The original inhabitants of The Bahamas were the Lucayans, a tribe of the Arawak Indian group, who arrived near the turn of the 9th century. The peaceful Lucayans lived primarily off the sea, fishing and harvesting shellfish, conch, lobster and mollusks. What little remains of their culture is limited to pottery shards, petroglyphs and words such as 'canoe,' 'cannibal,' 'hammock,' 'hurricane' and 'tobacco.' Christopher Columbus planted the Spanish flag on San Salvador upon his first landfall in the Americas in 1492. Three years later, Spanish colonialists established the first settlement in the archipelago, serving as a terminus for Lucayan Indians enslaved by the Spaniards for shipment to Hispaniola. Within 25 years, the entire Lucayan population of 50,000 was gone, and the Spanish eventually abandoned the settlement.

In 1513 the Spaniard Juan Ponce de Leon sailed through the archipelago searching for the fabled Fountain of Youth. Instead he ran into the fast-moving Gulf Stream, which whisked him to Florida and his 'discovery' of North America. Soon Spanish galleons were passing by the reef-encrusted Bahamas laden with treasure, from the empires of Central and South America, bound for Spain. Many foundered, and the waters of the archipelago were littered with wrecks. Tales of treasure lured pirates, and they used the Bahamian islands as hideaways and bases. For the most part, the islands remained unsettled and unclaimed until over a century later, when King Charles I of England granted them to his attorney general.

The English Civil War infected the colonies with religious persecution, and the Puritans of Bermuda were forced to move on. In 1648 some set sail to found a colony of tolerance, and so it was that the Company of Adventurers for the Plantation of the Islands of Eleuthera arrived at today's Abacos. Political rivalries forced a split, and the majority continued south to the island then known as Cigatoo (now Eleuthera), where the ship ran aground and sank. A few survivors set out by rowboat to enlist support and made it to Jamestown, Virginia, whose residents sent provisions to the marooned, who then founded the first independent republic in the New World.

Also during the 17th century, the British Crown sponsored privateers to patrol the waters in and around The Bahamas, enhancing the careers of scores of pirates and making the main settlement of Charles Town buccaneer central. After the town was destroyed by a joint French and Spanish fleet in 1703, the pirates proclaimed a 'Privateer's Republic' without laws or government and Edward Teach - better known as Blackbeard - made himself their magistrate. This state of affairs lasted until 1714, when Britain signed the Treaty of Utrecht, which removed royal patronage and made the pirates outlaws. For the next century, pirates plundered ships of all nations and raided towns and plantations both in the Caribbean and the Carolinas. The crown's appointed governor (himself a former privateer) eventually triumphed over the pirates, proclaiming, in words that became the nation's motto: Expulsis Piratis - Restituta Commercia ('Pirates Expelled - Commerce Restored'). With the pirates went the islands' main source of income, and those who remained had to scrape by through turtle trapping, salt farming and, most importantly, wrecking.

After America's Revolutionary War, English Loyalists began washing up in The Bahamas by the thousands, tripling the population in three years and introducing two things that would profoundly shape the island's future: cotton and slaves. They set up plantations modeled on those in the US, but the land was ill suited and most of the farms failed within a few years. When the Crown outlawed the slave trade in 1807, the Royal Navy began intercepting ships and depositing freed slaves in The Bahamas. Many Loyalists left The Bahamas after emancipation, often bequeathing their lands to their former slaves, who, like the free blacks around them, turned to eking out a meager living from fishing and subsistence farming. Full equality and political rights, however, proved more elusive, for the post-slavery era was marked by the continued rule of an elite minority of whites over an under-represented black majority.

For most of the 19th century, the economy muddled along on subsistence agriculture, fishing, wrecking, smuggling and sponging. But the islands' ticket out of poverty began to materialize in the US in the form of a new class of people with money to spend on health-inducing vacations in balmy climes. By the turn of the century, Florida was booming as a tourist destination and The Bahamas caught the spin-off. The trickle became a flood in 1920 when Prohibition took effect in the US, resurrecting Nassau's proclivity for smuggling overnight. The Bahamas were ideally situated for running illicit liquor into the States aboard speedboats, and the Nassau waterfront soon became a vast rum warehouse. The city poured its profits into construction, and hotels blossomed like mushrooms on a damp log. The islands' first casino attracted gamblers and gangsters and a potpourri of the rich and famous, and lesser party animals lured by the prospect of cheap booze. The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 sent Nassau into another economic downturn, this time worsened by the Depression.

As in the USA, however, war spelled the end of the economic slump. WWII rekindled the tourist industry by bringing thousands of American GIs to the islands for R&R. Wealthy Americans and Canadians seeking a sunny winter retreat began returning to The Bahamas, encouraged by the presence of the islands' new high profile governor and governess, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Formerly King Edward VIII of England, the duke gave the islands a new luster, ensuring that the rich and famous would pour into Nassau in the postwar years. The duke and duchess and their wealthy acquaintances sought to promote tourism as a way of pulling the islands out of the postwar slump, an effort that coincided with the arrival of the jet age and the Cuban Revolution in 1959, which sent Western travelers in search of a new vacation mecca. Concentrating their efforts on Nassau, local leaders expanded the US air base to accommodate international jets, dredged the harbor to lure cruise ships and launched a massive advertising campaign. They also made the country a corporate tax haven, and tourism and finance bloomed together.

The upturn in fortunes coincided with (and perhaps helped spark) the evolution of party politics and festering ethnic tensions, as the white elite reaped vast profits from the development and tourist boom while the black majority remained impoverished. The black-led Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) took power in 1967, bringing the era of white dominance to an end and paving the way to independence. On 10 July 1973, the islands of the Bahamas officially became a new nation, the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, ending 325 years of British rule. The PLP's attempts at reform led to a real-estate slump that put the kibosh on home building by foreigners and stalled the economy. Meanwhile, the party's leadership was mired in corruption - much of it linked to a burgeoning international drug trade. After a US-assisted crackdown on drug trafficking in the 1980s and the election of a pro-business administration in 1992 (returned in a landslide 1997 election), The Bahamas began turning itself around. Unfortunately, in 1999 Hurricane Dennis and Hurricane Floyd walloped the islands, destroying homes, roads, reefs and resorts. By 2001, most of the damage was repaired, and The Bahamas were once again feeling the golden glow of tourism's attentions.

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Summary|History|Culture|Environment
Abacos|Grand Bahama|Nassau