MAPS OF HISTORY · HISTORY OF · The Bahamas
ONE LAND · 4 ATLASES
The Bahamas, on the map of history
What was The Bahamas before it was The Bahamas? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History collection — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.
The Bahamas · The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848
| APR 1775 | Britain & its empire — the opening position |
OPEN THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONS ON THE LIVING MAP →
The Bahamas (blockade runners) · The American Civil War, 1861–1865
Nassau boomed as nowhere else on this map: the transshipment hub where British steamers met grey-painted blockade runners, swapping Enfield rifles, medicine and salt for cotton at twenty times peacetime freight rates. Fortunes were made in eighteen months; yellow fever and the 1865 collapse followed. The Bahamas are the war’s economics in miniature — the blockade never sealed the coast, it simply made every cargo cost the Confederacy a fortune it did not have.
| APR 1861 | Neighbors & the outside world — the opening position |
OPEN THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR ON THE LIVING MAP →
The Bahamas · The Great War, 1914–1918
The Bahamas · The Cold War, 1945–1991
OPEN THE COLD WAR ON THE LIVING MAP →
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