Travel Insurance to the Bahamas

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The Bahamas, officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the North Atlantic. It takes up 97% of the Lucayan Archipelago's land area and is home to 88% of the archipelago's population.

Christopher Columbus was the first European to see the islands, making his first landfall in the "New World" in 1492 when he landed on the island of San Salvador. Later, the Spanish shipped the native Lucayans to and enslaved them on Hispaniola, after which the Bahama islands were mostly deserted from 1513 until 1648, nearly all native Bahamians having been forcibly removed for enslavement or having died of diseases that Europeans brought to the islands. In 1649 English colonists from Bermuda, known as the Eleutheran Adventurers, settled on the island of Eleuthera.

The Bahamas became a British crown colony in 1718, when the British clamped down on piracy. After the American Revolutionary War, the Crown resettled thousands of American Loyalists to the Bahamas; they took enslaved people with them and established plantations on land grants. Enslaved Africans and their descendants constituted the majority of the population from this period on. The slave trade was abolished by the British in 1807; slavery in the Bahamas was abolished in 1834. Subsequently, The Bahamas became a haven for freed African slaves. Africans liberated from illegal slave ships were resettled on the islands by the Royal Navy, while some North American slaves and Seminoles escaped to The Bahamas from Florida. Bahamians were even known to recognise the freedom of enslaved people carried by the ships of other nations which reached The Bahamas. 

The Bahamas is one of the richest countries in the Americas  with an economy based on tourism and offshore finance. 

Bahamas demographics

Surrounding countries

USA travel insurance

The Australian High Commission in Trinidad and Tobago look after Bahamas

Australian High Commission, Trinidad and Tobago

Head of Mission

Australian High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago

Address

18 Herbert Street
St Clair
Port of Spain
Trinidad and Tobago

Telephone +1 (868) 822 5450

Bahamas travel information

Please refer to the Australian Government website Smartraveller for general information about the Bahamas from the Smart Traveller website. 

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