$Unique_ID{COW00281}
$Pretitle{233C}
$Title{Bahamas, the
Chapter 1.    General Overview of the Northern Islands}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Franklin W. Knight}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{islands
bahamas
caicos
turks
three
british
groupings
island
world
}
$Date{1987}
$Log{Spanish Caravel*0028101.scf
}
Country:     Bahamas, the
Book:        Caribbean Community, An Area Study: The Bahamas
Author:      Franklin W. Knight
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1987

Chapter 1.    General Overview of the Northern Islands

[See Spanish Caravel: Spanish Carival bound for the New World.]

     The Northern Islands is a term of convenience used in this study to
refer to the independent Commonwealth of the Bahamas and the two
British dependent territories, the Cayman Islands and the Turks and
Caicos Islands. All three are located in the northern Caribbean Basin.
Both the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands form part of the
Bahamas archipelago, which extends 80 kilometers southeast of Florida to
approximately 150 kilometers north of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
The Cayman Islands lie approximately 150 kilometers south of Cuba and
290 kilometers northwest of Jamaica.

     All three island groupings share a similar historical development.
Christopher Columbus most likely made his first landfall in the New World on a
Bahamian island, although exactly where has been debated for years. He
discovered the Cayman Islands on his third voyage in 1503. Although Ponce de
Leon is said to have discovered the Turks and Caicos in 1512, some historians
still speculate that Columbus landed on one of these islands during his first
voyage in 1492. In mid-1987 preparations were underway for the celebration of
the quincentenary of the discovery of the New World; replicas of Columbus's
ships were being constructed in Spain to recreate the historic transatlantic
voyage in 1992. The ships were scheduled to drop anchor in the Bahamas on
October 12 of that year, focusing world attention on the small Caribbean
nation.

    The islands shared common political linkages at various times in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Turks and Caicos formed part of the
Bahamas in the first half of the nineteenth century. By the second half of the
nineteenth century, both the Turks and Caicos and the Caymans were Jamaican
dependencies and remained so until Jamaican independence in 1962. At that
time, both sets of islands became separate British colonies, a status that
they retained as of the late 1980s. The Bahamas, which became a British colony
in the mid-seventeenth century, attained independence as a sovereign nation in
1973. In the late 1980s, all three island groupings maintained membership in
the British Commonwealth of Nations (see Appendix B).

    The Bahamas dwarfs both the Caymans and the Turks and Caicos in area,
population, and gross domestic product (GDP--see Glossary). Despite
differences, these three societies shared several common social and economic
characteristics in the late 1980s. The populations of all three groupings had
a strong African heritage. Tourism and financial services were major elements
of the domestic economies in all three island groupings. The Bahamian and
Caymanian economies were particularly developed in these two sectors,
resulting in relatively high per capita income for the region and for the
developing world in general. The economy of the Turks and Caicos lacked the
necessary infrastructure to exploit these activities fully; however, it was
steadily establishing important tourist and financial service sectors in the
mid-1980s with the help of British investments.

    Finally, all three island groupings were affected in the 1980s by drug
trafficking. Both the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos became transit points
for traffickers from South America; in addition, both societies experienced
severe social and political crises resulting from drug-related corruption.
Traffickers were also believed to have laundered funds in Caymanian banks.
This major international problem was being addressed throughout the area under
pressure and with assistance from the United States.