“An important addition to not only Atlantic historiography but to the history writing of the Bahamas and Bermuda. A tremendous achievement.”—Clarence Maxwell, editor of Bermuda Journal of Archaeology and Maritime History
“Tinker reveals the economic, political, cultural and military connections among Britain, Spain, France, North Africa, the West Indies and America, through the lens of Bermuda and the Bahamas. For five centuries these tiny islands have played important roles in the growth and development of the Atlantic nations, especially the United States, in ways little known and poorly appreciated up to now.”—Jim Miller, editor of the Florida Heritage Publication series
Though often marginalized in histories of the Atlantic World, Bermuda and the Bahamas have been key in shaping the Americas. Their strategic location at the crossroad of New World commerce created opportunity for colonization and trade that few other colonies enjoyed.
In this ambitious volume, Keith Tinker weaves a chronology that begins with the Age of Exploration and the arrival of Europeans in the Bahamas in 1492. He examines the role of these two archipelagos from the Revolutionary War and the Civil War through Prohibition, the Cold War, and the Space Age. Tinker concludes with a look at how these former havens for Atlantic pirates have transformed into financial and tourist meccas.
Full of intrigue and development, economic boom and bust, piracy and philanthropy, and cultural and social warfare, Gateways to the New World is unique in its representation of the active, rather than just reactionary, roles that these island nations have played in the emergence of the Atlantic World.
