## Introduction  
The purpose of this section of Volume X of the General History of Africa is to trace the formation of African diasporas and outline their characteristics and connections with Africa. The chapters explore the connected histories and the agency of Africans forcibly removed from their homeland. The authors focus on Africans in Africa and other parts of the world and on modern Afrodescendants, considering their cultural and political traditions, as well as the continuity, rupture and transformation thereof.  
Some conceptual questions require an explanation. The concept of diaspora is not restricted to, and does not originate specifically from, the study of people of African descent or a specific period. It is used to refer to the extensive migratory flows of different peoples - be they Asians, Jews, Muslims, Europeans, Africans or Palestinians - that have occurred throughout human history and relates to the formation of diaspora communities. However, diaspora is not synonymous with simple migration (Palmer, 2018, p. 15). Limited in scope, migration is defined as a change in residence across a specified geopolitical boundary, whereas a diasporic flow can be defined as the 'movement of a particular people to several places at once or over time' (Palmer, 2018, p. 216). A diaspora may therefore be the product of various diasporic currents that flow both involuntarily and  
voluntarily. In the case of the African diasporas, different diasporic currents took peoples from different parts of Africa to different parts of the world, and to different regions inside the African continent itself.