Bahamas historical timeline

Origins

The Lucayans, a Taino people, lived across these islands when Christopher Columbus made his first American landfall on one of them in 1492. Within about twenty-five years the Spanish had shipped the entire population to the mines and pearl beds of Hispaniola and beyond, and the archipelago was left empty. It stayed that way until English settlers from Bermuda — the Eleutheran Adventurers — arrived in 1648 looking for religious freedom and found very poor soil.

Turning points

Thin land and a thousand islands made wrecking, privateering and piracy the obvious trades. For a decade or so after 1706 Nassau functioned as a pirate republic with no government at all, until Woodes Rogers arrived as governor in 1718 to end it. American Loyalists fleeing the revolution after 1783 brought enslaved people and tried cotton, which failed within a generation; slavery was abolished in 1834. Prosperity afterwards came in sharp bursts tied to other countries’ troubles: blockade running for the Confederacy in the 1860s, and rum running during American Prohibition in the 1920s. Tourism and offshore banking took over in the 1950s, majority rule came in 1967, and independence on 10 July 1973.

Influential people

Woodes Rogers, whose motto for the colony — pirates expelled, commerce restored — is still on the coat of arms. Sir Lynden Pindling, who led the country to majority rule and independence and is called the Father of the Nation. Sir Milo Butler, the first Bahamian governor-general. And Sidney Poitier, raised on Cat Island, the first Black man to win the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Cultural evolution

Junkanoo is the centre of it: a masquerade parade on Boxing Day and New Year’s morning in which organised groups compete with crepe-paper costumes, goatskin drums, cowbells and brass, rushing through Nassau from the small hours until after dawn. It descends from the brief holidays allowed to enslaved people, and the rehearsal and construction run most of the year. Rake-and-scrape music, made with a saw and a screwdriver, and the folk medicine and belief called obeah belong to the same inheritance.

Present-day significance

Tourism accounts for roughly half the economy and financial services for much of the rest, the latter under steady international pressure over transparency. The islands are low and flat, which makes them among the most exposed places on earth to what is coming: Hurricane Dorian stalled over Abaco and Grand Bahama in 2019 as a category five storm and did damage those islands are still recovering from.