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History of The Bahamas: From Colonization to Independence

The Bahamas is an archipelagic state consisting of over 700 islands in the Atlantic Ocean located northeast of Cuba and Hispaniola. It was the site of Columbus' first landfall in the New World in 1492 and was later colonized by the British in the 18th century. The Bahamas gained independence in 1973 but remains within the British Commonwealth with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state. Today, tourism and finance make up the backbone of its economy, which has a high GDP per capita among countries in the Americas.

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Corina Taraș-Lungu
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10 views1 page

History of The Bahamas: From Colonization to Independence

The Bahamas is an archipelagic state consisting of over 700 islands in the Atlantic Ocean located northeast of Cuba and Hispaniola. It was the site of Columbus' first landfall in the New World in 1492 and was later colonized by the British in the 18th century. The Bahamas gained independence in 1973 but remains within the British Commonwealth with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state. Today, tourism and finance make up the backbone of its economy, which has a high GDP per capita among countries in the Americas.

Uploaded by

Corina Taraș-Lungu
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

The Bahamas (/bhmz/ ( listen)), known officially as the Commonwealth of The

Bahamas,[11] is an archipelagic state within the Lucayan Archipelago. It consists of more than
700 islands, cays, and islets in the Atlantic Ocean, and is located north
of Cubaand Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), northwest of the Turks and Caicos
Islands, southeast of the US state of Florida, and east of the Florida Keys. The capital is Nassau on
the island of New Providence. The designation of "the Bahamas" can refer either to the country or
to the larger island chain that it shares with the Turks and Caicos Islands. As stated in the
mandate/manifesto of the Royal Bahamas Defence Force, the Bahamas territory encompasses
470,000 km2 (180,000 sq mi) of ocean space.
The Bahamas is the site of Columbus' first landfall in the New World in 1492. At that time, the
islands were inhabited by the Lucayan, a branch of the Arawakan-speaking Taino people.
Although the Spanish never colonised The Bahamas, they shipped the native Lucayans to slavery
in Hispaniola. The islands were mostly deserted from 1513 until 1648, when English colonists
from Bermudasettled on the island of Eleuthera.
The Bahamas became a British crown colony in 1718, when the British clamped down on piracy.
After the American War of Independence, the Crown resettled thousands of American Loyalists in
the Bahamas; they brought their slaves with them and established plantations on land grants.
Africans constituted the majority of the population from this period. The slave trade was abolished
by the British in 1807; slavery in the Bahamas was abolished in 1834. The Bahamas became a
haven for freed African slaves; the Royal Navy resettled Africans here liberated from illegal slave
ships, American slaves and Seminoles escaped here from Florida, and the government freed
American slaves carried on United States domestic ships that had reached the Bahamas due to
weather. Today, Afro-Bahamians make up nearly 90% of the population.
The Bahamas became an independent Commonwealth realm in 1973, retaining the British
monarch, then and currently Queen Elizabeth II, as its head of state. In terms of gross domestic
product per capita, The Bahamas is one of the richest countries in the Americas (following the
United States and Canada), with an economy based on tourism and finance.[12]

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