Flight Andros Flight Arthur's Town, Cat Island Flight Bimini Flight Cape Eleuthera Flight Cat Cay Flight Cat Island Flight Cherokee Sound Flight Chub Cay, Berry Flight Congo Town Flight Crooked Island Flight Deadman's Cay Flight Duncan Town Flight Freeport - Grand Baham Flight George Town Flight Governor's Harbour Flight Grand Bahama Island Flight Great Harbour Cay, Berry Flight Green Turtle Cay Flight Harbour Island Flight Inagua (Matthew Town), Great Inagua Flight Mangrove Cay Flight Marsh Harbour Flight Mastic Point Flight Mayaguana Flight Moss Town (Exuma Flight Nassau Flight Norman's Cay Flight North Eleuthera Flight Paradise Island Flight Pitts Town Flight Powell Point Flight Rock Sound Flight Rum Cay Flight San Andros (Nichols Town) Flight San Salvador Flight South Andros (Congo Town) Flight Spanish Wells Flight Spring Point Flight Staniel Cay Flight Stella Maris, Long Flight The Bight Flight Treasure Cay Flight Walker's Cay, Abaco Flight West End

Flight Bahamas

About Bahamas

The Commonwealth of The Bahamas is a North American, English-speaking country consisting of two thousand cays and seven hundred islands that form an archipelago. It is located in the Atlantic Ocean, southeast of Florida and the United States, north of Cuba, the island of Hispanola and the Caribbean, and northwest of the British overseas territory of the Turks and Caicos Islands.

History

Although the area may have been populated previously, the seafaring Taino people moved into the southern Bahamas around the 7th century from Hispaniola and Cuba. These people came to be known as the Lucayans. There were an estimated 40,000+ Lucayans at the time of Columbus' arrival in 1492.

Christopher Columbus' first landfall in the New World was on an island he named San Salvador (known to the Lucayans as Guanahahani) which may be Samana Cay or present-day San Salvador Island (also known as Watling's Island), in the central part of the Bahamas archipelago. Here, Columbus made contact with the Lucayans and exchanged goods with them.

Bahamian Lucayans were later taken to Hispaniola as slaves; and within two decades, Lucayan societies ceased to exist due to forced labour, warfare, massacre, disease, emigration and intermarriage. After the Lucayan population was eliminated, the Bahamian islands were virtually unoccupied until English settlers led by William Sayle came from Bermuda seeking religious freedom in 1647. The Eleutherian Adventurers established settlements on the island of Eleuthera - the name derives from the Greek word for freedom. They later discovered New Providence and named it Sayle's Island. To survive, the settlers looted passing ships.

In 1670 King Charles II granted the islands to the Lord Proprietors of the Carolinas, who rented the islands from the king with rights of trading, tax, appointing governors, and administering the country. During proprietary rule, the Bahamas became a haven for pirates, including the infamous Blackbeard. To restore orderly government, the Bahamas was made a British crown colony in 1718 under the royal governorship of Woodes Rogers, who cracked down on piracy.

During the American Revolutionary War, the islands were a target for American naval forces under the command of Commodore Ezekial Hopkins. The capital of Nassau on the island of New Providence was occupied by US marines for a fortnight. In 1782, after the British defeat at Yorktown, a Spanish fleet appeared off Nassau, which surrendered without a fight. But the 1783 Treaty of Versailles - which ended the global conflict between Britain, France and Spain - returned the Bahamas to British sovereignty.

After the American Revolution, some 8,000 Loyalists and slaves moved to the Bahamas from New York, Florida and the Carolinas. The Americans established plantations on several out islands and became a political force in the capital. The British went on to abolish the slave trade in 1807, which led to the forced settlement on Bahamian islands of thousands of Africans liberated from slave ships by the Royal Navy. Slavery was finally abolished in the British Empire on August 1, 1834.

Modern political development began after the Second World War. The first political parties were formed in the 1950s and the British made the islands internally self-governing in 1964. In 1973, the Bahamas became fully independent, but retained membership in the Commonwealth of Nations. In 1967, Lynden Pindling became the first black premier of the colony, and in 1968 became prime minister. Another black Bahamian, Sir Milo Butler, was appointed governor-general upon independence.