British Guiana was a British colony located on the northern coast of South America. Since 1966 it has been known as the independent nation of Guyana.
The first known Europeans to encounter Guiana were Sir Walter Raleigh, an English explorer, and his crew. Raleigh published a book entitled The Discovery of Guiana, but this mainly relates to the Guayana region of Venezuela.
The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle there, starting in the early 17th century. They founded the colonies of Essequibo and Berbice, adding Demerara in the mid-18th century.
In 1796, Great Britain took over these three colonies during hostilities with the French, who had occupied the Netherlands. Britain returned control of the territory to the Batavian Republic in 1802, but captured the colonies a year later during the Napoleonic Wars. The Netherlands officially ceded the colonies to the United Kingdom in 1815.
The British consolidated the territories into a single colony in 1831. The colony's capital was at Georgetown (known as Stabroek prior to 1812).
Since the late 19th century, the economy has become more diversified but has still relied on resource exploitation. Guyana became independent of the United Kingdom on 26 May 1966.
The English made at least two unsuccessful attempts in the 17th century to colonise the lands that would later be known as British Guiana. By that time, the Dutch had established two colonies in the area: Essequibo, administered by the Dutch West India Company (WIC), and Berbice, administered by the Berbice Association. The WIC founded a third colony, Demerara, in the mid-18th century.
During the French Revolutionary Wars of the late 18th century, when the Netherlands were occupied by the French, and Great Britain and France were at war, Britain took over the colony in 1796. A British expeditionary force was dispatched from its colony of Barbados to seize the colonies from the French-dominated Batavian Republic. The colonies surrendered without a struggle. Initially very little changed, as the British agreed to allow the long-established laws of the colonies to remain in force.
In 1802 Britain returned the colonies to the Batavian Republic under the terms of the Treaty of Amiens. But, after resuming hostilities with France in the Napoleonic Wars in 1803, Britain seized the colonies again less than a year later. The Netherlands officially ceded the three colonies to the United Kingdom in the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814.
The UK continued separate administration of the individual colonies until 1822, when the administration of Essequibo and Demerara was combined. In 1831, the administration Essequibo-Demerara and Berbice was combined, and the united colony became known as British Guiana. During World War II the United States Navy established NAF British Guiana and NAF Paramaribo in British Guiana.
The economy was based on cultivation and processing of sugarcane as a commodity crop, dependent on extensive labour by enslaved workers of mostly sub-Saharan African descent. Although the UK and the United States abolished the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, the domestic slave trade flourished until Britain emancipated all the enslaved in its colonies in the 1830s. The wealth they generated had largely flowed to a group of absentee slave owners living in Britain, especially in Glasgow and Liverpool.
The economy of British Guiana was completely based on sugarcane production until the 1880s, when falling cane sugar prices stimulated a shift toward rice farming, mining and forestry. But the production of sugarcane remained a significant part of the economy (in 1959 sugar still accounted for nearly 50% of exports). Under the Dutch, settlement and economic activity was concentrated around sugarcane plantations lying inland from the coast.
Under the British, cane planting expanded to richer coastal lands, with greater coastline protection. Until the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, sugar planters depended almost exclusively on slave labour to produce sugar. Georgetown was the site of a significant slave rebellion in 1823.
In the 1880s gold and diamond deposits were discovered in British Guiana, including what was thought to be the world's largest diamond in 1922. They did not generate significant revenue.
Bauxite deposits proved more promising and would remain an important part of the economy. The colony did not develop any significant manufacturing industry, other than sugar factories, rice mills, sawmills, and certain small-scale industries (including a brewery, a soap factory, a biscuit factory, and an oxygen-acetylene plant, among others).
The London-based Booker Group of companies (Booker Brothers, McConnell & Co., Ltd) dominated the economy of British Guiana. The Bookers had owned sugar plantations in the colony since the early 19th century; by the end of the century they owned a majority of them. By 1950 they owned all but three. With the increasing success and wealth of the Booker Group, they expanded internationally and diversified by investing in rum, pharmaceuticals, publishing, advertising, retail stores, timber, and petroleum, among other industries. The Booker Group became the largest employer in the colony, leading some to refer to it as "Booker's Guiana".
Indentured workers were recruited from India from 1850 to 1920, and were largely locked in place. A minority achieved mobility. Some secretly fled; others waited until their contracts expired. Indian migration within the colonies involved three phases: desertion from the plantations; movement settlements and later to urban areas; and intra-regional migration from one Caribbean island to another. The traditional rigid Indian caste system largely collapsed in the colonies.
Guianese served in all British forces during the Second World War, and enjoyed veterans' benefits afterwards. The colony made a small but important financial contribution to the war effort. It also served as a refuge for Jews displaced from continental Europe, where the Nazis and Fascists worked to destroy them in the Holocaust.