A History of the Bahamian People: From the Ending of Slavery to the Twenty-First CenturyThe present work concludes the important and monumental undertaking of Islanders in the Stream: A History of the Bahamian People, creating the most thorough and comprehensive history yet written of a Caribbean country and its people. In the first volume Michael Craton and Gail Saunders traced the developments of a unique archipelagic nation from aboriginal times to the period just before emancipation. This long-awaited second volume offers a description and interpretation of the social developments of the Bahamas in the years from 1830 to the present. Volume Two divides this period into three chronological sections, dealing first with adjustments to emancipation by former masters and former slaves between 1834 and 1900, followed by a study of the slow process of modernization between 1900 and 1973 that combines a systematic study of the stimulus of social change, a candid examination of current problems, and a penetrating but sympathetic analysis of what makes the Bahamas and Bahamians distinctive in the world. This work is an eminent product of the New Social History, intended for Bahamians, others interested in the Bahamas, and scholars alike. It skillfully interweaves generalizations and regional comparisons with particular examples, drawn from travelers' accounts, autobiographies, private letters, and the imaginative reconstruction of official dispatches and newspaper reports. Lavishly illustrated with contemporary photographs and original maps, it stands as a model for forthcoming histories of similar small ex-colonial nations in the region. |
Contents
Transition Not Transformation Apprentices Liberated Africans and the Reconstructed Oligarchy 18341860 | 3 |
Hegemonic Imperatives The Economy Land Tenure Demography and Settlement Patterns 18381900 | 32 |
Capital of a Backwater Colony Nassau and Its Society 18381900 | 74 |
Over the Hill and Far Away The Life and Culture of Bahamian Blacks After Slavery | 101 |
The Margins of a Marginal Colony The Bahamian Out Islands 18381900 | 131 |
Structures Demography and Social and Material Conditions 19001973 | 173 |
New Century Minimal Changes 19001920 | 208 |
Limited Benefits The 1920s and 1930s | 237 |
World War II and Its Aftermath 19391962 | 275 |
Free at Last? A Decade of Radical Changes 19631973 | 316 |
A QuarterCentury of Independence Events Changes and Their Social Effects 19731999 | 365 |
The Conflict of Change and Tradition Demography Economy Material Life and Morality 19731999 | 390 |
The Bahamian Self and Others Achievements History and Mythology in the Creation of a National Identity | 435 |
Notes | 493 |
547 | |