ocean

The Bahamas ⁱ/bəˈhɑːməz/, officially the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, is a country consisting of more than 3,000 islands, cays and islets in the Atlantic Ocean, north of Cuba and Hispaniola (the Dominican Republic and Haiti), northwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands and southeast of the US state ofFlorida. Its capital is Nassau on the island of New Providence. Geographically, the Bahamas lie in the same island chain as Cuba, Hispaniola and the Turks and Caicos Islands; the designation of "Bahamas" usually refers to the country and not the geographic chain. The country's population, numbering around 354,000, lives on a land area of 13,939 km² (5,382 sq mi).

Originally inhabited by the Lucayans, a branch of the Arawakan-speaking Tainopeople, the Bahamas were the site of Columbus' first landfall in the New World in 1492. Although the Spanish never colonized the Bahamas, they shipped the native Lucayans to slavery in Hispaniola.