New Providence's European history is a cycle of building and destruction. The first lasting settlement came in 1666, and by 1670 the town of Charles-Town held over 900 residents. Then it burned. The Spanish razed it in 1684, and the colonists scattered. Two years later, English settlers from Jamaica arrived, rebuilt, and were told by Jamaica's governor to come home. They ignored the order. In 1695, Governor Nicholas Trott laid out the town again, renaming it Nassau in honor of William of Orange-Nassau, who had become William III of England. He built a fort by the same name. The Spanish damaged it in 1700. A combined French and Spanish attack in 1703 drove the colonists out entirely. Without soldiers or cannons, the empty fort became an open invitation, and the pirates accepted. For the next fifteen years, Nassau belonged to whoever was bold enough to claim it.

The American Revolution reached New Providence in March 1776, when Commodore Esek Hopkins led a squadron of seven ships to raid the British-held island. What followed was the first amphibious assault in American military history: 250 Continental Marines and sailors landed under covering fire from the Providence and the Wasp, overwhelmed Fort Montague, and forced the British at Fort Nassau to surrender. The Americans secured 88 cannons and 15 mortars, though most of the gunpowder they had come for had been evacuated before capture. Hopkins spent two weeks loading his ships before sailing home.

New Providence changed hands twice more during the war. In 1782, the frigate South Carolina joined a Spanish force of 59 vessels under Bernardo de Galvez, sailing from Havana. By May 8, the British colony had surrendered again - the third foreign capture of the island during the Revolutionary War alone. After the war, thousands of Loyalists and their enslaved people emigrated to New Providence, hoping to establish plantations. The shallow soil and sparse rainfall defeated them. By the early 1800s, the Bahamas had become a nearly vacant archipelago, and New Providence survived only because of its British military garrison.

New Providence has a talent for profiting from other nations' troubles. During the American Civil War, Nassau became one of the busiest ports for blockade-runners supplying the Confederacy. Cotton went out, weapons and supplies came in, and Bahamian merchants grew rich on the commissions. When that war ended, prosperity faded - until Prohibition handed the island another opportunity. From 1920 to 1933, New Providence became a smuggling center for distilled spirits bound for the dry United States. Warehouses filled with whiskey and rum. Fast boats ran the short passage to Florida under cover of darkness. The pattern was unmistakable: whenever America made something illegal, Nassau made money.

But the island's most durable reinvention was already underway. By the late 19th century, New Providence had begun marketing itself as the "sanitarium of the western hemisphere," promoting its mild climate, warm winters, and English-speaking population. Steam ships ran regular routes from the American South and Cuba. By the late 1920s, the island had hotels, a deepened harbor for cruise ships, and the beginnings of the tourism industry that would eventually eclipse everything else.

The Lucayan word Nema, meaning "middle-water," captured something essential about New Providence that remains true today. The island sits in the middle of everything - between North America and the Caribbean, between the Atlantic and the shallow Bahama Banks, between the 700 other islands of the archipelago that depend on it as their capital and commercial hub. All three branches of Bahamian government are headquartered here. More than 400 banks and trust companies operate from Nassau. The island's hotels and port account for more than two-thirds of the four million-plus tourists who visit the Bahamas annually.

New Providence is the only part of the Bahamas that lacks local government - national authorities handle local affairs directly, dividing the island into 24 supervisory districts. From Lyford Cay's gated wealth on the western tip to the dense neighborhoods of Grants Town and Bain Town, from the resort towers of Cable Beach to the quiet settlement of Adelaide, the island packs an entire nation's contradictions into 80 square miles. Paradise Island, connected by a bridge, adds the casinos and mega-resorts. The population reached 292,522 at the 2022 census. Nema, the middle-water, has become the center of gravity for an entire nation.