Freedom and Resistance

Abstract

A popular misconception about the American Revolution is that it was largely contained within the continental boundaries of North America. However, the American Revolution neither ended with the cessation of armed conflict in 1781 nor the Treaty of Versailles in 1783; rather it continued and mutated in unusual places, a revolution often carried by those who had the most to lose by being denied the freedom that was promised at the outset of the war. Freedom and Resistance: A Social History of Black Loyalists in the Bahamas studies the struggles for freedom of a group of black loyalists (those enslaved and free blacks loyal to the British causes), who settled in the non-plantation, slave-holding colony of the Bahamas, located on the periphery of the Caribbean region. By focusing on the struggles for freedom that black loyalists experienced in the Bahamas, this book not only aims to recover the social history of black loyalists but seeks to examine the nature of their contributions to Bahamian society. One of the major themes explored in this study is black resistance and political activism. Much of this activism was shaped by the racial discord which erupted in the Bahamas between black and white loyalists in two distinct locales: the previously uninhabited islands of Abaco and the older, more urban center of Nassau, located on the island of New Providence.