History of The Bahamas - Loyalists

Loyalists

During the American War of Independence the Bahamas fell to Spanish forces under General Galvez in 1782. A British-American loyalist expedition led by Colonel Andrew Deveaux, later recaptured the islands. After the American Revolution, the British issued land grants to American Loyalists, and the sparse population of the Bahamas tripled within a few years. Cotton growing soon became established, but it eventually dwindled from insect damage and soil exhaustion. Most of the current inhabitants are descended from the slaves brought to work on the Loyalist plantations, or from liberated Africans set free by the British navy after the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807. Plantation life ended with the British emancipation of slaves in 1834.