Table Of ContentSTUDIES
IN SOCIAL LIFE
XIV
EDITOR:
GUNTHER BEYER
ADVISORY BOARD
P. J. BOUMAN,
University of Groningen
JEAN GOTTMAN,
University of Paris
WALTER HOFFMANN,
University of Munster
LIVIO LIVI (t),
University of Rome
GUYANA: RACE AND POLITICS
AMONG
AFRICANS AND EAST INDIANS
GUYANA: RACE AND POLITICS
AMONG
AFRICANS AND EAST INDIANS
by
ROY ARTHUR GLASGOW
MARTINUS NIJHOFF / THE HAGUE / 1970
© 1970 by Martinus NijhojJ, The Hague, Netherlands
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
ISBN-13: 978-90-247-5005-4 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-3213-1
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-010-3213-1
T ABLE OF CONTENTS
I. EARLY COLONIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT
Methodology
Guyana - The Land 3
Early Settlements and Colonization 5
II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PLANTATION SYSTEM 20
Cultural Design of Plantation Society 29
III. THE SACCHARINE SOCIETY 33
The Image of King Sugar 33
VI. THE MOSAIC OF SUBCULTURES 42
The Colored Group 42
Analysis 47
The African Group 51
V. LABOR PROBLEMS AND SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT 66
The Portuguese Immigrants 69
The East Indians 72
The Chinese 85
VI. THE PRECURSORS OF CONFLICT BETWEEN THE FRAGMENTS 89
The Social Revolution 95
Politico-racial Factors 98
Some External Variables 107
VII. THE ERUPTION OF VIOLENCE 114
VIII. CONCLUSION 134
A Civic Program 142
GLOSSARY 145
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 147
CHAPTER I
EARLY COLONIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT
METHODOLOGY
British Guiana has been called Guiana, and since Independence
day May 26, 1966, the new state has been called Guyana, an Amer
indian word meaning land of waters.
Over the past three hundred years the ordinary people of Guyana
have been struggling to eke out some type of existence from a narrow
coastal strip of land. This painful struggle has been frustrated by
certain structural impedimenta inherited from a slave plantation past.
These structural debris are many and varied. Consequently. the
central theme of this work is that slave plantation society in Guyana
gave rise to distinct ideologies which shaped patterns of social be
haviour and politics. The author attempts to explain the present im
broglio in Guyana in the above context, and guided by this expla
nation makes policy recommendations for racial and group harmo
ny. Furthermore, we will describe to what extent the indigenous
governments have attempted to deal with the cultural legacies of the
plantation system by using a series of palliatives or employing an
active approach, mirroring a desire to introduce fundamental ideo
logical changes toward mutual adjustment among groups.
The theoretical development of this study leans heavily on the
theoretical concepts of J. S. Furnivall, and Michael G. Smith. Fumi
vall was an economist with first hand experience of the Colonial Far
East before the Second World War. In these societies he observed
groups of differing races and cultures living in "mutual avoidance
and economic symbiosis." These societies he described as plural. Ac
cording to Furnivall, a plural society is a unit of disparate parts which
2 EARLY COLONIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT
owes its existence to external facts, and lacks a common social will.l
M. G. Smith develops Furnivall's concept of cultural and social plu
rality and applies it to West Indian Societies. Guyanese society with
its diversities of race, culture, religion, and style of life mainly fits
the description of Furnivall and Smith. The problems to which policy
makers should urgently address themselves can be stated this way.
How to create common beliefs and practices out of this cultural
mosaic? In other words contemporary Guianese beliefs and values
should be manipulated and managed to provide a minimum amount of
consensus. This calls for the integration of the two largest and an
tagonistic racial groups in the country.2 The problems of British
Guiana are common to the countries of the West Indies in particular,
and less developed countries in general. Guyana can therefore serve
as a model for other developing countries.
For purposes of theoretical analysis the study can be conveniently
divided into three models. 3
Model I. The development of the primordial agents in Guyanese
plantation society.
Model II. The institutionalization of metropolitan values in Creole
Society.
Model III. The post 1945 period and the maturation of the pri-
mordial factors.
Model I, plantation society will introduce the reader to the physical
aspects of the country, its early history, and the development of a
plantation community. The structure and operation of this system is
also described, with the resulting problems. Model II, relates to the
period after emancipation to 1945. R. T. Smith describes creole so
ciety as being rooted in the political and economic dominance of the
metropolitan power.
1 J. S. Fumivall, "Some Problems of Tropical Economy," in R. Hinden, ed.,
Fabian Colonial Essays. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1945), pp. 167-171; and
Colonial Policy and Practice. London: Cambridge University Press, 1948), pp.
303-312.
2 Integration means the process of mutual adjustment among the racial groups
resulting in the absence or presence of conflict and inconsistencies in the ethos
of the society. See John and Mavis Biesanz, Modern Society. 3rd ed., (Englewood
Cliffs: Prentice Hall), 1965. p. 54.
3 R. T. Smith, "Social Stratification, Cultural Pluralism and Integration in
West Indian Societies" A Paper Prepared for the Third Conference of Caribbean
Scholars held in Georgetown, Guyana, April 1966. p. 3. The author is indebted
to Professor R T. Smith for these ideas.
