World War II Through the Bahamas Independence

On August 17, 1940, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor arrived in Nassau following his appointment as governor of the colony. The duke abdicated his throne as King Edward VIII so he could marry the woman he loved, the divorcée American Wallis Simpson. The people of The Bahamas were shocked that such a once-powerful figure was assigned to govern their impoverished colony, which was viewed then as a backwater of the British Empire. The duke tried to bring self-sufficiency to The Bahamas and provide more employment for its out-of-work population. World War II healed the wounds left over from the bootlegging days. The Bahamas served as an air and sea station in the Atlantic; as a result, the country inherited two airports built by the U.S. Air Force. The islands also were strategically important when Nazi submarines intruded Atlantic coastal and Caribbean waters. Today, some of the outlying islands still house U.S. missile-tracking stations.
In the years after World War II, party politics developed in The Bahamas as independence from Britain seemed more possible, and change came at the ballot box. In 1967, Lynden Pindling won a close election to become prime minister. During the general election of 1972, the Bahamian people voted for total independence. The people of The Bahamas agreed to be a part of the British Commonwealth, presided over by Queen Elizabeth II. Her representative in The Bahamas would be a governor-general, a position with mostly symbolic power. In 1992, after years of corruption under Pindling and countless exposés in the Miami Herald, Hubert A. Ingraham became prime minister. In office, he pledged to promote quality tourism for his nation.
In May 2002, Perry Gladstone Christie led the Progressive Liberal Party to victory, becoming the third prime minister to govern the island nation. Public opinion seems divided on Christie’s reign. Many voters praise him as a progressive, modern leader; others have attacked him, including scorching editorials in The Nassau Guardian. Christie has been accused of receiving a vast amount of campaign money from known drug dealers, an accusation that the prime minister denies.