The Bahamas

"Bahama" and "Bahamas" redirect here. For other uses, see Bahama (disambiguation).

Commonwealth of The Bahamas
Motto: "Forward, Upward, Onward, Together"
Anthem: "March On, Bahamaland"
Royal anthem: "God Save the King"[1]
Capital
and largest city
Nassau
25°04′41″N 77°20′19″W / 25.07806°N 77.33861°W / 25.07806; -77.33861
Official languagesEnglish
Vernacular languageBahamian Creole
Ethnic groups
(2020)
Religion
(2020)[4]
  • 4.5% no religion
  • 1.9% folk religions
  • 0.6% other
Demonym(s)Bahamian
GovernmentUnitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy[5][6]
• Monarch
Charles III
Cynthia A. Pratt
Philip Davis
LegislatureParliament
• Upper house
Senate
• Lower house
House of Assembly
Independence 
from the United Kingdom
• Realm
10 July 1973[7]
Area
• Total
13,943 km2 (5,383 sq mi) (155th)
• Water (%)
28%
Population
• 2023 census
412,628[8]
• Density
25.21/km2 (65.3/sq mi) (181st)
GDP (PPP)2024 estimate
• Total
Increase $18.989 billion[9] (153rd)
• Per capita
Increase $46,524[9] (46th)
GDP (nominal)2024 estimate
• Total
Increase $14.390 billion[9] (146th)
• Per capita
Increase $35,257[9] (29th)
HDI (2022)Increase 0.820[10]
very high (57th)
CurrencyBahamian dollar (BSD)
United States dollar (USD)
Time zoneUTC−5 (EST)
• Summer (DST)
UTC−4 (EDT)
Drives onleft
Calling code+1 242
ISO 3166 codeBS
Internet TLD.bs
  1. ^ Also referred to as Bahamian[11]

The Bahamas (/bəˈhɑːməz/ ⓘ bə-HAH-məz), officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas,[13] is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the Atlantic Ocean. It contains 97% of the Lucayan Archipelago's land area and 88% of its population. The archipelagic country consists of more than 3,000 islands, cays, and islets in the Atlantic Ocean, and is located north of Cuba and northwest of the island of Hispaniola (split between the Dominican Republic and Haiti) and the Turks and Caicos Islands, southeast of the U.S. state of Florida and east of the Florida Keys. The capital is Nassau on the island of New Providence. The Royal Bahamas Defence Force describes the Bahamas' territory as encompassing 470,000 km2 (180,000 sq mi) of ocean space.

The Bahama islands were inhabited by the Arawak and Lucayans, a branch of the Arawakan-speaking Taíno, for many centuries.[14] Christopher Columbus was the first European to see the islands, making his first landfall in the "New World" in 1492 when he landed on the island of San Salvador. Later, the Spanish shipped the native Lucayans to Hispaniola and enslaved them there, after which the Bahama islands were mostly deserted from 1513 until 1648, as nearly all native Bahamians had been forcibly removed for enslavement or had died of diseases which Europeans had brought with them from Europe. In 1649,[15] English colonists from Bermuda, known as the Eleutheran Adventurers, settled on the island of Eleuthera.

The Bahamas became a British crown colony in 1718, when the British clamped down on piracy. After the American Revolutionary War, the Crown resettled thousands of American Loyalists to the Bahamas; they took enslaved people with them and established plantations on land grants. Enslaved Africans and their descendants constituted the majority of the population from this period on. The slave trade was abolished by the British in 1807. Although slavery in the Bahamas was not abolished until 1834, the Bahamas became a haven of manumission for African slaves, from outside the British West Indies, in 1818.[16] Africans liberated from illegal slave ships were resettled on the islands by the Royal Navy, while some North American slaves and Seminoles escaped to the Bahamas from Florida. Bahamians were even known to recognise the freedom of enslaved people carried by the ships of other nations which reached the Bahamas. Today Black Bahamians make up 90% of the population of 400,516.[14]

The country gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1973, led by Sir Lynden O. Pindling. It shares its monarch with the other Commonwealth realms. The Bahamas has the fourteenth-largest gross domestic product per capita in the Americas. Its economy is based on tourism and offshore finance.[17] Though the Bahamas is in the Lucayan Archipelago, and not on the Caribbean Sea, it is often considered part of the wider Caribbean region.[18] The Bahamas is a full member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) but is not part of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy.[19]

  1. ^ "Bahamas, The § Government". The World Factbook (2024 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 10 July 2022. (Archived 2022 edition.)
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference cia.gov was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Bahamas Department of Statistics Archived 9 December 2015 at the Wayback Machine, PDF document retrieved 20 April 2014.
  4. ^ "National Profiles". Archived from the original on 3 June 2023. Retrieved 8 June 2023.
  5. ^ "•General situation and trends". Pan American Health Organization. Archived from the original on 27 April 2014. Retrieved 1 August 2011.
  6. ^ "Mission to Long Island in the Bahamas". Evangelical Association of the Caribbean. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 1 August 2011.
  7. ^ "1973: Bahamas' sun sets on British Empire". BBC News. 9 July 1973. Archived from the original on 18 September 2019. Retrieved 1 May 2009.
  8. ^ "Our World in Data".
  9. ^ a b c d "World Economic Outlook Database, April 2024 Edition. (The Bahamas)". International Monetary Fund. 10 April 2024. Retrieved 15 July 2024.
  10. ^ Nations, United (13 March 2024). Human Development Report 2023-24 (Report). United Nations.
  11. ^ "Bahamas". Ethnologue. Archived from the original on 1 June 2018. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  12. ^ "World Bank Open Data". Retrieved 27 July 2024.
  13. ^ "The Constitution of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 17 February 2023. Retrieved 8 June 2023.
  14. ^ a b "Bahamas, The". The World Factbook (2024 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 21 July 2019. (Archived 2019 edition.)
  15. ^ "History of The Bahamas". Archived from the original on 11 June 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2022.
  16. ^ Cite error: The named reference 1818opinion was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  17. ^ [1] . The World Factbook.
  18. ^ Boswell, Thomas D. (1 July 2009), "2 The Caribbean: A Geographic Preface", Understanding the Contemporary Caribbean, Lynne Rienner Publishers, pp. 19–50 (19), doi:10.1515/9781685856816-004, ISBN 978-1-68585-681-6, retrieved 19 September 2024
  19. ^ "Communique issued at the conclusion of the Fourth Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community, 4–8 July 1983, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago". CARICOM. Archived from the original on 6 August 2015. Retrieved 19 September 2024.