[3] Due to its situation on a geest, or slightly raised landform, the town was spared the great floods that inundated much of the region in the Middle Ages.

Bunde became predominantly Protestant in the early 16th century, largely following the Reformed (Calvinist) faith as in the adjacent Netherlands.

After the war, Prussian King Frederick the Great sponsored construction of dikes to expand the region's polders.

[9] As elsewhere in Germany following World War I, economic dislocation and unemployment rose in the 1920s, boosting the appeal of Nazism, especially in rural areas of the district.

[10] In April 1945, Bunde was the first East Frisian town to be liberated, being occupied initially by Canadian and Polish forces.

After the war, the district hosted an influx of German refugees expelled from territories east of the Oder–Neisse line under border changes promulgated at the Potsdam Conference.

Later, however, due in part to increasing mechanization of agriculture, the district's population declined, sinking from a peak of 8,893 in 1950 to 7,607 in 2015.