British Guiana

• 1. Introduction

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  British Guiana sat on the northern coast of South America, a colony that changed hands between empires, outlasted rebellions, and finally became the nation of Guyana on the 26th of May 1966. At midnight on that date, more than a century and a half of British rule came to an end. But the story of how this territory became British at all begins much earlier, with competing European powers, a colony built on sugar and slave labour, and a political crisis so alarming to London that it sent troops. What made this place so contested? What kind of economy ran on the backs of enslaved workers and, later, indentured labourers from half a world away? And why, even at the moment of independence, did old disputes remain stubbornly unresolved? The answers reach from Dutch trading posts on the Essequibo River to a law firm in New York and a 9.5-million-dollar postage stamp.

• 2. From Dutch to British

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  The Dutch, not the British, were the ones who first made lasting settlements in the region, establishing Essequibo under the Dutch West India Company and Berbice under the Berbice Association. A third colony, Demerara, followed in the mid-18th century. The English made at least two unsuccessful attempts in the 17th century to get a foothold, and both failed. It took a war in Europe to finally deliver the colonies into British hands.

  During the French Revolutionary Wars, France occupied the Netherlands, and Britain and France were enemies. In 1796, a British expeditionary force dispatched from Barbados seized all three Dutch colonies without a struggle. The British agreed to let the long-established Dutch laws remain in force, so very little changed for the people actually living there.

  In 1802, under the Treaty of Amiens, Britain handed the colonies back to the Batavian Republic. That arrangement lasted less than a year. When hostilities with France resumed in the Napoleonic Wars in 1803, Britain seized them again. The Netherlands officially ceded all three colonies to the United Kingdom through the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814.

  For years afterward, London still administered Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice separately. Essequibo and Demerara were merged in 1822. Then in 1831, that combined territory and Berbice were joined into a single colony: British Guiana. Its capital was Georgetown, a city that had been called Stabroek until 1812.

• 3. Sugar, Slavery, and Booker's Guiana

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  Georgetown was the site of a significant slave rebellion in 1823, a fact that points to how central enslaved labour was to the entire colonial economy. Sugar was not merely important to British Guiana; until the 1880s it was the economy. Planters depended almost exclusively on enslaved workers of mostly sub-Saharan African descent to grow and process cane. The wealth they generated flowed largely to absentee owners living in Britain, concentrated especially in Glasgow and Liverpool.

  The UK and the United States abolished the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, but the domestic slave trade continued to operate within the colonies. Britain did not emancipate the enslaved in its colonies until the 1830s. Under the Dutch, economic activity had clustered around inland plantations. Under the British, cane farming expanded to the richer coastal lands, with greater investment in coastline protection.

  When cane sugar prices fell sharply in the 1880s, the colony began shifting toward rice farming, mining, and forestry. Gold and diamond deposits were discovered in that same decade. In 1922, what was thought to be the world's largest diamond was found there. Neither gold nor diamonds generated significant revenue. Bauxite proved more durable as an economic asset.

  One company came to overshadow everything else. The London-based Booker Group, formally known as Booker Brothers, McConnell and Co., Ltd, had owned sugar plantations in the colony since the early 19th century. By the end of that century it owned a majority of them; by 1950, it owned all but three. The Booker Group expanded into rum, pharmaceuticals, publishing, advertising, retail, timber, and petroleum. It became the largest employer in the colony, prompting some to call the place "Booker's Guiana".

  In 1850, with the sugar economy needing labour after emancipation, the colony began recruiting indentured workers from India. That recruitment continued until 1920. These workers were largely locked in place by their contracts. A minority achieved mobility through desertion, waiting out their contracts, or moving between settlements and urban areas. The rigid Indian caste system largely collapsed in the colonial setting.

• 4. Railways and Infrastructure

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  In 1848, the first railway in British Guiana opened, running 61 miles from Georgetown to Rosignol, with a separate 19-mile line between Vreed en Hoop and Parika. British colonists built this initial system; several narrow-gauge lines followed to serve the sugar industry, and later the bauxite and other mines.

  In 1948, an unexpected source of new equipment arrived. When the railway in Bermuda was shut down that year, its locomotives, rolling stock, track, sleepers, and virtually all associated equipment were shipped to British Guiana to renovate the aging system there. It was a colonial hand-me-down, but a practical one.

  The main lines ceased operating in 1972, six years after independence. The large Central Station in Georgetown still stands. Some inland mines continue to operate their own narrow-gauge lines.

• 5. Government and Constitutional Crisis

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  For most of its history, British Guiana was governed through structures the British had inherited and modified from the Dutch. A Court of Policy handled both legislative and executive functions under the colonial Governor from 1831 until 1966. A separate body, the Financial Representatives, joined the Court of Policy in what was called the Combined Court to set tax policy. A College of Kiezers, a Dutch term meaning roughly "electoral college", selected some members of the Courts. The Kiezers themselves were elected, but only by the largest landowners, and they served for life.

