In the British West Indian islands (and also in the United States), the majority of enslaved blacks brought across the Atlantic came from West Africa (roughly between modern Senegal and Ghana). Very little of Bermuda's original black emigration came from this area. The first blacks to arrive in Bermuda in any numbers were free blacks from Spanish-speaking areas of the West Indies, and most of the remainder were recently enslaved Africans captured from the Spanish and Portuguese. As Spain and Portugal sourced most of their slaves from South-West Africa (the Portuguese through ports in modern-day Angola; the Spanish purchased most of their African slaves from Portuguese traders, and from Arabs whose slave trading was centred in Zanzibar). Genetic studies have consequently shown that the African ancestry of black Bermudians (other than those resulting from recent immigration from the British West Indian islands) is largely from the a band across southern Africa, from Angola to Mozambique, which is similar to what is revealed in Latin America, but distinctly different from the blacks of the West Indies and the United States.

Why is the black population in Bermuda different from that in the British West Indies and the United States?