Expanding our perspective on the diversity and consequences of the African Diaspora, Douglas Armstrong explores life in the Virgin Islands for a distinctive black community that gained its freedom from slavery more than 40 years prior to emancipation in 1848.

Armstrong examines its transformation from a group of small cotton and provisioning estates to community-held and family-owned parcels, and he traces spatial and economic shifts over a period of more than 150 years. The author discusses the region's geography and history and also addresses topics such as maritime trade and exchange, gender roles, and community interrelationships. Utilizing information from extensive archaeological excavations at selected households, Armstrong analyzes an array of documents, including deeds, cash books, and census, tax, and harbor records.

Creole Transformation from Slavery to Freedom offers a rare glimpse of how a free Caribbean culture emerged from an 18th-century plantation society. Important to scholars interested in Caribbean peoples and their transformations, this illustrated book also will appeal to scholars of the African Diaspora.