  In 1891, that system was reformed. The College of Kiezers was abolished in favour of direct elections, and property qualifications for voters were significantly relaxed. In 1928, the British Government went further and replaced the Dutch-influenced constitution entirely with a Crown colony constitution. A Legislative Council with an appointed majority was established. The Guyanese did not welcome these changes; they viewed them as a step backward. The 1928 reforms did extend the franchise to women.

  The West India Royal Commission, known as the Moyne Commission, was appointed in 1938 to investigate economic and social conditions across the British Caribbean after a series of civil and labour disturbances. By 1943, its recommendations had produced reforms: a majority of Legislative Council seats became elective, property qualifications were lowered again, and the bar on women and clergy serving was abolished.

  The most dramatic constitutional moment came in 1953. A new bicameral legislature had been established, with universal adult suffrage and an entirely elective House of Assembly. In the election of the 27th of April 1953, the People's Progressive Party won 18 of the 24 seats. The British Government, alarmed by the PPP's perceived closeness to communist organisations, suspended the constitution, declared a state of emergency, and militarily occupied British Guiana on the 9th of October 1953. Direct rule from London continued until 1957.

  Elections held on the 12th of August 1957 returned the PPP to power, this time with nine of fourteen elective seats. A constitutional convention in London in March 1960 agreed on a new legislature of 35 elected House seats and 13 nominated Senate seats. In the election of the 21st of August 1961, the PPP won 20 of those 35 seats and British Guiana became self-governing in all matters except defence and external affairs.

  From 1962 to 1964, racial, social, and economic tensions produced riots and strikes that delayed full independence. The British Colonial Office eventually imposed its own plan, including a new proportional representation system designed to reduce the PPP's seat count. The December 1964 elections gave the PPP 45.8% of the vote and 24 seats; the People's National Congress received 40.5% and 22 seats; the United Force took 12.4% and 7 seats. The United Force joined the PNC in a coalition government, and the PNC leader became prime minister. An independence conference in London in November 1965 quickly settled the remaining details and set the date for independence as the 26th of May 1966.

• 6. Borders Never Fully Settled

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  In 1840, the British Government sent a German-born explorer named Robert Hermann Schomburgk to survey British Guiana's western boundary with Venezuela. The line he drew placed the entire Cuyuni River basin inside the colony. Venezuela refused to accept the Schomburgk Line, insisting that everything west of the Essequibo River was its territory.

  The dispute dragged on for decades and reached a peak in the Venezuela Crisis of 1895. Venezuela appealed to the United States' Monroe Doctrine for support. US President Grover Cleveland applied diplomatic pressure, eventually getting Britain to agree to arbitration. An arbitration tribunal met in Paris in 1898 and issued its award in 1899, giving approximately 94% of the disputed territory to British Guiana. A boundary commission surveyed the new line, and both parties accepted it in 1905.

  The matter seemed closed. Then, in 1962, Venezuela revived its 19th-century claim, arguing that the 1899 arbitral award was invalid. A key piece of evidence was a letter published after his death by Severo Mallet-Prevost, who had served as legal counsel for Venezuela and was a named partner in the New York law firm Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt and Mosle. Mallet-Prevost alleged that the judges on the tribunal had acted improperly due to a back-room deal between Russia and the United Kingdom. Both the British Government and the then-PPP-led British Guiana Government rejected the claim. Efforts to resolve the matter before independence in 1966 failed, and the dispute remains unresolved today.

  Schomburgk's 1840 commission also surveyed the eastern boundary with Dutch Surinam. The 1899 arbitration award referred to the source of the Courantyne River, naming it the Kutari River. The Netherlands disputed this, arguing the New River, not the Kutari, was the true source. In 1962, the Kingdom of the Netherlands formally claimed the "New River Triangle", the wedge-shaped territory between the two rivers. That claim, too, persisted through independence and beyond.

• 7. The Most Expensive Stamp in the World

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  British Guiana holds a peculiar distinction in the world of philately. The colony issued its first postage stamps in 1850. Among them was a one-cent magenta stamp from 1856 that became, over the following century and a half, the most famous and most valuable stamp in the world. It is unique: only one example is known to exist. In 2014, that single stamp sold for US$9.5 million, a figure that signals how far the appetite for the rarest objects can carry a collector.

  The stamp's survival says something about the colony it came from: a place remote enough, and administratively peculiar enough, that a one-of-a-kind object could slip through history without being destroyed, lost, or replicated. British Guiana became Guyana in 1966, but the British Guiana 1c magenta still carries its original name wherever it is exhibited or sold.