This study explores the decisive and seminal decades in the twentieth century in which The Bahamas was transformed from a marginalised, British colony to a modern nation-state. Particular attention is given to party politics and the ideas and ideologies that shaped the modern Bahamas. Additionally, economic policies and budgetary issues will be addressed within the context of political parties attempting to formulate plans for national development and state formation. The broad framework o...

Beginning in the mid-16th century and down through the 18th century, thousands of immigrants of Scots-Irish origin migrated to the Bahamas, which included the Turks and Caicos Islands. The first, and smaller wave of immigrants came via Bermuda in the mid to late 1600s in the wake of the mass migration of pro-Presbyterians from northern Ireland to the Americas seeking refuge from religious persecution. Later, in the 18th century, as a consequence of the American Revolution, thousands of so-...

Blockade running to Nassau provides a review of national and international events in which the small, traditionally poor British colonial outpost in the Bahamas became a pivotal transshipment point for the movement of supplies and commodities between the federal-blockaded confederate states and merchant houses, commodity markets, and shipyards in a technically neutral Great Britain. During the American Civil War (1860–1865), Nassau benefitted significantly from facilitating the brisk inter...