Guest Author - Eileen Brown

Fast Facts:

Capital : Nassau
Population : 300,500
Official Language : English
Political Status : Independent nation.
Location: North Atlantic Ocean, 50 miles southeast of Florida.
Area : 5,382 square miles; slightly smaller than Connecticut.
Natural Resources : Salt, aragonite, timber
Land Use: Arable land 0.58%; permanent crops 0.29%; other 99.13%
Climate: Tropical marine, moderated by the Gulf Stream.
Terrain: Long, flat coral formations and some low hills.

History

The first inhabitants of the Bahamas were the Siboney people, who lived there about 7,000 years ago. Sometime later the Arawak -or Lucayan - people migrated from the Amazon region of South America. The Lucayans were a highly organized and prosperous people with distinctive political and social structures. At one time there were as many as 40,000 Lucayan people residing in the Bahama islands, but shortly after their first encounter with Columbus in 1492 they were enslaved and deported to Hispaniola to work in the gold mines, where they eventually perished.

The first colonization by the British occurred in 1649, but the archipelago of the Bahamas' 700 islands and cays and the shallow waters and sandbars along the nearby shipping routes became favorite locations for pirates to ambush and loot trading vessels. By 1700 Nassau was ruled by pirates and they flourished there until 1718 when the British seized the islands once again. But the region remained sparsely populated until an influx of 8,000 American Loyalists and their slaves migrated to the Bahamas in the late 1800's and established cotton plantations there.

The Bahamas gained independence in 1973 and the economy of the islands has flourished, with tourism and financial services the primary industries. Today Bahamians maintain the third highest per capita income in the western hemisphere.