page_title: Half-caste
section_title: Half-caste in other languages
hierarchical_section_title: Half-caste / Half-caste in other languages
caption_attribution_description: English: Representation of Zambos during the Latin American colonial period. An example of a pintura de castas. The legend reads "9. De negro é india sale lobo / negro 1. india 2. lobo 3." — "9. From male Black and female Amerindian comes a Lobo (a Mexican synonym for Zambo) offspring / Black&#160;1. Amerindian&#160;2. Lobo&#160;3." Español: Representación de Zambo de la época colonial de Latinoamérica. Ejemplo de una "pintura de castas". Pintura de Castas: "De negro e india, sale lobo". ("Lobo" es un sinónimo mexicano de "Zambo").
context_page_description: Half-caste is a term for a category of people of mixed race or ethnicity. It is derived from the term caste, which comes from the Latin castus, meaning pure, and the derivative Portuguese and Spanish casta, meaning race. Terms such as half-caste, caste, quarter-caste and mix-breed were widely used by ethnographers throughout the British Empire to try to classify "the natives", and in Australia used during the pursuit of a policy of assimilation. In Latin America, the equivalent term for half-castes was Cholo and Zambo.
  Today, the word is considered highly offensive in several countries, particularly Australia and the United Kingdom.
context_section_description: The term half-caste was common in British colonies, however not exclusive. Other colonial governments such as Spain devised terms for the mixed-race children. The Spanish colonies devised a complex system of castas, consisting of Mulattoes, Mestizos, and many others. The French colonies used terms such as Métis, while the Portuguese used the term Mestiço. French colonies in the Caribbean referred to half-caste people as Chabine (female) and Chabin (male). Before the American Civil War, the term mestee was common for certain people of mixed descent.
  Other terms in use in colonial era for half-castes included - creole, casco, cafuso, caburet, cattalo, citrange, griffe, half blood, half-bred, half-breed, high yellow, hinny, hybrid, ladino, liger, mamaluco, mixblood, mixed-blood, mongrel, mule, mustee, octoroon, plumcot, quadroon, quintroon, sambo, tangelo, xibaro. The difference between these terms of various European colonies usually was the race, ethnicity or caste of the father and the mother.
  Ann Laura Stoler has published a series of reviews of half-caste people and ethnic intermixing during the colonial era of human history. She states that colonial control was predicated on identifying who was white and who was native, which children could become citizens of the empire while who remained the subjects of the empire, who had hereditary rights of a progeny and who did not. This was debated by colonial administrators, then triggered regulations by the authorities. At the start of colonial empires, mostly males from Europe and then males of indentured laborers from India, China and southeast Asia went on these distant trips; in these early times, intermixing was accepted, approved and encouraged. Over time, differences were emphasised, and the colonial authorities proceeded to restrict, then disapprove and finally forbid sexual relationships between groups of people to maintain so-called purity of blood and limit inheritable rights.
caption: The term half-caste was widely used by colonial administrators in the 19th- and 20th-century British empire. In Spanish colonies, other terms were in use for half-caste people; above painting, for example, shows a Zamba. The caption India in the painting refers to native Indian American woman.
exif: {}