The history of Guyana begins about 35,000 years ago with the arrival of humans coming from Eurasia. These migrants became the Kalina and Lokono tribes, who met Alonso de Ojeda's first expedition from Spain in 1499 at the Essequibo River. In the ensuing colonial era, Guyana's government was defined by the successive policies of the French, Dutch, and British settlers.
During the colonial period, Guyana's economy was focused on plantation agriculture, which initially depended on slave labour. Guyana saw major slave rebellions in 1763 and 1823. Following the British Slavery Abolition Act 1833, 800,000 enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and South Africa were freed, resulting in plantations contracting indentured workers, mainly from India. Eventually, these Indians joined forces with Afro-Guyanese to demand equal rights in government and society. After the Second World War, the British Empire pursued policy decolonisation of its overseas territories, with independence granted to British Guiana on 26 May 1966. Following independence, Forbes Burnham rose to power, quickly becoming an authoritarian leader, pledging to bring socialism to Guyana. His power began to weaken following international attention brought to Guyana in wake of the Jonestown mass murder suicide in 1978.
After his unexpected death in 1985, power was peacefully transferred to Desmond Hoyte, who implemented some democratic reforms, before being voted out in 1992. The People's Progressive Party (PPP/C) served as the country's ruling party from 1992 to 2015. It was unseated following the victory of David Granger's Afro-Guyanese political coalition of A Partnership for National Unity and Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) in 2015. In 2020, the PPP/C returned as the ruling party of Guyana in a contested election.
Pre-colonial Guyana and first contacts The first people to reach Guyana made their way from Siberia, perhaps as far back as 20,000 years ago. These first inhabitants were nomads who slowly migrated south into Central and South America. At the time of Christopher Columbus's voyages, Guyana's inhabitants were divided into two groups, the Lokono along the coast and the Kalina in the interior. One of the legacies of the indigenous peoples was the word Guiana, often used to describe the region encompassing modern Guyana as well as Suriname (former Dutch Guiana) and French Guiana. The word, which means "land of waters", is appropriate considering the area's multitude of rivers and streams.
Historians speculate that the Lokono and Kalinago originated in the South American hinterland and migrated northward, first to the present-day Guianas and then to the Caribbean islands. The Lokono, mainly cultivators, hunters, and fishermen, migrated to the Caribbean islands before the Kalinago and settled throughout the region. The tranquility of the earlier Arawakan-speaking society was disrupted by the arrival of the bellicose Kalinago from the South American interior. The warlike behaviour of the Kalinago and their violent migration north made an impact. By the end of the 15th century, the Kalinago had displaced the earlier Arawakan-speaking population throughout the islands of the Lesser Antilles. The Kalinago settlement of the Lesser Antilles also affected Guyana's future development. The Spanish explorers and settlers who came after Columbus found that the Arawakan-speaking peoples proved easier to conquer than the Kalinago, who fought hard to maintain their independence. This fierce resistance, along with a lack of gold in the Lesser Antilles, contributed to the Spanish emphasis on conquest and settlement of the Greater Antilles and the mainland. Only a weak Spanish effort was made at consolidating Spain's authority in the Lesser Antilles (with the arguable exception of Trinidad) and the Guianas. In later decades, slaving, land seizure, and disease would destroy such societies, causing those who survived to have a "far less elaborate way of life". Between 1400 and 1860, European slave traders would import 500,000 slaves to Guyana and Suriname, along with sugar, as part of the transatlantic slave trade.
Colonial Guyana
Early colonisation
The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle modern-day Guyana. The Netherlands had obtained independence from Spain in the late 16th century and by the early 17th century had emerged as a major commercial power, trading with the fledgling English and French colonies in the Lesser Antilles. In 1616 the Dutch established the first European settlement in the area of Guyana, a trading post twenty-five kilometres upstream from the mouth of the Essequibo River. Other settlements followed, usually a few kilometres inland on the larger rivers. The initial purpose of the Dutch settlements was trade with the Indigenous people. The Dutch aim soon changed to the acquisition of territory as other European powers gained colonies elsewhere in the Caribbean. Although Guyana was claimed by the Spanish, who sent periodic patrols through the region, the Dutch gained control over the region early in the 17th century. Dutch sovereignty was officially recognised with the signing of the Treaty of Münster in 1648. European contact and colonisation would have a "catastrophic effect" on indigenous communities, due to diseases, Indian slave trade, intense warfare, and forced migration.
In 1621 the government of the Netherlands gave the newly formed Dutch West India Company (WIC) complete control over the trading post on the Essequibo. This Dutch commercial concern administered the colony, known as Essequibo, for more than 170 years. The company established a second colony, on the Berbice River southeast of Essequibo, in 1627. Although under the general jurisdiction of this private group, the settlement, named Berbice, was governed separately. Demerara, situated between Essequibo and Berbice, was settled in 1741, and emerged in 1773 as a separate colony under the direct control of the Dutch WIC. In these colonies, enslaved Africans produced "coffee, sugar and cotton [...] for the Dutch market."
