The earliest arrival of people in the islands now known as The Bahamas was in the first millennium AD. The first inhabitants of the islands were the Lucayans, an Arawakan language-speaking Taino people, who arrived between about 500 and 800 AD from other islands of the Caribbean.
Recorded history began on 12 October 1492, when Christopher Columbus landed on the island of Guanahani, which he renamed San Salvador Island, on his first voyage to the New World. The earliest permanent European settlement was in 1648 on Eleuthera, settled by the British. During the 18th century slave trade, many purchased African slaves were brought to The Bahamas to work unpaid. Their descendants now constitute 85% of the Bahamian population. The Bahamas gained independence from the United Kingdom on July 10, 1973.
Early history Sometime between 500 and 800 AD, Indigenous people began crossing in dugout canoes from Hispaniola and/or Cuba to the Bahamas. Suggested routes for the earliest migrations have been from Hispaniola to the Caicos Islands, from Hispaniola or eastern Cuba to Great Inagua Island, and from central Cuba to Long Island (in the central Bahamas). William Keegan argues that the most likely route was from Hispaniola or Cuba to Great Inagua. Julian Granberry and Gary Vescelius argue for two migrations, from Hispaniola to the Turks and Caicos Islands, and from Cuba to Great Inagua.Craton:17Granberry and Vescelius:80-86Keegan:48-62
From the initial colonisation(s), the Lucayan expanded throughout the Bahamas in some 800 years (c. 700 – c. 1500), growing to a population of about 40,000. Population density at the time of first European contact was highest in the south-central area of The Bahamas, declining towards the north, reflecting the migration pattern and progressively shorter time of occupation of the northern islands. Known Lucayan settlement sites are confined to the nineteen largest islands in the archipelago, or to smaller cays located less than one km. from those islands. Population density in the southernmost Bahamas remained lower, probably due to the drier climate there (less than 800 mm of rain a year on Great Inagua Island and the Turks and Caicos Islands and only slightly higher on Acklins and Crooked Islands and Mayaguana).Keegan:25, 54-8, 86, 170-3
European exploration
In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain on his first voyage with three ships, the Niña, the Pinta, and the flagship, Santa Maria, seeking a direct route to Asia. On 12 October, Columbus reached an island in the Bahamas and claimed it for Spain, an event long regarded by Europeans as the "discovery" of America. This island was called Guanahani by the Lucayan, and San Salvador by the Spanish. The identity of the first American landfall by Columbus remains controversial, but many authors accept Samuel E. Morison's identification of Columbus' San Salvador as what was later called Watling (or Watling's) Island. Its name has been officially changed to San Salvador. Columbus visited several other islands in the Bahamas before sailing to present-day Cuba and afterwards to Hispaniola.Albury:21-33Craton:28-37Keegan:175-205
The Bahamas held little interest to the Spanish except as a source of slave labor. Nearly the entire population of Lucayan (almost 40,000 people total) were transported to other islands as laborers over the next 30 years. When the Spanish decided to remove the remaining Lucayans to Hispaniola in 1520, they could find only eleven. The islands remained abandoned and depopulated for 130 years afterwards. With no gold to be found, and the population removed, the Spanish effectively abandoned the Bahamas. They retained titular claims to them until the Peace of Paris in 1783, when they ceded them to Britain in exchange for East Florida.Albury:34-7Albury:34-7Craton. pp. 37-39Johnson:3Keegan:212, 220-3
When Europeans first landed on the islands, they reported the Bahamas were lushly forested. Colonists later cleared the land to develop sugarcane plantations. The forests have not regrown and have not been replanted.
For many years, historians believed that the Bahamas was not colonised until the 17th century. However, recent studies show that there may have been attempts of colonisation by groups from Spain, France, Britain, and the Netherlands. In 1565 a group of French Huguenots settled on Abaco and were never heard of again.
Early English settlement
In 1648, a group from Bermuda called "The Company of Adventurers for the Plantation of the Islands of Eleutheria", which was led by William Sayle, sailed to the Bahamas to found a colony. These early settlers were Puritans and republicans. Bermuda was becoming overcrowded, and the Bahamas offered both religious and political freedom and economic opportunity. The larger of the company's two ships, the William, wrecked on the reef at the north end of what is now called Eleuthera Island, with the loss of all provisions.
