The Bahamas

At the time of Columbus’s landing in 1492, the Bahamas were inhabited by a group of Arawak Indians known as the Lucayans. Over the following decades, the Spanish carried off many of the original inhabitants to serve as slaves on other islands, and the native population was eventually decimated. Europeans did not establish a permanent settlement in the Bahamas until the mid-17th century.

The first permanent European inhabitants in the Bahamas were the British, who settled Eleuthera and New Providence in 1647. During its early years the settlement was repeatedly attacked by the Spanish. The islands were later the stronghold of buccaneers and pirates, notably the infamous Blackbeard. The Bahamas were ruled by the proprietary governors of the British colony of Carolina from 1670 to 1717, when the British crown assumed direct control of civilian and military affairs.

In 1776, during the American Revolution, Nassau was held for a short time by American naval forces. After the revolution the islands became a refuge for American colonists loyal to Britain. Descendants of African slaves imported by the loyalists now account for more than three-quarters of the population. Spain held the islands in 1782 and 1783; they became a British colony in 1787. After slavery was abolished in 1833, both the economy and the population declined. An epidemic of cholera in the middle of the century further reduced the population. Prosperity returned temporarily during the American Civil War (1861-1865), when the islands became a station for Confederate blockade-runners, and again during Prohibition (1920-1933), when rum-runners found them a convenient base. More recently, drug smugglers have used the islands as a base just as the pirates of previous centuries did.

In 1964 Britain granted the Bahamas internal autonomy. Some friction thereafter developed between white- and black-dominated political parties until the black Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) won control of the government in general elections in 1967. Its leader, Lynden O. Pindling, then became prime minister. Independence was achieved on July 10, 1973.

Pindling held power throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but chronic unemployment and allegations of government corruption and drug trafficking eventually eroded his support. In 1992 the Free National Movement won parliamentary elections, and Hubert Ingraham became prime minister. Ingraham and his party were reelected in 1997, but the PLP regained control in 2002 with Perry Christie as prime minister.