The Bahamas from Slavery to Servitude was another great addition to the chronicle of Bahamian history. Johnson takes his time with the historical period and milks it for the reader to learn more from. I won't say this book is light reading because it's not, but it is informative. The time Johnson spent learning and researching about the topic is impressive. The chapter layouts are really helpful when searching for information about the various topics covered. I enjoyed the fact that Johnson went into the difference between slavery and freedom from the black enslaved people and the type of labour and compensation they had to receive. Learning more about enslaved people who would lease themselves out for self-hire was very interesting; never heard of it before. My favourite chapter was the credit and truck systems. I found that while other authors like Saunders mention the truck system they do not go into enough detail for me. The Bahamas from Slavery to Servitude have wonderful little quotes and interesting comments here and there that I found fascinating like these ones.

"In the Bahamas, however, blacks spoke a vernacular that was closer to the English language, as contemporary observers noted... The writer commented: 'Thus may we justly contrast the Bahamas with the other colonies. Our labourers [are] intelligent-- speaking the English language, and not that a miserable patios.'"

"In the Bahamas, under the share system, tenants remained basically 'permanent hired hands' whose main resource was their labor power."

"The credit and truck systems frequently left the lower classes in debt and, as a governor of the colony in the late nineteenth century remarked, in a position of 'practical slavery.'"

In the Bahamas, as elsewhere in the British West Indies and later in Africa, the black population was regarded as 'working' only when it was engaged in wage labor."

These are just a brief brief look into some of what Johnson talks about and what the book contains.