The first inhabitants of the archipelagic country came from mainland South America circa AD 500. The South America’s north eastern coast was then inhabited by Lucayans, the Arawakan speaking people who then migrated to modern day Bahamas. Historians suggest that the earliest migration happened during 500 and 800 AD from eastern Cuba to the Long Island (Central Bahamas).

Considered as the first colonization, the Lucayans expanded throughout the Bahamas from 500 AD to circa 1500 AD growing to a population of around 40,000. It was in 1492 that Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain on his first voyage in search of a direct route to Asia. En route, on 12 October 1492 he reached an island in the Bahamas and claimed it for Spain. This island was called Guanahani by the Lucayans. When the Europeans first arrived in the Bahamas, it was rich in natural vegetation and thick forests, which was unfortunately cleared for sugarcane plantations. The forests failed to grow back after this.

The Bahamas was a source for slave labor for the Spanish during the 1500s. As a result, the entire population of the Lucayans were transported to other islands as laborers. After this event in history the island was depopulated and abandoned for over 150 years after the year 1520 AD. The Spanish left the Bahamas retaining titular claims until the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, after which they surrendered the islands to Britain in exchange for East Florida.

The later colonists from Bermuda settled on New Providence which soon became the center of population and commerce with just over 500 people living on the islands. The early settlers continued to live much like they had in Bermuda; fishing, hunting turtles, whales and seals, finding ambergris, making salt on the drier islands, cutting the abundant hardwood of the islands for lumber, dye-wood, medicinal bark and salvaging wrecks.

There is also a history of conflicts with the Spanish and Bahamian wreckers over the salvaging of shipwrecks and their valuable remains. The Bahamians then engaged privateers (private warfare ships) against Spain. After all the conflicts in the coast and inland, the Spanish burned the settlement of New Providence in 1684, which was again abandoned. Later, Jamaican colonists rebuilt New Providence in 1686.

In 1690, English privateers tried to make a base in the Bahamas by bribing the governor Nicholas Trott with gold, silver, gunpowder and elephant tusks. Owing to the continued occupation of English, French and Spanish privateers, the island was nicknamed as the ‘privateers republic’ for almost a decade, along with the known fact that the islanders were serving as the middlemen for the pirates.

It was in 1713 when the Britons, Woodes Rogers and his friends formed a company to tackle the pirates nest in The Bahamas. As a result, King George I (then prince of Britain), pardoned everyone who was willing to give up and retire from piracy. The venture succeeded and by 1723 the land was cleared of pirates.

In 1782, during the American War, the Bahamas was regained by the Spanish, after which the population in the Bahamas had tripled in a very short span of time. The Americans and Europeans developed cotton as a commodity crop in the islands as a source of revenue but the cultivation later declined due to pests and soil erosion. It was during this time that the settlers brought in African slaves for labor. Later, between 1823 and 1834, owing to the political developments in the region, the slaves continued to find freedom in the Bahamas and they chose to work on their own small plots of land.

During the late colonial era (circa 1911) there was an attempt to make Bahamas a part of Canada but it failed due to the British government's opposition.

Post World War II, Nassau, Havana and Grand Bahamas became the hub of growth and mass tourism. In 1961, Grand Bahamas was established as a free trade zone which led to rapid growth in the financial sector during the post war years.

The political and democratic development progressed and the Bahamians achieved independent government in 1964. Roland Symonette was the first premier and the current premier is Hubert Alexander Minnis. The archipelago has gone through lots of colonisations and settlements but then thrived to come to the mainstream political realm after strenuous struggles. In the modern day, Bahamas is a hub for financial, agro and mariculture investments. The Bahamas became a sovereign state in 1973 and since then its head of state is Queen Elizabeth II.