Although the Dutch colonisers initially were motivated by the prospect of trade in the Caribbean, their possessions became significant producers of crops. The growing importance of agriculture was indicated by the export of 15,000 kilograms of tobacco from Essequibo in 1623. But as the agricultural productivity of the Dutch colonies increased, a labour shortage emerged. The indigenous populations were poorly adapted for work on plantations, and many people died from diseases introduced by the Europeans. The early Dutch settlers, pushed Indigenous Indians out of their homelands and those they couldn't they wipe out with a combination of strategy and "superior military technology". Ultimately, Dutch presence in Guyana resulted in internal rather than outward migration of Indians, in part due to pull and push of Dutch trade. Although effective jurisdiction from the Dutch "touched relatively few Indians", relations between the Dutch and Indigenous people were "often punctuated by physical conflicts". The Dutch West India Company turned to the importation of enslaved Africans, who rapidly became a key element in the colonial economy. By the 1660s, the enslaved population numbered about 2,500; the number of indigenous people was estimated at 50,000, most of whom had retreated into the vast hinterland. Although enslaved Africans were considered an essential element of the colonial economy, their working conditions were brutal. The mortality rate was high, and the dismal conditions led to more than half a dozen rebellions led by the enslaved Africans. At the end of the eighteenth century, the number of people who were enslaved within Guyana was "roughly equal that in Suriname" while millions were invested so that goods could be created for Dutch market "using forced labour by African people".
The most famous uprising of the enslaved Africans, the Berbice Slave Uprising, began in February 1763. On two plantations on the Canje River in Berbice, the enslaved Africans rebelled, taking control of the region. As plantation after plantation fell to the enslaved Africans, the European population fled; eventually only half of the whites who had lived in the colony remained. Led by Coffy (now the national hero of Guyana), the escaped enslaved Africans came to number about 3,000 and threatened European control over the Guianas. The rebels were defeated with the assistance of troops from neighbouring colonies, such as the British and French, and the Dutch Sint Eustatius, and overseas from the Dutch Republic. The 1763 Monument on Square of the Revolution in Georgetown, Guyana commemorates the uprising.
Transition to British Rule
Eager to attract more settlers, in 1746 the Dutch authorities opened the area near the Demerara River to British immigrants. British plantation owners in the Lesser Antilles had been plagued by poor soil and erosion, and many were lured to the Dutch colonies by richer soils and the promise of land ownership. The influx of British citizens was so great that by 1760 the English constituted a majority of the European population of the Dutch Demerara. By 1786 the internal affairs of this Dutch colony were effectively under British control, though two-thirds of the plantation owners were still Dutch. Under the British, the colonies became a huge cotton producer. This was thanks to the groundwork laid "during the Dutch colonial era".
As economic growth accelerated in Demerara and Essequibo, strains began to appear in the relations between the planters and the Dutch West India Company. Administrative reforms during the early 1770s had greatly increased the cost of government. The company periodically sought to raise taxes to cover these expenditures and thereby provoked the resistance of the planters. In 1781 a war broke out between the Netherlands and Britain, which resulted in the British occupation of Berbice, Essequibo, and Demerara. Some months later, France, allied with the Netherlands, seized control of the colonies. The French governed for two years, during which they constructed a new town, Longchamps, at the mouth of the Demerara River. When the Dutch regained power in 1784, they moved their colonial capital to Longchamps, which they renamed Stabroek. The capital was in 1812 renamed Georgetown by the British.
The return of Dutch rule reignited conflict between the planters of Essequibo and Demerara and the Dutch West India Company. Disturbed by plans for an increase in the slave tax and a reduction in their representation on the colony's judicial and policy councils, the colonists petitioned the Dutch government to consider their grievances. In response, a special committee was appointed, which proceeded to draw up a report called the Concept Plan of Redress. This document called for far-reaching constitutional reforms and later became the basis of the British governmental structure. The plan proposed a decision-making body to be known as the Court of Policy. The judiciary was to consist of two courts of justice, one serving Demerara and the other Essequibo. The membership of the Court of Policy and of the courts of justice would consist of company officials and planters who owned more than twenty-five slaves. The Dutch commission that was assigned the responsibility of implementing this new system of government returned to the Netherlands with extremely unfavourable reports concerning the Dutch West India Company's administration. The company's charter, therefore, was allowed to expire in 1792 and the Concept Plan of Redress was put into effect in Demerara and Essequibo. Renamed the United Colony of Demerara and Essequibo, the area then came under the direct control of the Dutch government. Berbice maintained its status as a separate colony.