ONE LAND · 7 ATLASES
History of The Bahamas in maps
The Bahamas as it appears in 7 interactive history atlases, from 1750 to 2015: the Bahamas. Each era below lists who ruled the land and when control changed, linked to the dated map that shows it.
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What was The Bahamas before it was The Bahamas? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History atlases — 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 · Industrial Revolution
| Colony or dependency — the opening position |
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
The Bahamas · Age of Revolutions
| Britain & its empire — the opening position |
AGE OF REVOLUTIONS: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
The Bahamas · Haiti and Kenya independence
The Bahamas were a British colony of small islands, settled after 1783 by Loyalist planters from the United States who brought enslaved workers to grow cotton. Lying across the sea lanes north of Saint-Domingue, they received refugees and watched the Windward Passage for ships. Slavery ended with British abolition in 1834, and the islands became independent in 1973.
| Under colonial rule — the opening position | |
| Other states and societies |
HAITI AND KENYA INDEPENDENCE: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
The Bahamas (blockade runners) · American Civil War
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.
| Neighbors & the outside world — the opening position |
AMERICAN CIVIL WAR: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
The Bahamas · WWI
The Bahamas · Cold War
COLD WAR: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
The Bahamas · Feminism and the Tunisian Revolution
| Authoritarian, one-party or colonial rule — the opening position | |
| No reform yet / outside this story |
FEMINISM AND THE TUNISIAN REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
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