Bahamas

The Bahamas is a sovereign state within the Lukayan Islands of the West Indies of the Atlantic Ocean. It occupies 97% of the land area of ​​the Lukayan archipelago and is home to 88% of the archipelago's population. The archipelagic state consists of more than 700 islands, Kay and islands in the Atlantic Ocean, located north of Cuba, northwest of Hispaniola (divided into Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and southeast of Turkey and the Caikos Islands. I am. Florida, USA, and east of the Florida Keys. The capital is Nassau, New Providence Island. The Royal Bahamas Defense Force describes the Bahamas territory as including 470,000 km2 (180,000 square miles) of water.

For centuries, the Bahamas were inhabited by the Lucayan tribe, a branch of the Arawak-speaking Taino tribe. Columbus was the first European to see the island and landed in the "New World" in 1492. The Spaniards then sent the native Lucayan to Hispaniola and enslaved them. After that, the islands of the Bahamas were almost uninhabited from 1513 to 1648. , When British settlers from Bermuda settled on Eleuthera.

The Bahamas became a British crown colony in 1718, when the British cracked down on piracy. After the American Revolutionary War, the Crown reset thousands of American Loyalists to the Bahamas. They took the enslaved people and set up plantations with land subsidies. Since this time, African enslaved people and their descendants have made up the majority of the population. The slave trade was abolished by the British in 1807. Slavery in the Bahamas was abolished in 1834. After that, the Bahamas became a paradise for liberated African slaves. Freed from illegal slave ships, Africans resettled on the island by the British Navy, and North American slaves and Seminoles fled Florida to the Bahamas. The Bahamas were even known to recognize the freedom of enslaved people carried by ships from other countries arriving in the Bahamas. Today, Afro Bahamian makes up 90% of the population of 332,634.

In 1973, the country led by Sir Lynden O. Pindling gained government independence with Queen Elizabeth II as Queen. In terms of GDP per capita, the Bahamas is one of the wealthiest countries in the Americas (following the United States and Canada) and has an economy based on tourism and offshore finance.