History of The Bahamas

Lucayan people, 800 CE–1520 Draft, not yet reviewed

The Lucayan people were the Indigenous people of the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands before the European colonisation of the Americas. Sometime between 500 and 800 CE, Taínos began crossing in dugout canoes from Hispaniola or Cuba to the Bahamas. The Lucayans expanded throughout the Bahamas Islands in some 800 years, growing to a population of about 40,000. Shortly after contact, the Spanish kidnapped and enslaved Lucayans, and the displacement ended in the complete eradication of the Lucayan people from the Bahamas by 1520.

Seat of power: Lucayan Archipelago

Republic of Pirates, 1706–1718 Draft, not yet reviewed

The Flying Gang was an 18th-century group of pirates who established themselves in Nassau, New Providence, the Bahamas after the War of the Spanish Succession and the sinking of the Spanish 1715 Treasure Fleet. It was not a republic in a formal sense, but it was governed by an informal pirate code. The Governor of Bermuda stated that there were over 1,000 pirates in Nassau at that time and that they outnumbered the mere hundred inhabitants in the town. Woodes Rogers reached Nassau in 1718 and restored British control.

Seat of power: Nassau

Commonwealth of the Bahamas, 1718 to today Draft, not yet reviewed

The Bahamas became a crown colony of the Kingdom of Great Britain 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 slaves with them and established plantations on land grants. The slave trade was abolished by the British in 1807, but slavery in the Bahamas was not abolished until 1834. The Bahamas became an independent Commonwealth realm separate from the United Kingdom in 1973.

Seat of power: Nassau

Rulers

• George Phenney, Governor of the Bahamas, 1721–1728
• John Tinker, Governor of the Bahamas, 1741–1758
• William Shirley, Governor of the Bahamas, 1760–1768
• Sir Thomas Shirley, 1st Baronet, Governor of the Bahamas, 1768–1774
• John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, Governor of the Bahamas, 1787–1796
• Charles Cameron, Governor of the Bahamas, 1804–1820
• Lewis Grant, Governor of the Bahamas, 1821–1829
• Francis Cockburn, Governor of the Bahamas, 1837–1844
• William Robinson, Governor of the Bahamas, 1874–1880
• Ambrose Shea, Governor of the Bahamas, 1887–1895
• Gilbert Thomas Carter, Governor of the Bahamas, 1898–1904
• William Grey-Wilson, Governor of the Bahamas, 1904–1912
• William Allardyce, Governor of the Bahamas, 1914–1920
• Elizabeth II, monarch of the Bahamas, 1973–2022
• Charles III, monarch of the Bahamas, 2022 to today