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The Bahamas, officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the North Atlantic. It takes up 97% of the Lucayan Archipelago's land area and is home to 88% of the archipelago's population. The archipelagic state consists of more than 3,000 islands, cays, and islets in the Atlantic Ocean, and is located north of Cuba and northwest of the island of Hispaniola and the Turks and Caicos Islands, southeast of the U.S. state of Florida, and east of the Florida Keys. The capital is Nassau on the island of New Providence. The Royal Bahamas Defence Force describes The Bahamas' territory as encompassing 470,000 km2 (180,000 sq mi) of ocean space.
Nassau is the capital and largest city of the Bahamas. With a population of 246,329 as of 2010, or just over 70% of the entire population of the Bahamas, Nassau is commonly defined as a primate city, dwarfing all other towns in the country. It is the centre of commerce, education, law, administration, and media of the country.
The earliest arrival of people in the islands now known as The Bahamas was in the first millennium AD. The first inhabitants of the islands were the Lucayans, an Arawakan-speaking Taino people, who arrived between about 500 and 800 AD from other islands of the Caribbean.
James Weldon Johnson was an American writer and civil rights activist. He was married to civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson. Johnson was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he started working in 1917. In 1920, he was chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer. He served in that position from 1920 to 1930. Johnson established his reputation as a writer, and was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novel, and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of black culture. He wrote the lyrics for "Lift Every Voice and Sing", which later became known as the Negro National Anthem, the music being written by his younger brother, composer J. Rosamond Johnson.
Perry Gladstone Christie PC, MP is a Bahamian former politician who served as Prime Minister of the Bahamas from 2002 to 2007 and from 2012 to 2017. He is the second longest-serving Bahamian elected parliamentarian, representing the Centreville constituency from 1977 to 2017. He is also a former athlete. His Progressive Liberal Party is the oldest Bahamian political party, holding solid majorities in the Bahamian Parliament several times in its long history.
John Rosamond Johnson was an American composer and singer during the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Jacksonville, Florida, he had much of his career in New York City. Johnson is noted as the composer of the tune for the hymn "Lift Every Voice and Sing”. It was first performed live by 500 Black American students from the segregated Florida Baptist Academy, Jacksonville, Florida, in 1900. The song was published by Joseph W. Stern & Co., Manhattan, New York.
Afro-Caribbean people or African Caribbean are Caribbean people who trace their full or partial ancestry to sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of the modern African-Caribbeans descend from Africans taken as slaves to colonial Caribbean via the trans-Atlantic slave trade between the 15th and 19th centuries to work primarily on various sugar plantations and in domestic households. Other names for the ethnic group include Black Caribbean, Afro or Black West Indian or Afro or Black Antillean. The term Afro-Caribbean was not coined by Caribbean people themselves but was first used by European Americans in the late 1960s.
Bahamian Americans are an ethnic group of Caribbean Americans of Bahamian ancestry. There are an estimated 56,797 people of Bahamian ancestry living in the US as of 2019.
Bahamian culture is a hybrid of African, European, and other cultures.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in the Bahamas face challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents. While same-sex sexual activity is legal in the Bahamas, there are no laws that address discrimination or harassment on the account of sexual orientation or gender identity, nor does it recognize same sex unions in any form, whether it be marriage or partnerships. Households headed by same-sex couples are also not eligible for any of the same rights given to opposite-sex married couples.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to The Bahamas:
The monarchy of the Bahamas is a system of government in which a hereditary monarch is the sovereign and head of state of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. The current Bahamian monarch and head of state since 8 September 2022, is King Charles III. As sovereign, he is the personal embodiment of the Bahamian Crown. Although the person of the sovereign is equally shared with 14 other independent countries within the Commonwealth of Nations, each country's monarchy is separate and legally distinct. As a result, the current monarch is officially titled King of the Bahamas and, in this capacity, he and other members of the royal family undertake public and private functions domestically and abroad as representatives of the Bahamian state. However, the King is the only member of the Royal Family with any constitutional role.
Frederick Audley Mitchell Jr. is a Bahamian Progressive Liberal Party politician serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs for the third time. He is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Fox Hill, first elected in 2002 and then again in 2021. He also served two terms in the Senate.
Afro-Bahamians are an ethnicity originating in The Bahamas of predominantly or partial African descent. They are descendants of various African ethnic groups, many associated with the Bight of Biafra, Ghana, Songhai and Mali, the various Fula kingdoms, the Oyo Empire, and the Kingdom of Kongo. According to the 2010 Census, 92.7% of The Bahamas' population identifies as Black African descent.
White Bahamians are Bahamian citizens of European ancestry, most of whom trace their ancestry back to England, Scotland and Ireland. Bahamians of European descent are sometimes called "Conchs", a term that is also applied to people of White Bahamian descent in Florida. White Bahamians were a majority in the 18th century, but now constitute less than 5% of the Bahamian population. White Bahamians are largely concentrated in Eleuthera, the Abaco Islands, Long Island, and New Providence.
Ellison Edroy Greenslade QPM is a Bahamian retired police officer who was Commissioner of Police of the Royal Bahamas Police Force, and then became the Bahamas High Commissioner to the Court of St. James's.
Dame Doris Sands Johnson was a Bahamian teacher, suffragette, and politician. She was the first Bahamian woman to contest an election in the Bahamas, the first female Senate appointee, and the first woman granted a leadership role in the Senate. Once in the legislature, she was the first woman to be made a government minister and then was elected as the first woman President of the Senate. She was the first woman to serve as Acting Governor General of the Bahamas, and was honored as Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
Foreign relations exist between the Bahamas and Turkey.
Bahamian nationality law is regulated by the 1973 Constitution of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, as amended; The Bahamas Nationality Act; The Bahamas Immigration Act; and various British Nationality laws. These laws determine who is, or is eligible to be, a national of The Bahamas. Bahamian nationality is typically obtained either on the principle of jus soli, i.e. by birth in The Bahamas; or under the rules of jus sanguinis, i.e. by birth abroad to a father with Bahamian nationality. It can also be granted to persons with an affiliation to the country, or to a permanent resident who has lived in the country for a given period of time through naturalisation. There is currently no program in The Bahamas for citizenship by investment. Nationality establishes one's international identity as a member of a sovereign nation. Though it is not synonymous with citizenship, rights granted under domestic law for domestic purposes, the United Kingdom, and thus the commonwealth, has traditionally used the words interchangeably.
Travis Lamar Robinson is a Bahamian Free National Movement politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Bain and Grants Town from 2017 to 2021. Elected at the age of 22, he became the youngest MP in the history of the Bahamas as well as CARICOM at large.
References
- ↑ "Browse In Civil Rights Activist, Africa and Diaspora Studies, 1775–1800: The American Revolution and Early Republic". Oxford African American Studies Center.
- ↑ McCartney, Donald M. (August 6, 2004). Bahamian Culture and Factors which Impact Upon it: A Compilation of Two Essays. Dorrance Publishing Co., Inc. ISBN 9780805963250 – via Google Books.
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