ONE _ The Land and Its Early Peoples Even to the casual observer the ‘raw’, undeveloped nature of Guyana at the time of the European advent was evident from the limited exploita- tion of the country’s natural resources, the predominance of subsistence agriculture and fishing, the lack of trunk roads, the absence of terracing and artificial irrigation systems, and the relatively small sizes of the political groupings. But at thesame time, the Amerindian inhabitants were free from foreign domination or dependence on external sources, and had devised ingenious ways of adapting to their environment and also altering the environment to adapt to their needs. The Amerindian communities were in constant dialogue with their physical and ecological environment. The polit- ical, economic and social institutions which evolved were the result of the interaction of man with his environment. As time went by, old institutions were adapted or-new ones developed to meet changing circumstances. The physical environment is just one of a number of factors which deter- mine human development at any point in time, other important factors being man’s intellectual capacity, ideological viewpoint and interpersonal relationships, and technological innovations. But the environment ulti- mately limits the choices available to him. In its primal state the physical landscape can often be forbidding; extremities of temperature, dense forests, large deserts, great rivers, huge massifs, fierce animals and mortal or debilitating diseases have presented the greatest challenges in man’s quest to modify and make his environment serviceable to him. His capacity to do so is indispensable to (one may even say, is a pre-condition of) his material and social advancement‘ It is equally important for him to live in harmony with his surroundings, that is, to maintain a proper balance between his lifestyle and his environment—a need to which little attention was paid in the past. To the early European travelers in Guyana the most prominent features of the landscape were the rude coastline, multiplicity of rivers, large sprawl- ing savanna, and succession of gently rolling plateaus. These features are prominent not only in Guyana but throughout the Guianas, which form a geographical unit circumscribed by the Atlantic Ocean, and the Amazon, 12 COLONIALISM AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN GUYANA | Rio Negro, Casiquiare and Orinoco rivers. The entire area is abour 500,000 square miles and comprises, in addition to Guyana, French Guiana (Cayenne), Suriname, Brazil and Venezuela. Guyana, the country with which this study is concerned, embraces just over one-sixth of this area (83,000 square miles) and shares boundaries with the last three countries mentioned. It is usually divided into three geophysical zones: the coast and alluvial plain, the sand and clay belt, and the mountaino’ ion. The mud flats and rollers (breakers) encountered there. They dubbed it the “Wild Coast’ and avoided coastal navigation whenever possible. The allu- vial plain, an area of about 6,250 square miles, consists first of a stretch of land some 270 miles long and 15 to 20 miles wide, overlaid with light and dark marine clays. It is generally a little below sea level at the coastline, which in early times used to be covered entirely by mangrove and courida trees. Today these trees have virtually disappeared as a result of clearings and poldering made to facilitate agricultural development. It is quite suita- > ble for the cultivation of sugar, cotton and plantains. Even so, only about \ 500 square miles of it are cultivated at present. The plain rises to ten or } twelve feet above high water level as it moves inland and is covered in large sections with peat, a semi-decomposed mold of vegetable matter, favor- able to the cultivation of coffee in some places. This area also contains large swampy savannas or meadows (sometimes called ‘wet savannas’) which the Europeans considered unhealthy but to which the indigenous peoples had (become largely inured. %K South of this plain is a belt of white sand and clay, extending to the northwest for about fifty miles inland and to the southeast for more than 100 miles. It rises continuously as it moves inland and contains sand reefs which are very fertile for the cultivation of coffee, cocoa, fruits and ground provisions. However, most of the area, and indeed some eighty-five percent of the entire country, is covered with forests, some of the trees growing very tall and assuming increasing economic importance, especially from the late nineteenth century. The sand and clay belt gives place further south to high and often moun- tainous country, composed mainly of crystalline rocks, or metasediments and metavolcanics. The undulating lands or elevated plateaus found here are dominated by three principal mountain ranges—the Pakaraima, the Kanuku and the Akarai. In addition, there are a number of isolated hills and mountains in the extreme south.! The vegetation of the mountain region is predominantly forest in the north, southeast and southcentral, and savanna in the southwest. The country is traversed by four great rivers, with which nearly all its other waterways are connected. Various terms and analogies have been used by writers to stress the importance of these waterways in making the coun-THE LAND AND ITS EARLY PEOPLES Coastal Plain Hilly sond ond yaa fi cloy region Highland region SURINAME streams [3 ee — od Waterfallé a \ Sunvawe (SAA ZFR Guana PACIFIC OCEAN = ecuapor >, BRAZIL Geophysical zones of Guyana 34 COLONIALISM AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN GUYANA try accessible to travelers. The main rivers and their tributaries have been likened respectively to the arteries and veins of the human