« La ligne de couleur » dans l’histoire de crioulo, criollo et créole

According to primary sources in various languages, the Sp. term criollo and its counterparts Fr. créole and Pt. crioulo (Cape Vert) referred to all persons born in America, except the Indigenous, without being confined to particular characteristics. There exists, however, a widespread belief among scholars that in its original meaning, the word concerned exclusively the white population, especially in the French Caribbean. To resolve this incongruency, the contribution explores particularly the meaning of the term as applied to descendants of white settlers in Spanish America, the French Antilles and Cape Vert during the period between the 16th and the 19th century. What is striking in all these contexts is the discrepancy between the use of so-called racial terms within local communities, on the one hand, and among representatives of European culture, on the other. In all these contexts, the word creole plays a key role in political discourses. It is from a Eurocentric perspective that the term acquired the association with the phenotype (white) and the genealogy (European descent). Drawing on primary sources, we have, however, found out that neither Cape Verdean crioulo, nor Spanish criollo, español and mestizo or Antillean créole were related to physiological features only, they served primarily for cultural identification.