Overview
Turks and Caicos Islands is a British Overseas Territory consisting of the larger Caicos Islands and smaller Turks Islands, two groups of tropical islands in the Lucayan Archipelago of the Atlantic Ocean and northern West Indies. The islands are known primarily for tourism and as an offshore financial centre.
The resident population in 2023 was estimated at 59,367 according to The World Factbook, making it the third-largest of the British overseas territories by population. The islands have a total land area of 430 square kilometres (170 square miles).
Cockburn Town, the capital since 1766, is situated on Grand Turk approximately 1,042 kilometres (647 miles) east-southeast of Miami. The islands are located southeast of Mayaguana in the Bahamas island chain and north of the island of Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic).
Etymology
The name "Caicos" originates from the Lucayan word "caya hico," meaning "string of islands." The Turks Islands are named after the Turk's cap cactus, Melocactus intortus, whose red cephalium resembles the fez hat worn by Turks in the late Ottoman Empire.
History
Precolonial Era
The first inhabitants of the islands were Arawakan-speaking Indigenous people who most likely crossed over from Hispaniola between AD 500 and 800. Together with Taíno who migrated from Cuba to the southern Bahamas around the same time, these people developed as the Lucayan. According to historians Julian Granberry and Gary Vescelius, around 1200 CE, the Turks and Caicos Islands were resettled by Classical Taínos from Hispaniola.
European Arrival and Settlement
The identity of the first European to sight the islands remains uncertain. Some sources state that explorer Christopher Columbus saw the islands during his voyage to the Americas in 1492, while other sources suggest that Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León was the first European in Turks and Caicos, in 1512. By 1512, the Spanish had begun capturing the Taíno and Lucayans as labourers under the encomienda system. Due to this practice and the introduction of diseases to which the native people had no immunity, the southern Bahama Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands were completely depopulated by about 1513 and remained so until the 17th century.
From the mid-1600s, Bermudian salt collectors began seasonally visiting the islands and later settling more permanently with their African slaves. For several decades around the turn of the 17th century, the islands became popular pirate hideouts. During the Anglo-French War (1778–1783), the French captured the archipelago in 1783; however, the Treaty of Paris (1783) later confirmed it as a British colony.
After the American War of Independence (1775–1783), many Loyalists fled to British Caribbean colonies, bringing African slaves with them. They developed cotton as an important cash crop, which was later superseded by the salt industry. In 1799, both the Turks and the Caicos island groups were annexed by Britain as part of the Bahamas.
19th Century
In 1807, Britain prohibited the slave trade and, in 1833, abolished slavery in its colonies. Notable shipwrecks involving enslaved Africans occurred during this period. In 1837, the Portuguese slaver Esperança wrecked off East Caicos, with 220 captive Africans surviving the wreck, though 18 died before the survivors reached Nassau. In 1841, the illegal Spanish slave ship Trouvadore wrecked off East Caicos, with all 20 crew members and 192 captive Africans surviving. The freed Africans were apprenticed to island proprietors, increasing the colony's population by seven per cent.
In 1848, Britain designated the Turks and Caicos as a separate colony under a council president. In 1873–1874, the islands were made part of the Jamaica colony; in 1894, the chief colonial official was restyled commissioner. In 1917, Canadian Prime Minister Robert Borden suggested that the Turks and Caicos join Canada, but this suggestion was rejected by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and the islands remained a dependency of Jamaica.
20th and 21st Centuries
On 4 July 1959, the islands were again designated as a separate colony. When Jamaica was granted independence from Britain in August 1962, the Turks and Caicos Islands became a Crown colony. Beginning in 1965, the governor of the Bahamas also served as governor of the Turks and Caicos Islands.
When the Bahamas gained independence in 1973, the Turks and Caicos received their own governor. Since August 1976, the islands have had their own government headed by a chief minister (now premier). Moves towards independence in the early 1980s were stalled by the election of an anti-independence party in 1980, and the islands have remained British territory since then.
In 2002, the islands were re-designated a British Overseas Territory, with islanders gaining full British citizenship. A new constitution was promulgated in 2006; however, in 2009 Premier Michael Misick resigned in the face of corruption charges, and the United Kingdom took over direct control of the government. A new constitution was promulgated in October 2012, and the government was returned to full local administration after the November 2012 elections.
In the 2016 elections, the Progressive National Party (PNP) lost power for the first time since 2003, and the People's Democratic Movement (PDM) came to power with Sharlene Cartwright-Robinson as Premier. She was replaced by Washington Misick after the PNP returned to power following the 2021 general elections.
Geography
The two island groups are located in the North Atlantic Ocean approximately 160 kilometres (99 miles) north of Hispaniola and about 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from Miami in the United States.