Founding of The Bahamas

The Bahamas became independent from the United Kingdom after more than two and a half centuries as a British colony. The islands were first inhabited by the Lucayan people, a branch of the Taino, and it was in the Bahamas that Christopher Columbus made his first landfall in the Americas in 1492. English settlers arrived in the seventeenth century, and the islands became a base for pirates until Woodes Rogers was appointed governor in 1718 and restored order. After the American Revolution, loyalists from the new United States settled there with enslaved people. Lynden Pindling, who led the movement for majority rule, became the first prime minister of the independent Bahamas. The economy has since depended heavily on tourism and offshore banking.

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