BAHAMAS, THE

officially Commonwealth of the Bahamas, archipelago and state on the northwestern edge of the West Indies. The group occupies an irregular submarine tableland that rises out of the Atlantic depths and is separated from nearby lands to the south and west by deepwater channels. Lying to the north of Cuba and Hispaniola, the archipelago comprises nearly 700 islands and cays, only about 30 of which are inhabited, and more than 2,000 low, barren rock formations. It stretches more than 500 miles (800 kilometres) southeasterly from Grand Bahama Island, which lies about 60 miles off the southeastern coast of Florida, to Great Inagua Island, some 50 miles from the eastern tip of Cuba. The total land area is 5,382 square miles (13,939 square kilometres). The name comes from the Spanish bajamar, meaning shallow water. Formerly a British colony, in 1973 The Bahamas became an independent nation within the Commonwealth. The capital city, Nassau, is located on the small (80 square miles) but important New Providence Island. Other islands, known collectively as the Family (or Out) Islands, include Grand Bahama (530 square miles), which contains the major settlements of Freeport and West End; Andros (2,300 square miles), the largest island; Great Abaco (372 square miles); and Eleuthera, site of one of the early attempts at colonization. In spite of the concentration of the population in urban centres (especially Nassau and Freeport) devoted to tourism, the traditional pattern of small farming and fishing prevails in many villages, notably in the southeastern islands. The strategic position of the Bahama Islands, which lie at the geographic centre of the New World landmass, commanding the gateway to the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, and the entire Central American region, has given the history of the islands a unique and often striking character. It was there that Christopher Columbus made his original landfall in the Americas. The subsequent fate of the peaceful original inhabitants remains one of the more tragic episodes in the development of the entire region, while the early attempts at European-dominated settlement were marked by intense national rivalries, interspersed with long periods of lawlessness and piracy. As a result, the society and culture that has evolved in The Bahamas is a distinctive blend of European and African heritages, the latter a legacy of the slave trade. The islands, lacking natural resources other than their magnificent climate and dazzling beaches, have become heavily dependent on the income generated by the extensive tourist facilities that have been developed, often as a result of the injection of foreign capital. The continued popularity of the islands, largely with North American tourists, has maintained a relatively high standard of living among the population, most of whom are black. officially Commonwealth of the Bahamas archipelago and state on the northwestern edge of the West Indies, consisting of about 700 islands and cays and more than 2,000 low, barren rock formations, located off the southeastern coast of Florida, U.S. The archipelago is spread across the Tropic of Cancer and about 90,000 square miles (233,000 square km) of ocean in the western Atlantic. Andros (104 miles long and 40 miles wide [167 km long and 64 km wide]) is the largest of the islands. The capital is Nassau on New Providencethe most important island. Area 5,382 square miles (13,939 square km). Pop. (1993 est.) 266,000. Additional reading Geographic information is available in Gail Saunders, The Bahamas: A Family of Islands (1988), a general guidebook; Mary Moseley, The Bahamas Handbook (1926), a classic study of landscape, flora, fauna, history, economy, and tourism that covers the islands from Grand Bahama to Grand Turk; Michael Craton, Sun 'n Sixpence: A Guide to Nassau and the Bahama Out Islands (1964), a descriptive handbook; and Michael Halkitis, Karen Rigg, and Steven Smith, The Climate of the Bahamas (1980), including an examination of Grand Turk. Nathaniel Lord Britton and Charles Frederick Millspaugh, The Bahama Flora (1962), provides an examination of the botanical species on the islands from Grand Bahama to Grand Turk. Historic architecture is discussed in Gail Saunders and Donald Cartwright, Historic Nassau (1979). Works on the Family Islands include Steve Dodge, Abaco: The History of an Out Island and Its Cays (1983); and Margery O. Erickson, Great Inagua (1987).The most comprehensive general history is Michael Craton, A History of the Bahamas, 3rd ed. (1986). Paul Albury, The Story of the Bahamas (1975), expands on the growth of tourism, political parties, and nationalism and gives special attention to the Family Islands, and his Paradise Island Story (1984) is also useful. The loyalists and the slavery period are examined in Gail Saunders, Bahamian Loyalists and Their Slaves (1983), and Slavery in the Bahamas, 16481838 (1985). Political histories include Randol Fawkes, The Faith that Moved the Mountain (1979); Doris L. Johnson, The Quiet Revolution in the Bahamas (1972); and Colin A. Hughes, Race and Politics in the Bahamas (1981). History It is widely held that on Oct. 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus first landed on an island called by its native inhabitants Guanahani, which he renamed San Salvador. Its actual identity is still in dispute, but some scholars believe it is the place known today as Watling Island, while some others claim the first landfall to have been at Samana Cay, or Cat Island. Columbus explored the island and others nearby and then sailed to Cuba and Hispaniola. The natives of the Bahamas, whom Columbus called Lucayans, were Arawak Indians. They also inhabited the Greater Antilles and were peaceful. Between 1492 and 1508, Spanish raiders carried off about 40,000 natives to work in the mines of Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and the islands remained depopulated more than a century before the first English settlement took place. Although Columbus took formal possession of the islands with pomp and ceremony in the name of Spain, and under the Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal in 1494 the islands were held