that has subsequently split into multiple socially divergent and geographically dispersed Gypsy groups". The same study revealed that this population "was founded approximately 32–40 generations ago, with secondary and tertiary founder events occurring approximately 16–25 generations ago".

Other sources

See esp. "Chapter Seven: Laws Against Mixing Races"

Deschamps, Bénédicte, Le racisme anti-italien aux États-Unis (1880–1940), in Exclure au nom de la race (États-Unis, Irlande, Grande-Bretagne), Michel Prum (Éd.). Paris: Syllepse, 2000. 59–81.
Jacobson, Matthew Frye, Whiteness of a different color. European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race, Harvard University Press, 1998.
Novkov, Julie, Racial union: law, intimacy, and the White state in Alabama, 1865–1954, University of Michigan Press, 2008, pp. 125–128.
Tehranian, John, Whitewashed: America's invisible Middle Eastern minority, New York University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-8147-8306-1
Ubeysekara, Ruwan Nisantha, Questioning the Revival: White Ethnicities in the Racial Pentagon, PhD Thesis, University of Bath, 2008.

External links

Explore Famous Interracial Couples and Other Race Relations Issues on the About.com Website.
Perez v. Sharp
Historical Background on Miscegenation

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