Bahamas ((top))

– Ask any traveler to close their eyes and picture The Bahamas, and they will likely summon the same postcard: a kaleidoscope of electric blue water, a fluted cocktail glass, a pink sand beach, and a swimming pig.

That observation was a death sentence. Within 30 years, the entire Lucayan population—estimates range from 30,000 to 50,000—was gone. They were not killed primarily by war, but by enslavement. The Spanish, needing labor for their gold mines in Hispaniola, swept through the Bahamas in slaving raids. The shock of capture, the brutality of the voyage, and exposure to Old World diseases like smallpox and measles to which they had no immunity obliterated them. By 1540, the Bahamas were empty, a ghost archipelago haunted by the crumbling bohíos of a vanished people. Bahamas

A constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy. King Charles III is the Head of State, represented by a Governor-General. Independence: – Ask any traveler to close their eyes

: It consists of over 700 islands and thousands of cays, though only about 30 are inhabited. They were not killed primarily by war, but by enslavement