Issued to mark the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, which took full legal effect in the Bahamas on August 1, 1838, following the end of the so-called "apprenticeship" period that had delayed complete emancipation after the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. The Bahamas had been a significant slaveholding colony, with loyalist planters relocating there from the American South after the Revolution and bringing enslaved people with them to work cotton plantations on the Out Islands — plantations that largely failed within a generation.
Issued to mark the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, which took full legal effect in the Bahamas on August 1, 1838, following the end of the so-called "apprenticeship" period that had delayed complete emancipation after the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. The Bahamas had been a significant slaveholding colony, with loyalist planters relocating there from the American South after the Revolution and bringing enslaved people with them to work cotton plantations on the Out Islands — plantations that largely failed within a generation.