"Baha mar," in Spanish, means "shallow sea" and was chosen by Christopher Columbus and his crew to describe the Bahama Banks' shallow waters. The full name today is the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.
History
Previously populated by the Lucayan people, the Bahamas was settled by English religious refugees in the seventeenth century. After becoming a British colony in 1717, the islands adopted English as the language of all official proceedings, a legacy which continues to this day, as it is virtually the only language spoken. A wide variety of people have made the Bahamas their home throughout history, including other island populations, English settlers, United States southerners, and most notably, thousands of slaves from African countries. The islands gained their freedom peacefully from the British Empire in 1973 and remain a royal Commonwealth. The 1990s saw the explosion of the tourism industry, which had been building for a century but finally became the international phenomenon it is today with the opening of mega resorts like Atlantis. In recent history, the Bahamas has faced hurricanes and the arrival of Haitian immigrants, who are often treated with prejudice; their Haitian Creole language is not valued as a national dialect.
Geography
Located in the Caribbean, the Bahamas is a chain of 700 islands off the coasts of Florida and Cuba. Thirty of the islands are inhabited. The climate is tropical marine, made warm by the Gulf Stream. Altogether, the islands are about the same size as Connecticut, but they span 10,000 miles of ocean.
Population
As of July 2018, the population of the Bahamas was 332,634. The breakdown is 90.6 percent black, 4.7 percent white, 2.1 percent black and white, 1.9 percent other, and 0.7 percent unspecified. Two-thirds of the population live on New Providence Island; 83 percent of the population is urbanized.
Government
The capital city is Nassau, located on New Providence Island. The current constitution was adopted on June 20th, 1973, after independence from Britain was achieved. The Bahamas has a common law system, based on England's, with three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. The executive branch includes England's monarch (represented by a Governor General), a prime minister, and a cabinet; legislative, the Senate and the House of Assembly, each with five-year terms; judicial, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court as the highest courts (Culture Grams, 2010). Political parties include the Democratic National Alliance, the Free National Movement, and the Progressive Liberal Party. Suffrage is universal, starting at age eighteen, and citizenship is by descent and not birth: if at least one parent is a citizen, the child will also be a citizen.
Economy
The Bahamas possesses the second-highest gross domestic product of all English-speaking Caribbean countries. Tourism accounts for 50 percent of this GDP and employs half of the labor force. Agriculture and manufacturing account for just seven percent of the GDP. 2017 saw a rise in the country's debt after hurricane damage warranted the need for reconstruction and relief. Interestingly, the Bahamas is the only nation in the Western Hemisphere that is not a part of the World Trade Organization. It is the wealthiest Caribbean country and the third wealthiest nation in all of the Americas.
Religion
The nation is 69.9 percent Protestant, 12 percent Roman Catholic, 13 percent other Christian, 2.6 unspecified, 1.9 percent no religion, and 0.6 other. Religious freedom is protected under the Constitution, but members of the government are required to possess and exhibit Christian values. The state often discusses issues with a group of influential Christian leaders called the Bahamas Christian Council. Christianity is taught in most schools; however, parents have the right to keep their children out of religious classes (U.S. Department of State, 2012).
Education
The Bahamas has seen dramatic growth in its quality of education in the past half-century. The Bahamas Union of Teachers inspired massive change beginning in the 1960s. Today, free education is guaranteed for all students age five through sixteen under the Education Act of 1996. Three-quarters of children attend public schools. There are four required national examinations after grades three, six, nine, and twelve. Most recently, millions of dollars have been spent in efforts to bring technology into the classroom; teachers are now put through training programs; and special education is being introduced for students who learn at different paces (Ministry of Finance, n.d.). In 2014, a new National High School Diploma that established standards of civic duty, community service, good attendance, and employment readiness was put in place. The premier institution of higher education is the University of the Bahamas (Chambers, 2018).
This interesting video describes the high school diploma awarded in the Bahamas since 2014, which requires much more than a diploma in the United States (Bahfari Films Inc., 2018).
Languages
The official language of the Bahamas is English. Due to the country's rich cultural history, the people speak a hybrid dialect called Bahamian English. There is a small percentage of Haitian Creole speakers--immigrants from Haiti--and this language is a unique blend of French and various African languages. American Sign Language is also used (Culture Grams, 2010), (Editorial Team, p. 651, 2006), (Ethnologue, n.d.)