body, an analogy particularly striking, since this is exactly the impression conveyed by a look at a modern physical-relief map of the country. It is difficult to give an exact estimate of the total number of creeks, tributary rivers and main rivers which the country contains, but the figure literally runs into thousands. Not all of them play an important role in communication with the interior of the country, but they help to drain a land which would otherwise be largely a series of swamps. This natural drainage, aided by a small amount of artifi- cial drainage, has made it possible to inhabit and cultivate some sections of the country. On the other hand, it may be argued that serious developmen- tal problems are created by the excessive dissection of the land by the rivers, occasioning the building of many dams and bridges. The four main rivers—Essequibo, Demerara, Berbice and Corentyne— flow in a south-to-north direction. Two of these, the Corentyne and the Essequibo, run almost throughout the entire length of the country, though the Essequibo is the longest (over 600 miles) and by far the most important from the point of view of the drainage system. Some of its tributaries, such as the Cuyuni, the Mazaruni and the Rupununi, are quite huge and they themselves have numerous tributaries, together draining more than half the country. All the main rivers contain a number of impediments which limit their use considerably. Except for Demerara, their estuaries are quite shal- low, while there are sand banks at or close to their mouths which make it impossible for them to accommodate vessels drawing more than eighteen feet of water. The sand banks also, particularly in the case of Essequibo, divide the estuaries into various channels, further impeding navigation, especially at low tide when the water level sometimes drops to twelve feet or lower. To a large extent the geophysical factors described above have condi- tioned both the settlement patterns and the material cultures of the various peoples who occupied the country. This was certainly true of the early Amerindians. Although they have often been disparaged as ‘primitives’ and ‘savages’ by Europeans, many of their solutions to the environmental problems they encountered were adopted by their critics. Most present-day authorities agree that the ancestors of the Amer- indians inhabiting the country when the Dutch arrived in the late sixteenth century must have come there sometime in the first millenium A.D., though there is great uncertainty about their provenance, population densities and earliest occupation sites. Several authorities cite the lower Orinoco as the proximate site of the earliest immigrants. One can be fairly certain that that was the nuclear area at least of the Caribs who inhabited the Guianas; they were heavily concentrated there when the Europeans arrived. Their area of greatest density in Guyana was the northwest district (immediately east ofTHE LAND AND ITS EARLY PEOPLES 5 the Orinoco delta) between the Barima and the Pomeroon rivers. Only limited archaeological work has been done so far into the early his- tory of Guyana but certain conclusions have been drawn. Pottery sherds excavated at Mabaruma in the northwest give a reading of around A.D. 500, but it is thought that the area was inhabited long before that time by peoples of a pre-ceramic culture whose main relics are shell middens.? Archaeologists are fairly certain that the early pottery was intrusive to the area, though later ones are of local origin. Archaeological work in this dis- trict has also unearthed a number of crudely flaked stone implements of a pre-neolithic kind. Pottery excavated at selected sites in the southern savan- nas has given a much more recent dating than that found in the coastal areas. Certain tentative conclusions are possible, based upon these findings and upon the limited evidence of occupation sites and population move- ments found in early European records. The earliest and most densely occu- pied sites were located in the coastal area between the Barima and Coren- tyne rivers. From there, the Indians gradually moved into the most con- genial sites in the wet savanna, and the lower reaches of the rivers in the hinterland.? Fhe western forest tract, to the immediate south of the wet savanna, had but a scattering of settlements up to the sixteenth century, though by the eighteenth the number of settlements, while still small, had grown appreciably. As for the southern savanna, this area saw the intrusion of various groups in small numbers from the areas of modern Brazil and Venezuela in the pre-European period, and in somewhat larger numbers mainly in the eighteenth century. Finally, the eastern forest tract, specifi- cally the whole area from the commencement of the great falls of Berbice and Corentyne southward, remained almost completely unoccupied until the late nineteenth century. It is not possible at this stage to give more than the most general outline \ of the sites and the various groups who occupied Guyana at the advent of the Dutch. The four ethnic groups who definitely inhabited the country at the time are the Caribs, Arawaks, Warraus and Akawois, though it is possi- ble that small groups of Macusis, Wapisianas and other southern peoples also occupied marginal areas between the Takutu, Ireng and Rupununi rivers. | ( The’Caribs populated the coastal area from Orinoco to Pomeroon fairly densely, and also selected sites along the coast as far eastward as Corentyne. In time, perhaps retreating before the Europeans, they occupied new areas in the forest zone. In the eighteenth century their inland locations were mainly in the lower-middle Cuyuni-Mazaruni-Essequibo area. Some early and more recent writers think that they might also have occupied