Freedom and Resistance

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. Comparing the experiences of these Bahamians to those of other black loyalist communities in Jamaica and Nova Scotia, Christopher Curry adds a new global dimension to the freedom struggle that spread from the American Revolution.