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The Bahamas

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The Bahamas (/bəˈhɑːməz/ bə-HAH-məz), officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas,[12] is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the North Atlantic. It takes up 97% of the Lucayan Archipelago's land area and is home to 88% of the archipelago's population. The archipelagic state 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.

Quick facts: Commonwealth of The Bahamas, Capitaland large...
Commonwealth of The Bahamas
Motto: "Forward, Upward, Onward, Together"
Anthem: "March On, Bahamaland"
Location of The Bahamas
Capital
and largest city
Nassau
25°04′41″N 77°20′19″W
Official languagesEnglish
Vernacular languageBahamian Creole
Ethnic groups
(2010)
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
Senate
House of Assembly
Independence 
 Realm
10 July 1973[7]
Area
 Total
13,878 km2 (5,358 sq mi) (155th)
 Water (%)
28%
Population
 2022 estimate
400,516 (170th)
 2022 census
399,314[8]
 Density
25.21/km2 (65.3/sq mi) (181st)
GDP (PPP)2023 estimate
 Total
$17.479 billion[9]
 Per capita
$43,913[9]
GDP (nominal)2023 estimate
 Total
$14.114 billion[9]
 Per capita
$35,458[9]
HDI (2019)Increase 0.814[10]
very high · 58th
CurrencyBahamian dollar (BSD) United States dollar (USD)
Time zoneUTC−5 (EST)
 Summer (DST)
UTC−4 (EDT)
Driving sideleft
Calling code+1 242
ISO 3166 codeBS
Internet TLD.bs
  1. ^ Also referred to as Bahamian[11]
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The Bahama Islands were inhabited by the Lucayans, a branch of the Arawakan-speaking Taíno, for many centuries.[13] 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 and enslaved them on Hispaniola, after which the Bahama islands were mostly deserted from 1513 until 1648, nearly all native Bahamians having been forcibly removed for enslavement or having died of diseases that Europeans brought to the islands. In 1649,[14] 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; slavery in the Bahamas was abolished in 1834. Subsequently, The Bahamas became a haven for freed African slaves. 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.[13]

The country gained governmental independence in 1973, led by Sir Lynden O. Pindling. Charles III is currently its monarch.[13] In terms of gross domestic product per capita, The Bahamas is one of the richest countries in the Americas (following the United States and Canada), with an economy based on tourism and offshore finance.[15]