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Location:
Central
America, Caribbean, Bahamas
Category:
Coastal View
Description:
View
of the beach and coast at Rocky Bay
Location Information:
The
Bahamas officially the Commonwealth
of The Bahamas, is an
English-speaking country consisting
of 29 islands, 661 cays, and 2,387
islets (rocks). It is located at the
north-east of the Caribbean Sea in
the Atlantic Ocean north of Cuba,
Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and
Haiti) and the Caribbean Sea,
northwest of the Turks and Caicos
Islands, and southeast of the United
States of America (nearest to the
state of Florida). Its total land
area is almost 14 000 km², with an
estimated population of 330,000. Its
capital is Nassau.
Originally inhabited by Arawakan
Taino people, The Bahamas were the
site of Columbus' first landfall in
the New World in 1492. Although the
Spanish never colonised The Bahamas,
they shipped the native Lucayans (as
the Bahamian Taino settlers referred
to themselves) to slavery in
Hispaniola. The islands were mostly
deserted from 1513 to 1650, when
British colonists from Bermuda
settled on the island of Eleuthera.
The Bahamas became a Crown Colony in
1718 when the British clamped down
on piracy. Following the American
War of Independence, thousands of
pro-British loyalists and enslaved
Africans moved to The Bahamas and
set up a plantation economy. The
slave trade was abolished in the
British Empire in 1807 and many
Africans liberated from slave ships
by the Royal Navy were settled in
The Bahamas during the 19th century.
Slavery itself was abolished in 1834
and the descendants of enslaved and
liberated African form the bulk of
The Bahamas's population today.
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Weather:
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