Bermuda Islands

BERMUDA ISLANDS

BERMUDA ISLANDS, roughly 300 small coral islands, twenty of which are inhabited, are in the Atlantic Ocean east of North Carolina. Bermuda is a reference point of the Bermuda Triangle, an area of the Atlantic Ocean in which ships and airplanes have disappeared under supposedly mysterious circumstances that scientists attribute to weather and currents.

Discovered by the Spanish captain Juan de Bermúdez in 1503, Bermuda was first settled in 1609 by a hundred shipwrecked English colonists, including Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, and William Strachey. In 1612 Bermuda, called Somers Islands, was colonized by the Virginia Company. It became an autonomous company in 1615 and subsequently a British Crown colony. Bermuda records first mention slaves in 1617. In 1620, under probably the first conservation laws in the New World, Bermuda provided limited protection for turtles.

In 1946 the civil rights advocate E. F. Gordon delivered to London a petition protesting the political and racial conditions in Bermuda. In 1959 blacks boycotted hotels and theaters, forcing integration of those facilities. Black voting rights (1963), universal adult suffrage (1968), and school integration followed (1971).

In 2000 Bermuda had a population of 62,275 and 98 percent literacy. Reflecting its history of immigration, shipwrecks, and slavery, it is 59 percent blacks, 36 percent whites, and 6 percent others.

Because only 6 percent of Bermuda's land is arable, the islands survived by supplying ships, smuggling rum during U.S. prohibition, and providing services. From 1940 to 1995 the United States leased land for naval and air bases, which were important during World War II. Bermuda's economy is approximately 1 percent agriculture, 10 percent industry, and 89 percent services.

The islands' subtropical climate attracts tourists, especially from the United States, a major source of income, revenue, and employment. Bermuda is a major international offshore financial services and banking center, where transnational corporations shelter their assets and profits under permissive tax and banking laws.

Bermuda is a British territory with an appointed governor. Citizens elect a parliament, and the governor appoints the prime minister, the leader of the largest parliamentary party. A referendum on independence was defeated in 1995. In November 1998 the Progressive Labor Party won the general election, ending the United Bermuda Party's thirty-five years of control, and Stanley Lowe became the first black speaker of the House of Assembly. Opinion surveys in the late 1990s showed Bermudians increasingly inclined toward independence from Britain.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ahiakpor, James C. W. The Economic Consequences of Political Independence: The Case of Bermuda. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: Fraser Institute, 1990.

Boultbee, Paul G., and David F. Raine, comps. Bermuda. Oxford and Santa Barbara, Calif.: Clio Press, 1998.

Steffen W. Schmidt

See also Rum Trade ; Slave Trade .