Publisher's Synopsis
Astride the northern portals of the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, the Bahama Islands were of significant, if literally marginal, importance during the colonial era, from their ""discovery"" by Columbus in 1492 to their independence from Great Britain in 1973. Yet the archipelago was for so long in the imperial shadow that the record of its peoples - Amerindians, white settlers, black slaves, and their descendants - has been hitherto set mainly in the context of the islands' and islanders' compliance with and usefulness to Britain, Spain, and the United States. Addressing this anomaly, ""Islanders in the Stream"" is a comprehensive chronicle of the Bahamian people. In addition to telling the full history of all the people who have ever inhabited the archipelago. ""Islanders in the Stream"" also describes and explains the evolution of a Bahamian national identity within the comparative framework of neighbouring territories in similar circumstances. Despite its topical emphasis on social relationships and continuities, the book's structure is in the tradition of the chronological narrative. In their approach, however, the authors have eschewed the conventional emphasis on political and economic elites in favour of a more inclusive, integrative, cliometric methodology. The present volume, the first of two, ranges from aboriginal times to 1838. Consisting of three parts, it includes a generous array of maps and tables, figures and illustrations. The first part covers the period 500-1525 and includes accounts of Columbus' first landfall in the New world on San Salvador island, his voyage through the Bahamas, and the disastrous collision of European and native Arawak cultures that soon followed. Covering the islands' initial settlement, the second section ranges from 1647 to 1784 - from the first toeholds of the Spanish, French, and British through the lawless era of pirate rule to Britain's dominance of the islands' colonial enterprises. The third, and largest, section offers a full analysis of Bahamian slave society from 1784 to 1838, highlighting the great influx of British Loyalists and their slaves at the end of the American Revolution and the official end of slavery in 1834. Published to coincide with the quincentennial celebration of Columbus' arrival in the New World, this first volume of ""Islanders in the Stream"" aims not only to mitigate the Eurocentric bias of most of the islands' histories but may also initiate a major reinterpretation of the rich Caribbean past.
