A Political And Social History Of Guyana, 1945-1983

Thomas Spinner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780429716591
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

Originally published in 1984, this is a documented account of the political history of the former British colony of Guyana. Providing a reflection of the increasing involvement of the United States in the Caribbean and Central America on the long-term political, social and economic effect that intervention can have on the small states of less developed countries during the period of 1945 to 1983. The text includes a detailed historical account of post-World War II politics and moves onto the emergence of the nationalist movement in Guyana in the late 1940s and the cold war period of the 1950s; concluding with the consequences both politically and economically in the 1980s.

1

The People and the Land

DOI: 10.4324/9780429049750-1

Many travellers are astonished to discover that in the northern part of South America there is a nation as large as Great Britain in area which had—in the 1970s—a Chinese president (Arthur Chung), a black African prime minister (Forbes Burnham), and an East Indian leader of the opposition (Cheddi Jagan). All three men were born in British Guiana, now the Cooperative Republic of Guyana; they represent the three non-Western cultures which have shaped this fascinating, though bitterly divided, country.¹

British Guiana, Dutch Guiana, and French Guiana were never more than tiny enclaves in the massive empires carved out by the Spanish and Portuguese on the South American mainland. Christopher Columbus sailed along the Guiana coast, but no serious attempt at trade and colonization occurred until the region was penetrated by seamen and adventurers a century later. Sir Walter Raleigh was convinced that the area between the mouths of the Orinoco and Amazon rivers contained the fabled golden city, El Dorado. His book, describing the wealth and beauty of the region, aroused considerable interest; Sir John Falstaff referred to Mistress Page as “a region in Guyana, all gold and bounty.” The Pilgrim Fathers contemplated a move to the Guiana coast, but prudently decided in favor of New England.

Actually, there was little gold and less bounty in what was to become British Guiana. Raleigh’s failure to find any wealth helped bring him to the executioner’s block in 1618. Writing some three hundred years later, James Rodway conceded that a “narrow line of sugar estates seems but a very poor showing for such a long struggle with nature, but when all the circumstances are taken into consideration, it is almost a wonder that the colony has not been abandoned altogether.” A certain fascination with the area has continued as readers of W. H. Hudson’s Green Mansions and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World can testify.

When the first British, Dutch, and French traders entered the region, they encountered an Amerindian population of hostile Caribs and friendly Arawaks. Finding only small amounts of gold and not much of value to barter for, the Europeans turned to the cultivation of cotton, tobacco, and, most important, sugar.

The Dutch initially constructed and developed the trading posts, plantations, villages, and towns that would become British Guiana. Incorporated in 1621, the Dutch West India Company’s men and ships were soon moving along the Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice rivers. The soil on the river banks was not particularly fertile and, as the planters turned more and more to sugar, they moved back down the rivers into the coastal plain. As might be expected, the Dutch excelled at establishing and maintaining a complex system of dams and dykes, needed to reclaim a coastal plain that consisted mostly of mangrove swamps and was usually below sea level at high tide. During the two rainy seasons, both a hostile sea and the surging interior rivers needed to be confronted.

The word “Guiana” is of Amerindian origin and means “land of waters.” It is an appropriate designation, for the region not only contains many streams and bodies of water but is bounded by the Orinoco, Negro, and Amazon rivers. Nature can never be ignored in this area; the dry season is very hot while torrential rain can cause rapid flooding in the rainy season. Fortunately, in the evening a refreshing breeze almost always blows in from the Caribbean. But during the day newcomers must adjust to the debilitating effects of a hot, steamy climate.

Eventually the sugar planters carved out a coastal strip running from the Corentyne River boundary with Surinam—formerly Dutch Guiana—to the Venezuelan frontier. The properly drained part of the fertile coastal strip is often not more than three or four miles in width, and cultivation almost never extends beyond ten miles from the sea. While the coastal belt makes up only about 4 percent of the total land area of Guyana, it contains more than 90 percent of the population. Forbidding to the Dutch, the lush tropical forest comprising more than 80 percent of the land remains inhospitable more than three hundred years after colonization. Hopes for mineral wealth in the forest region have never been fully realized. Some gold and diamonds have been found and, most important, bauxite was discovered in the twentieth century. The forest zone ends in mountains which reach a height of 10,000 feet and in the savannah grasslands where a small cattle industry has been established.

