If, during the 19th Century, the structure of modern Bermuda began to be assembled, the 20th Century put flesh on the bones. It was a period of enormous change – for the world as well as Bermuda.

As the Century began, the Boer War was being fought, partly from horseback, in the Transvaal, part of British South Africa, and some 4,000 Boer prisoners of war were interned well away from it all in Bermuda. As it ended, Nelson Mandela retired as the first leader of the democratically-elected government of South Africa. In Bermuda, at about the same time, the black-dominated Progressive Labour Party was taking the reins of the government, ending nearly four centuries of white leadership.

Meantime, penicillin was developed. The world’s social order was turned upside down by the two world wars. Motion pictures were perfected. The British Empire dissolved. Atomic bombs were dropped. The United Nations was established. Television was invented. Humans flew to the moon. Satellite communication was begun. The Cold War was fought and won. The Internet…ah, the Internet.

Bermuda came of age politically with the end of segregation and the advent of Constitutionally-guaranteed democratic government. Shifting global realities made this once-remote Island strategically important – the Royal Navy Dockyard hummed with activity until advances in technology allowed it, at the end of the Second World War to shrink to a facility run by a handful of staff, then to be shut down completely at the end of the Cold War. During the war, the US military built a modern airport at the east end of the Island, and a naval fuelling and repair facility at the west end. After the war, Bermuda became one of NASA’s networks of ground stations as the space programme developed, and a vital Atlantic listening station in Cold War submarine warfare.

After the war, the US military continued to operate its airfield, and allowed its use by civilian aircraft. That gave an extraordinary impetus to what had been, in the first half of the Century, a steady stream of wealthy American visitors looking for warmer weather during the winter months. Very quickly, a very substantial tourism enterprise was built on the skeleton that had been established in Bermuda before the war. At its height in the 1970s, the Bermuda tourism industry was acknowledged to be one of the most successful in the world, and tourism was by far the most important element of the Bermuda economy. But the cost of doing business in Bermuda rose rapidly to almost prohibitive levels during the second half of the Century. A Bermudians-first immigration policy shut down the entertainment sector of tourism, dulling down the Bermuda vacation experience. Those things, combined with strong competition from elsewhere and changes in the demographics of Bermuda’s visitors, precipitated a decline in the tourism business from which it has never recovered.

The tourism decline, though, coincided with a steep increase in the number of international companies registering in Bermuda. A strong legal and financial services infrastructure built itself up to take care of the needs of these companies. Now, Bermuda is one of the strongest and most sophisticated of the world’s offshore financial centres, with especially strong trust, hedge fund and insurance sectors.

1600s, 1700s, 1800s, 1900s