Freedom and Resistance: A Social History of Black Loyalists in the Bahamas

After the American Revolution, enslaved and free blacks who had been loyal to the British cause arrived in the Bahamas, drawn by British promises of liberty and land. Freedom and Resistance shows how Black Loyalists struggled to find freedom, clashing with white loyalists who tried either to bind them to illegal indentured contracts or to enslave them.

Despite these challenges, Black Loyalists made significant contributions to Bahamian society. They advanced ideas of civil liberty through political activism and armed resistance, built churches and schools that became the foundations of self-reliant black communities, and participated in the emerging market economy.

Christopher Curry highlights the complex ways in which Black Loyalists transplanted and re-inscribed traditions from colonial America into new host societies and in doing so dynamically refashioned their identities and institutions. By comparing the experiences of these Bahamians to those of other Black Loyalist communities in Jamaica and Nova Scotia, he adds a new global dimension to the freedom struggle that spread from the American Revolution.

A volume in the series Contested Boundaries, edited by Gene Allen Smith

Author: Christopher Curry
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Published: 04/25/2017
Pages: 268
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.75d
ISBN: 9780813054476

Review Citation(s):
Choice 11/01/2017

About the Author
Christopher Curry is assistant professor of history at the University of The Bahamas.