The Dutch planters and traders attempted to enslave the Amerindians, who either retreated to the safety of the interior or succumbed to European diseases. Today the Amerindians constitute about 4 percent of the population and are a negligible political factor. Roman Catholic missionaries have been quite successful in winning converts and building schools. Some attempts have been made to protect their cultural heritage, but a debate rages as to whether they should be fully integrated into Guyanese society or allowed to retain their ancient ways.²

Unsuccessful with the Amerindians, the Dutch turned to the importation of African slaves. Soon there were far more slaves than free whites in the region, a constant source of worry for the Dutch plantocracy. Slave revolts occurred frequently, but were repressed with barbarous efficiency. No settlement of runaway slaves, similar to the Bush Negroes of Surinam or the Maroons of Jamaica, managed to survive. The most significant of the slave rebellions was led by Guyana’s national hero, Cuffy, in 1763. Triumphant for almost a year in the Berbice region, the movement failed to spread into Demerara and Essequibo and was finally crushed by the Dutch.

The horrors of the slave trade and slavery have been well documented. Doctor George Pinckard recorded the tragedy of a slave auction in British Guiana in 1796. He witnessed “numbers of our fellow beings regularly bartered for gold, and transferred, like cattle, or any common merchandise, from one possessor to another.” The Africans were forced to remove their clothes so that they might be “minutely inspected” by the prospective purchasers. Even more dreadful scenes were to follow:

In one part of the building was seen a wife clinging to her husband, and beseeching, in the strongest eloquence of nature, not to be left behind him. Here was a sister hanging upon the neck of her brother, and, with tears, entreating to be led to the same home of captivity. There stood two brothers, enfolded in each other’s arms, mutually bewailing their threatened separation. In other parts were friends, relatives and companions, praying to be sold to the same master, using signs to signify that they would be content with slavery, might they but toil together.³

Although conditions varied from plantation to plantation, the evidence demonstrates that the life of the slave was wretched and degrading. Consciously and unconsciously the memories of slavery remain a major element in shaping the Guyanese outlook in the twentieth century.

Dutch activity centered on the Essequibo portion of the area that was to become British Guiana; the entire region was transformed by the appointment of Laurens Storm van’s Gravesande as commander in 1742. A man of intelligence and imagination, Storm had arrived in the colony four years before as a secretary to the West India Company. He served as commander for thirty years, before retiring to his plantation where he died in 1775, During these years, Demerara was finally opened to development; British planters rushed in, fleeing from the ruined soil of Barbados and the other West Indian islands. Storm reorganized the government of the colony, pushed into the interior of Essequibo, and encouraged the hard-working British planters in Demerara while objecting to their attempts to avoid taxation.

By 1770, there were about 10,000 slaves in Essequibo and Demerara, and some 4,000 slaves and 350 whites in Berbice. Berbice, only very loosely regulated by the West India Company, had developed a governmental structure independent of the one controlling Essequibo and Demerara. The wishes of the Estates-General in the Netherlands and the influence of the local plantocracy remained the dominating elements in both regions.

The eighteenth century was characterized by a massive struggle among the European states for trade and empire. Spain and Portugal, the sixteenth-century victors, were elbowed aside in the seventeenth century; Britain, France, and the Dutch Republic emerged as the principal contestants. The Dutch were weakened by three gruelling wars with the British between 1652 and 1674, and by being forced to counter the aggressive blows of Louis XIV. Between 1689 and 1815, Britain and France fought a second Hundred Years’ War. This time, Britain’s aristocratic and merchant elite did not covet France herself; instead, they fancied the French Empire in Canada, India, Africa, and the West Indies. The final, titanic conflict would be a part of the American and French revolutionary wars. Nothing would be the same again after the dramatic political, economic, and social events which occurred between 1775 and 1815.

While the British momentarily lost control of the seas—and the American colonies along with it—British seapower ultimately proved decisive. During the forty years of war and revolution between 1775 and 1815, possession of Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice changed hands a number of times. Essequibo and Demerara were taken by Admiral Rodney in 1781 after the Dutch joined the Armed Neutrality against Britain. But France, allied to the Dutch, chased out the British the following year. The short occupations by the British and French had profound consequences; they gave Demerara a new capital. The colony had been administered from an island in the Demerara River, but the British and the French quickly recognized the strategic importance of the point at which the river flowed into the Caribbean Sea.