to come within the Spanish sphere, the Spanish made little attempt to settle them. British colonization British interest began in 1629 when Charles I granted Sir Robert Heath, attorney general of England, territories in America including Bahama and all other Isles and Islands lying southerly there or neare upon the foresayd continent. Heath made no effort to settle the Bahamas. In the 1640s Bermuda was troubled by religious disputes. In 1647 Captain William Sayle, who had twice been governor of Bermuda, took the leadership of an enterprise to seek an island upon which dissidents could worship as they pleased. In July of that year the Company of Eleutherian Adventurers was formed in London for the Plantation of the Islands of Eleutheria, formerly called Buhama in America, and the Adjacent Islands. Sayle and about 70 prospective settlers, consisting of Bermuda Independents and some persons who had come from England, sailed from Bermuda for the Bahamas some time before October 1648. The place of their landing is uncertain, but modern belief is that they settled on Eleuthera, then known as Cigatoo. They had envisioned establishing a flourishing plantation colony, but unproductive soil, internal discord, and Spanish interference dashed their hopes. Some of the settlers, including Sayle, returned to Bermuda. New Providence was first settled in 1656 by a new group of Bermudans. In 1663 South Carolina was granted by Charles II to eight of his friends as lords proprietors, and they appointed Sayle as the first governor. Both Sayle and certain of those who had interested themselves in the settlement of New Providence independently drew the attention of the lords proprietors to the possibilities of the Bahama Islands, and in consequence the Duke of Albemarle and five others acquired a grant of the islands from Charles II in 1670, and they accepted nominal responsibility for the civil government. New Providence, with the largest population, became the seat of government. The proprietors did not take a very active interest in the settlement or development of the islands, however, and they soon became a haven for pirates, whose depredations against Spanish ships provoked frequent and savage retaliatory raids. In 1671 they appointed John Wentworth as the first governor. Although elaborate instructions for the government of the colony were issued and a parliamentary system of government was instituted, the lot of both governors and settlers was far from easy. New Providence was often overrun by the Spaniards alone or in combination with the French, while any governor attempting to institute a semblance of law and order received short shrift from the settlers, who had found piracy the most lucrative profession. In 1684 the king himself intervened and required that a law be passed against the pirates, but apparently it had little effect. Early in the 18th century, official representations were being made for direct crown control. The lords proprietors surrendered the civil and military government to the king in 1717 and leased the islands to Captain Woodes Rogers, whom the king commissioned as the first royal governor and charged with the responsibility of exterminating pirates and establishing more stable conditions. When he arrived in 1718, armed with a disciplined troop of soldiers, about 1,000 pirates surrendered and received the king's pardon, while eight of the unrepentant were hanged. His measures were so effective that in 1728 the colony was able to adopt the motto, Expulsis piratis restituta commercia. In 1660 the present site of the capital was known as Charles Towne in honour of Charles II, but these early settlers saw fit to change the name to Nassau when William and Mary came to the throne; the German region Nassau was a holding of William's family. With the restoration of order following the establishment of the royal government, the settlers demanded an assembly. In 1729 Woodes Rogers, acting under authority from the crown, issued a proclamation summoning a representative assembly and from then on, apart from the brief interruptions caused by foreign invasion, the government of the colony carried on in an orderly manner. In 1776 Nassau was captured by the U.S. Navy, which was seeking supplies during the Revolutionary War; they evacuated after a few days. In May 1782 the colony surrendered to Spain and, though it was restored to Britain by the Peace of Versailles in January 1783, it was brilliantly recaptured in April by Colonel Andrew Devaux, a loyalist commander, before news of the treaty had been received. On the conclusion of the American Revolution many loyalists emigrated from the United States to the Bahamas under very favourable terms offered by the crown. Among the newcomers was Lord Dunmore, formerly governor of New York and of Virginia, who served as governor of the Bahamas from 1786 to 1797. The loyalists fled with their slaves to the islands, doubling the white population and trebling the black. The cotton plantations that they developed yielded well for a few years, but exhausted soil, insect pests, and, finally, abolition of slavery led to their ultimate collapse. In 1787 the proprietors surrendered their remaining rights for 12,000. Early 19th-century efforts of the assembly to thwart the attempts of the executive to ameliorate the conditions of the slaves continued until the United Kingdom Abolition Act came into force in the colony on Aug. 1, 1834; full emancipation came in 1838. A legislative council was created by royal letters patent in 1841. Considerable wealth poured into the islands as the result of blockade-running during the American Civil War and the handling of liquor during Prohibition in the 1920s in the United States. This activity made no lasting contribution to the islands, however, nor did it establish any firm economic base. Before and after these periods, many attempts were made to grow pineapples, citrus fruits, tobacco, tomatoes, and sisal for export, but despite initial promise, all failed. Sponge fishing also collapsed in 1938. After World War II, strenuous efforts to establish tourism as the basis of the economy were strikingly successful, transforming the economic and social structure of the islands.