
Bahamas History
A Brief History of the Bahamas
Eighty-five percent of the Bahamian population is of African descent. Many
Africans arrived in the Bahama Islands when they were a staging area for the
slave trade in the early 1800's. Others arrived with thousands of British
loyalists who left the American colonies at the time of the Revolutionary
War.
In 1492, Christopher Columbus made his first landfall in the New
World on the island of San Salvador in the eastern Bahamas. After observing
the shallow sea around the islands, he said "baja mar" (low water or sea),
and effectively named the area The Bahamas, or The Islands of the Shallow
Sea.
Non-Arawak people - perhaps from Cuba - lived in The Islands Of The Bahamas
as early as 300 to 400 AD. They were later followed by Lucayan Indians.
Neither group of people left a written history, but what they did leave -
drawings, pottery, tools and bones - gives insight into their daily lives.
There were about 40,000 Lucayans when Columbus arrived, but this population
soon dwindled to nothing after being enslaved.
In 1647, a group of English and Bermudan religious refugees, the
Eleutheran Adventurers, founded the first permanent settlement in the area
and gave Eleuthera Island its name. The islands became a British crown
colony in 1717.
At the time of the American Civil War, The Bahamas prospered as a center of
Confederate blockade-running. After World War I, the area served as a base
for American Prohibition rum runners. During World War II, the Allies
centered training there for the area. Bahamians gained "internal self
-government" in 1964 and full independence within the Commonwealth on
July 10, 1973.
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