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The term free people of color (French: ''gens de couleur libres''), in the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, at first specifically referred to persons of mixed African and European descent who were not enslaved. The term was especially used in the French colonies, including ''La Louisiane'' and settlements on Caribbean islands, such as Saint-Domingue, Guadeloupe, and Martinique. Freed African slaves were included in the term ''affranchis,'' but historically they were considered as distinct from the free people of color. In these territories and major cities, particularly New Orleans, and those cities held by the Spanish, a substantial third class of primarily mixed-race, free people developed. These colonial societies classified mixed-race people in a variety of ways, generally related to visible features and to the proportion of African ancestry. Racial classifications were numerous in Latin America. In the Thirteen Colonies settled by the British, and later in the United States, the term free negro was often used to cover the same class of people – those who were legally free and visibly of ethnic African descent. It included persons of mixed race as well as freed African slaves. ==History== Free people of color played an important role in the history of New Orleans and the southern area of La Louisiane, both when the area was controlled by the French and Spanish, and after acquisition by the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase. They were also important in forming an educated class of people of color in French colonies of the Caribbean islands. When French settlers and traders first arrived in these colonies, the men frequently took Native American women as their concubines or common-law wives. When African slaves were imported to the colony, the colonists took African women as concubines or wives. In the period of French and Spanish rule, men tended to marry later after becoming financially established. As the German Coast colony grew and more white women arrived from France and Germany, some French men or ethnic French Creoles still took mixed-race women as mistresses, known as ''placées,'' before they officially married. The free people of color developed formal arrangements for ''placées'', which the young women's mothers negotiated. Under the system of ''plaçage,'' often the mothers negotiated a kind of dowry or property transfer to their daughters, including freedom for them and their children, and education for the children. The French Creole men often paid for education of their "natural" (illegitimate) mixed-race children from these relationships, especially if they were sons, generally sending them to France to be educated. Over time, free people of color developed as a separate class between the colonial French and Spanish and the mass of enslaved black African workers. They often achieved education and some measure of wealth; they spoke French and practiced Catholicism, although they also developed a syncretic Christianity. At one time the center of their residential community in New Orleans was the French Quarter. Many were artisans who owned property and their own businesses. They formed a social category distinct from both whites and slaves, and maintained their own society into the period after United States annexation.〔("French Speaking ‘Hommes de Couleur Libre’ Left Indelible Mark on the Culture and Development of the French Quarter" ), FrenchQuarter.com. Retrieved 10 May 2008.〕 Free people of color were also an important part of the history of the Caribbean during the period of slavery and afterward. Initially descendants of French men and African slaves, and often marrying within their own mixed-race community, some achieved wealth and power. Free people of color were leaders in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which achieved independence in 1804 as the Republic of Haiti. In Saint-Domingue, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and other French Caribbean colonies before slavery was abolished, the free people of color were known as ''gens de couleur libres'', and ''affranchis''. Comparable groups became an important part of the populations of British Jamaica, the Spanish Captaincy General of Santo Domingo, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Portuguese Brazil. Some historians suggest that free people of color made New Orleans the cradle of the civil rights movement in the United States, due to the earliest efforts of Louisiana Creoles to integrate the military ''en masse''. William C. C. Claiborne, appointed by Thomas Jefferson as governor of the Territory of Orleans, formally accepted delivery of the French colony on 20 December 1803. Free men of color had been members of the militia for decades during both Spanish and French rule of the colony of Louisiana. They volunteered their services and pledged their loyalty to Claiborne and to their newly adopted country. In early 1804, the new U.S. administration in New Orleans under Governor Claiborne was faced with a dilemma previously unknown in the United States, the integration of the military by incorporating entire units of established "colored" militia. See, e.g., the 20 February 1804 letter to Claiborne from Secretary of War Henry Dearborn, which states that "it would be prudent not to increase the Corps, but to diminish, if it could be done without giving offense." A decade later during the War of 1812, the militia of free men of color volunteered to defend their city and country at the Battle of New Orleans, when the British began landing troops on American soil outside the city in December 1814. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「free people of color」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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