While the British only built a fort at the site of the present capital, Georgetown, the French commander, the Comte de Kersaint, planned the construction of a proper town. He grandiosely proclaimed that the capital of the colony must,

… become the business centre, where Religion will have a temple, Justice a palace, War its arsenals, Commerce its counting-houses, Industry its factories, and where the inhabitants may enjoy the advantages of social intercourse, (smith 1962:20)

It was extraordinary, the Count concluded, that the colony had “arrived at some magnificence without the establishment of either town or village.” Two years later, the Dutch returned and baptized Kersaint’s new town, Stabroek. Within a few years, there were almost one thousand inhabitants, whites numbering about one-third, with the remainder mostly slaves plus a small number of freed blacks and mulattoes. By 1810, the population had soared to almost ten thousand.

The British seized Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice, once again, in 1796. Briefly returned to the Dutch after the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, the colonies were snatched by the British permanently in 1803, and their control was ratified by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Eager to win the loyalty of the residents, the British retained the main features of Dutch government; but, the administrative structure of the less progressive Berbice proved too cumbersome and British Guiana was finally created in 1831 when Berbice was united with Essequibo and Demerara.⁴

Having pledged in 1803 that “the laws and usages of the colony shall remain in force and be respected,” the British were unable to rule British Guiana as a Crown Colony in which the governor and the Colonial Office monopolized political power. Instead, they saddled themselves with a system in which the governor shared authority and influence with several elected bodies dominated by the wealthy planters. For instance, a Court of Policy was partially chosen by the sugar barons and, even more important, six financial representatives were also elected by the plantocracy to meet with the Court of Policy as a Combined Court when new taxes were required.

After 1831, the governor’s nominees outnumbered the elected members of the Court of Policy, but the Combined Court contained a majority of elected representatives. While the governor and the Court of Policy exercised the legislative and executive powers of the colony, the Combined Court retained the authority to check the public accounts and to raise taxes. Planter domination of the country’s political life was assured by high property qualifications for both voting and holding office. This arrangement remained in effect until a significant liberalization of the property requirements was introduced in 1891.⁵ Sugar reigned throughout the nineteenth century; the needs of this industry affected every aspect of Guyanese life and ultimately brought about the fascinating ethnic mix that has become modern Guyana.⁶

During the first third of the nineteenth century, British Guiana’s small white population lived in fear of a slave majority. The great house on the plantation was the center both of sugar production and of society itself. Mulattoes were an important intermediary group. Normally freed by their white fathers, they tried desperately to identify with white society. Interesting distinctions also developed among the slaves. Those toiling in the great house were regarded as superior to the cane cutters, and the locally born slave was assigned a higher rung in the social hierarchy than the one imported in chains from Africa.

Economic necessity and humanitarianism combined to bring about the British decisions to end the slave trade in 1807 and slavery in 1833. Britain’s emerging market economy coupled with the profound transformation of the world’s first industrial revolution compelled both free trade and free labor. There was no room for slavery and the special preferences awarded to the West Indian sugar barons. Missionaries and other humanitarians denounced the horrors of slavery, and the martyred Congregational minister, John Smith, went to an early grave in 1823 as a consequence of his struggle to aid the slaves.

The abolition of slavery brought the planters of British Guiana more than four million pounds in compensation for the almost eighty-five thousand emancipated slaves. A period of semislavery and adjustment followed until complete liberation in 1838. Emancipation was a traumatic event for both planters and slaves; the freed blacks tried valiantly to run abandoned sugar plantations or to establish cooperative ventures on the land; but, by the 1850s their heroic efforts had failed. Without capital to fully develop their small plots, they often needed to seek seasonal labor on the hated, white-owned plantations. Rather than do this, many blacks moved to the villages and towns where they became a new urban proletariat.

The high hopes of the freed slaves were really defeated by the determination of the plantocracy to retain its political, economic, and social supremacy. The sugar industry requires large supplies of additional field workers during the two cutting sea...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents Page
• Foreword Page
• Chapter 1 The People and the Land
• Chapter 2 Cheddi Jagan, Forbes Burnham, and the People’s Progressive Party
• Chapter 3 Elections and Gunboats
• Chapter 4 Strife and Division
• Chapter 5 Return to Constitutional Government
• Chapter 6 Racial Warfare and Foreign Intervention
• Chapter 7 Government by Coalition
• Chapter 8 King Forbes I
• Chapter 9 Jonestown and the House-Mouse Referendum
• Chapter 10 What Happens to a Dream Deferred?
• Abbreviations
• Critical Bibliography
• Select Bibliography
• Index