New Providence is the most populous island in the Bahamas, containing more than 70% of the total population. It also houses the national capital city, Nassau. The island was originally under Spanish control following Christopher Columbus‘s discovery of the New World, but the Spanish government showed little interest in developing the island (and the Bahamas as a whole). Nassau, the island’s largest city, was formerly known as Charles-town but was burned to the ground by the Spanish in 1684. It was laid out and renamed Nassau in 1695 by Nicholas Trott, the most successful Lord Proprietor, in honor of the Prince of Orange-Nassau who became William III of England.
The three branches of Bahamian Government—the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary—are all headquartered on New Providence. New Providence functions as the main commercial hub of the Bahamas. It is also home to over 400 banks and trust companies; and its hotels and port account for more than two thirds of the four million-plus tourists who visit the Bahamas annually. Other settlements on New Providence include Grants Town, Bain Town, Fox Hill, Adelaide, Yamacraw, South Beach, Coral Harbour, Lyford Cay, Paradise Island, Sea Breeze, Centreville, The Grove (South) and The Grove (West Bay), Cable Beach, Deportee, Gambier and Love Beach.
After the American Revolution, several thousand Loyalists and their slaves emigrated to New Providence and nearby islands, hoping to re-establish plantation agriculture. The shallow soils and sparse rainfall doomed this activity to failure, and by the early 19th century the Bahamas had become a nearly vacant archipelago. Salt raking continued here and there, wreck gleaning was profitable in Grand Bahama, but New Providence was the only island with any prosperity because of the large British military establishment. The fortresses began to crumble and were abandoned by 1850. New Providence afterwards had two periods of high economic success: during the American Civil War of 1861-65, when it was a highly popular port for blockade-runners serving the Confederate States of America; and during Prohibition, when it was a smuggling center for distilled spirits.
Since 1929, New Providence has become an American vacation destination with many tourist facilities, including a deepened harbour for short-visit cruise ship visitors and hotels offering gambling. Two-thirds of the ~300,000 Bahamians live on New Providence, although this proportion has fallen somewhat with the development of Freeport on Grand Bahama. The name New Providence Island is derived from a 16th‐century governor who gave thanks to Divine Providence for his survival after a shipwreck. The “New” was added later to distinguish it from a small island off British Honduras (now Belize) used by pirates.
