Includes bibliographical references and index.

The Bahamas in the post-emancipation period -- Bahamian society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: class, race, and ethnicity -- Gradual changes in the Bahamas, 1880-1914 -- World War I and prohibition -- The 1930s and the depression: tourism and restlessness -- World War II and the 1942 Nassau riot -- The formative years, 1950-1958: political organization, race, and protest -- The 1958 general strike and its aftermath -- Confronting a divided society.

Saunders shows that, although the Bahamas had class tensions in common with other British colonial lands, Bahamian racial tensions were not necessarily parallel to those across the West Indies so much as they mirrored those occurring in the U.S., with power and/or money consolidated in the hands of the white minority. She examines the nature of the Bahamian race and class relations and interactions between dominant groups--from whites, to people who identified as creole or mixed race, to liberated Africans--between the 1880s and the early 1960s.

Description based on print version record.