Bahamas

The Bahamas, officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an archipelagic country in the Lucayan Archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, comprising 700 islands and more than 2,500 cays north of Cuba, northwest of Hispaniola and southeast of Florida, with a land area of roughly 13,880 square kilometers. Nassau, on New Providence, is the capital and largest city of a country whose 2022 census recorded 398,165 residents, about 90 percent Black Bahamian. Indigenous Lucayans inhabited the islands before Columbus arrived in 1492; English colonists settled in 1648 to 1649, and Britain established crown colony status in 1718, with the Bahamas achieving independence on 10 July 1973 as a Commonwealth realm separate from the United Kingdom. The Bahamas is a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with King Charles III as monarch, represented locally by a governor-general, Prime Minister Philip Davis heading the government, and a bicameral Parliament of a Senate and House of Assembly; its economy depends primarily on tourism and offshore finance, with a 2024 nominal GDP of about 14.4 billion dollars.