EARLY COLONIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT 3
It was color stratified and integrated around the conception of thc
moral and cultural superiority of things English.4
Finally in Model III, the maturation of the primordial factors, in
volving a wide range of endogenous and exogenous factors, a rigorous
and critical analysis of the problems from a theoretical descriptive
approach, and pragmatic policy recommendations, concludes this
study.
GUYANA - THE LAND.S
Guyana, formerly British Guiana, is a country of 83,000 square
miles located on the north-eastern coast of South America between
latitude 1 ° North and 9° North and longitude 5° West and 62° West,
known as "the land of six peoples," and the land of waters. Guyana
has a population of 590,140 - the majority are of East Indian (47
percent) and African (32 percent) descent - but also including a con
siderable number of Chinese, Portuguese, Amerindians and Euro
peans.6 It is bordered by Brazil, Venezuela, Surinam and the Atlantic
Ocean. The Atlantic Coast stretches some 270 miles, and it is in this
narrow coastal belt, 10 to 40 miles wide, that 96 percent of the in
habitants live and work. This coastal zone lies 4 to 5 feet below sea
level at high tide and is dependent upon an elaborate system of dams,
walls and groynes to protect it from the sea.7 In this area agricultural
activity is concentrated. Stretching from the west bank of the mighty
Corentyne river to the west bank of the Essequibo river, including the
4 Ibid., p. 9.
5 Some of the information in this section is taken from a country profile of
Guyana prepared by the author for the Peace Corps Washington, D.C.: See
Howard University, Peace Corps Training Program, Guyana. July 6 - September
2, 1966. Washington D.C. p. 13.
6 In order that the reader might have a better picture of the ethnic breakdown
in the country, the following statistics taken from the Guyana Yearbook, 1964,
would be helpful. These figures are based on the census of 1960 which is the
latest population estimate. East Indians, 289,790; African descent, 192,660;
mixed descent (colored) 68,420; Amerindians, 23,600; Portuguese, 7,390; other
Europeans, 4,760; Chinese, 3,520; total 590,140.
7 Carleen O'Loughlin, "The Rice Sector in the Economy of British Guiana,"
Social and Economic Studies. vii (June 1958), p. 87. Dr. O'Loughlin states that
the main problem in this area is one of water control. Flood and drought con
ditions occur regularly, resulting in too much water and too little water at differ
ent times. For a succinct description of the history and operation of this system
see Allan Young, The Approaches to Local Self Government in British Guiana.
(London: Longman's Green and Company Ltd., 1958), pp. 1-2.
4 EARLY COLONIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT
GUY A N A
- •.- lnl.,noUonal boundary
-- -Admlnls".tI •• dlll,lcl
• Copil.1 boundarr
• Administrative dislric!
__ Railroad tOpilal
- - Raid
......... Troll
c ~~:.:! Swamp or marsh
0i..-~2~5_ _5_ 0_~75 Mil ••
o 25 50 75 Kllome.ers
o
EARLY COLONIZA nON AND DEVELOPMENT 5
estuary, are farms and plantations growing rice and com respectively.
From the coastal zone the land rises to a plateau marked by dense
equatorial forests and swamps. Minerals are found in this area, the
most valuable being bauxite, diamonds, gold and manganese. The
most important mineral product is bauxite, which comprises about 35
percent of domestic exports, and 12 percent of the Gross Domestic
Product. The largest bauxite deposits lie between the Berbice and
S
Demerara rivers, about 100 miles from the coast. The rivers provide
a natural system of communication and are of great value to the
bauxite and timber industries in terms of being the main method of
moving freight. The important rivers are the Essequibo, Cuyuni, Ma
zaruni, Corentyne, Berbice and Demerara.
In the southwest the forest plateau merges into the Savannahs
called the Rupununi. The soils are sandy, consequently twelve (12)
large cattle ranches with an animal population of 60,000 cattle dot
the landscape.!) In the dry season the ground is brown red and hard;
in some places what appears to be grass turns out to be sedge. Such
then is the general landscape of Guyana. To many Guyanese the area
outside of the coastal strip is "the bush." This means that the country
beyond Atkinson field, some forty miles from Georgetown the capital,
is considered as an underdeveloped area.
EARLY SETTLEMENTS AND COLONIZATION
The prehistory of Guyana is not known with any degree of as
surance. Most of the information filtered down to us has a transitory
quality about it, being based upon anthropological speculation.10 The
early inhabitants were the Amerindian tribes. Today their descendants
who live in the interior of the country are members of the Warraus,
or Swamp Indians - a timid people; the Arawaks, who live on slight-
8 U.S. Information Agency Fact Sheet. Georgetown, 1966. p. 3.
!l Milton F. Gregg, "The Rupununi Area of British Guiana," External Affairs,
XVIII (April, 1966), pp. 166-173. See also The Rupununi. British Guiana Infor
mation Office, 1964.
10 R. T. Smith, British Guiana. (London: Oxford University Press, 1962),
p. 11. Much useful information can be gleaned from the following sources: John
Gillian, "Tribes of the Guianas," in J. H. Steward, ed., Handbook Of South
A merican Indians. Vol. III. pp. 799-860; Irving Rouse, Guianas: Indigenous
Period. Mexico. 1953; Clifford Evans and Betty J. Meggers, "Preliminary Re
sults of Archaeological Investigations at the Mouth of the Amazon," American
Antiquity. Vol. XVI. (1950) pp. 1-19.
