Economic development in the Caribbean: from the perspective of the comparison of Martinique and the Bahamas Assignment COURSE TITLE: "REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT"

III. SemesterEconomic development in the Caribbean: from theperspective of the comparison of Martinique and theBahamasAssignmentCOURSE TITLE: "REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT"December, 20072Table of contents1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………….....p. 31.1 Aims…………………………………………………………………………….…...p. 32. A brief history…………………………………………………………………..……p. 33. The Bahamas…………………………………………………………………………p. 51.3 The Bahamas in the past………………………………………………………..….p. 52.3 The Bahamas today…………………………………………………………….…..p. 63.3. Recent government policies in order to help development……………………...p. 84.3 Analysis……………………………………………………………………..….…...p. 94. Martinique………………………………………………………………………..…p. 101.4 Martinique in the past………………………………………………………….…p. 102.4 Martinique today…………………………………………………………………..p. 113.4 Analysis of the development of Martinique…………………………...................p. 145. Comparison of the economic performance of Martinique and the Bahamas…..p. 156. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….... p. 18Appendix….…………………………………………………………………………. p. 19References……………………………………………………………………………. p. 2131. INTRODUCTIONIn the 14th century Europe largely benefited from colonising the Caribbean islands. These islandswent through five decades of cultural and political impact, piracy, slavery and international trade bythe time they finally gained their freedom from their settlers. These factors had a large influence onthe countries' economy.

The Bahamas and Martinique are two groups of islands in the Caribbean that experienced similarcolonisation history with the difference of having been occupied by two different Europeancountries (Martinique by France and the Bahamas by the United Kingdom), but have very differentstructures today.

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A map of Martinique

Caribbean - Martinique.PNG

The main difference is that the Bahamas is now independent from its formercoloniser, while Martinique has become an equal part of France. Both of these countries wentthrough a huge economic transformation during and after the colonisation period.

1.1 AimsOne of the reasons I have chosen this topic is personal experience by having worked at theCaribbean for six months, where I learnt a lot about the economy of these two countries. It wasinteresting for me to discover that even though these countries are now much more developed nowthan in their colonisation-period, there are still huge differences between poor and rich. Althoughmany of these areas are not poor, in the two cases discussed, they have failed to develop to Westernlevels of GDP per capita.