Despite the arrival of additional settlers, including Europeans, slaves and former African slaves from Bermuda and the receipt of relief supplies from Virginia and New England, the Eleuthera colony struggled for many years, hampered by poor soil, fighting between settlers, and conflict with the Spanish. In the mid-1650s, many of the settlers returned to Bermuda. The remaining settlers founded communities on Harbour Island and Saint George's Cay (Spanish Wells) at the north end of Eleuthera. In 1670 about 20 families lived in the Eleuthera communities.Albury:41-6Johnson:3-4
In 1666 other colonists from Bermuda settled on New Providence, which soon became the centre of population and commerce in the Bahamas, with almost 500 people living on the island by 1670. Unlike the Eleutherians, who were primarily farmers, the first settlers on New Providence made their living from the sea, salvaging (mainly Spanish) wrecks, making salt, and taking fish, turtles, conchs and ambergris. Farmers from Bermuda soon followed the seamen to New Providence, where they found good, plentiful land. Neither the Eleutherian colony nor the settlement on New Providence had any legal standing under English law. In 1670, the Proprietors of Carolina were issued a patent for the Bahamas, but the governors sent by the Proprietors had difficulty imposing their authority on the independent-minded residents of New Providence.Albury:47-51Johnson:4
The early settlers continued to live much as they had in Bermuda, fishing, hunting turtles, whales, and seals, finding ambergris, making salt on the drier islands, cutting the abundant hardwoods of the islands for lumber, dyewood and medicinal bark; and wrecking, or salvaging wrecks. The Bahamas were close to the sailing routes between Europe and the Caribbean, so shipwrecks in the islands were common, and wrecking was the most lucrative occupation available to the Bahamians.Johnson:4-5
Republic of Pirates
The Bahamians soon came into conflict with the Spanish over the salvaging of wrecks. The Bahamian wreckers drove the Spanish away from their wrecked ships, and attacked Spanish salvagers, seizing goods the Spanish had already recovered from the wrecks. When the Spanish raided the Bahamas, the Bahamians in turn commissioned privateers against Spain, even though England and Spain were at peace. In 1684, the Spanish burned the settlements on New Providence and Eleuthera, after which they were largely abandoned. New Providence was settled a second time in 1686 by colonists from Jamaica.
In the 1690s, English privateers (England was then at war with France) made a base in the Bahamas. In 1696 Henry Every (or Avery), using the assumed name Henry Bridgeman, brought his ship Fancy, loaded with pirates' loot, into Nassau harbor. Avery bribed the governor, Nicholas Trott (uncle of the Nicholas Trott who presided at the trial of Stede Bonnet), with gold and silver, and by leaving him the Fancy, still loaded with 50 tons of elephant tusks and 100 barrels of gunpowder. Following peace with France in 1697, many of the privateers became pirates. From this time the pirates increasingly made their base at Nassau, the Bahamian capital, which had been founded in 1670 as Charles Town and rebuilt under its present name in 1695. The governors appointed by the Proprietors usually made a show of suppressing the pirates, but most were accused of dealing with them. By 1701 England was at war with France and Spain. In 1703, and again in 1706, combined French-Spanish fleets attacked and sacked Nassau, after which some settlers left, and the Proprietors gave up on trying to govern the islands.Albury:51-5Craton:70-87Johnson:6Woodard:12-14, 23-24
With no functioning government in the Bahamas, English privateers operated from Nassau as their base, in what has been called a "privateers' republic", which lasted for eleven years. The raiders attacked French and Spanish ships, while French and Spanish forces burned Nassau several times. The War of the Spanish Succession ended in 1714, but some privateers were slow to get the news, or reluctant to accept it, and slipped into piracy. One estimate puts at least 1,000 pirates in the Bahamas in 1713, outnumbering the 200 families of more permanent settlers.Albury:58-68Craton:89-90Woodard:89-90, 140, 160
The "privateers' republic" in Nassau became a "pirates' republic". At least 20 pirate captains used Nassau or other places in the Bahamas as a home port during this period, including Henry Jennings, Edward Teach (Blackbeard), Benjamin Hornigold and Stede Bonnet. Many settler families moved from New Providence to Eleuthera or Abaco to escape harassment from the pirates. On the other hand, residents of Harbor Island were happy to serve as middlemen for the pirates, as merchants from New England and Virginia came there to exchange needed supplies for pirate plunder. Piracy provoked frequent and brutal but ineffective retaliatory attacks by the French and Spanish.
Reasserting British control
Starting in 1713, Woodes Rogers had conceived the idea of leading an expedition to Madagascar to suppress the pirates there and establish it as a British colony. Rogers' friends Richard Steele and Joseph Addison eventually convinced him to tackle the pirates' nest in the Bahamas, instead. Rogers and others formed a company to fund the venture. They persuaded the Proprietors of Carolina to surrender the government of the Bahamas to the king, while retaining title to the land. In 1717 King George appointed Rogers governor of the Bahamas and issued a proclamation granting a pardon to any pirate who surrendered to a British governor within one year.Albury:69-74Craton:93-6Johnson:7-8Woodard:117-121, 163-168
Word of the appointment of a new governor and of the offer of pardons reached Nassau ahead of Rogers and his forces. Some of the pirates were willing to accept a pardon and retire from piracy. Henry Jennings and Christopher Winter, sailed off to find British authorities to confirm their acceptance of the amnesty.
Others were not ready to give up. Many of those were Jacobites, supporters of the House of Stuart, who identified as enemies of the Hanoverian King George. Still others simply identified as rebels, or thought they were better off as pirates than trying to earn an honest living. When a Royal Navy ship brought official word to Nassau of the pardon offer, many pirates planned to accept. Soon, however, the recalcitrant parties gained the upper hand, eventually forcing the Navy ship to leave.Woodard:226-29