The Bahamas, officially the Commonwealth of the Bahamas (in English: Commonwealth of the Bahamas), is a country made up of more than 700 islands (of which 24 are inhabited and more than 600 uninhabited), cays and islets in the Atlantic Ocean ; to the north of Cuba and the Dominican Republic, northwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands, to the southeast of the US state of Florida and east of the Florida Keys. Its capital is Nassau located on the island of New Providence. Geographically, the Bahamas together with the Turks and Caicos Islands form the Archipelago of the Lucayas, also known as the Bahamian extension. By the manifesto of the Royal Defense Force of the Bahamas, the territory of the Bahamas occupies 180,000 square miles of ocean space, although official measures would provide much more economic space.

Originally inhabited by the Lucayos, a branch of the Taino ethnic group, the Bahamas were the site where Christopher Columbus arrived on his first trip to the New World in 1492. They were then colonized by the Spanish from 1513 to 1648, when English settlers from the island of Bermuda settled on the island of Eleuthera.