parts of the upper Essequibo, but the evidence on this score is at present rather scanty. The Arawaks were also scattered over the entire coast and along the6 COLONIALISM AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN GUYANA lower courses of the rivers and the higher spots of the wet savanna. They later migrated to areas within the sand and clay belt, of which they were almost the sole occupants in the nineteenth century. The Warraus were almost exclusively located in the area between the Moruka and Orinoco rivers, where they settled in the most swampy terrain and developed a cul- ture peculiarly suited to it. Like the Caribs, they were far more numerous in Venezuela than in Guyana. Apart from the northwest district, they are mentioned in historical records as occupying swamplands in Mahaica- Mahaicony, the Canje and possibly the Berbice river areas, but these sites might have been inhabited as a result of later migrations. The sites of the early Akawois settlements are less certain and early extant records are extremely vague about them. They are however men- tioned specifically in the eighteenth century as dwelling in the forest zones, in conjunction with the Caribs, with whom they are closely related and were often in conflict. It is possible that in the early period they also shared the Barima-Barama area with the Caribs and other groups. The fact is that with the exception of the Warraus the Indians appear to have been extremely peripatetic, moreso. perhaps than most other neolithic peoples who culti- vated the land. Ironically, the Warraus, ‘who remained the ost sedentary of the lot, practiced little or no agriculture. It is extremely difficult to give a reliable estimate of tlie sizes of the vari- ous ethnic groups inhabiting the country in early times, for it is only recently that population data about them have shown any consistency and perhaps some accuracy. The situation is compounded by the fact that for the Dutch period actual numerical estimates are few and far between. Even Laurens Storm van’s Gravesande, the Director-General of Essequibo- Demerara and a man in close touch with the Indians, admitted in 1764 that he did not have any idea of the number of Carib inhabitants.‘ Hartsinck, in 1770, was one of the few Dutch writers who attempted to give some general estimate of the Indian population. He stated that the coastal popu- lation was estimated at 10,000 to 15,000 but that it was impossible to esti- mate the number of Indians in the interior because no contact existed between some of them and the Dutch, while others were perhaps completely unknown to the Europeans. In 1825 William Hilhouse, former Quartermaster-General of the Indians in Demerara, estimated the total ir the British colonies recently taken over from the Dutch at 15,000 tc 20,000.° Estimates for the nineteenth century usually varied from thes« figures to as low as 7,000. All the early figures concerning the Indian population represent guesses some less inspired than others. But while the writers often disagree on popu lation statistics, at least the later ones substantially agree on one point: the later figures represent a much smaller population than that which existec when the Europeans arrived. Various explanations are given for thiTHE LAND AND ITS EARLY PEOPLES 7 \) ’ circumstance—imported and local digeaseop tnter-erup and European- Indian warsJthe erosion of the Amerindian cultures by the dominant Euro- pean ones, etc. Almost everywhere in the Americas where the Europeans came into contact with the Amerindians the same story is told: the latter suffered a major demographic decline. Of course, one of the historical myths which have been handed down to us about the Amerindians is that their societies contained within them the seeds of their own destruction. Much is made of the wars among themselves which several writers regarded as endemic; rarely is it appreciated that very often, and certainly in the case of those in Guiana, wars were fomented or encouraged by the Europeans to serve their own narrow ends. This, as we shall show in greater detail in another chapter, was particularly true of the slave raids carried on largely by the Caribs against their neighbors, often leading to retaliation by the aggrieved parties. Cannibalism among the Caribs was also cited by early writers as an important cause of warfare but again it is clear that the Europeans grossly exaggerated this factor and often used it as an excuse for naked aggression against the Caribs. Another important factor in the self-destruction of the Indians is said to have been the kanaima, or law of retaliation. Like.the Israelites of an earlier period, the Amerindians were supposed to have put into extensive practice the precept ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’. This, it is asserted, led to blood feuds, which often eécalated into ‘tribal’ wars. The religious aspects of the kanaima will be dealt with later on; it is necessary to deal here with its political and juridical aspects. In the first place, the documented instances of such retaliation, almost exclusively in the nineteenth century, are not sufficiently frequent or large- scale to warrant their being classified as the causative factor in the decline of the Indian population. Secondly, and more fundamentally, the view that the ‘retaliatory law’ was one of the main ones which governed relations among Indians is completely erroneous. However, it is based upon the mis- conception of several writers, such as Hartsinck, that the Indians were “subject to no laws or governments”’; and again: ‘‘. . . they are wholly ignorant of any form of government or political authority, each one living as he pleases; so that no distinction in rank or regard can be found among them.’’? Hartsinck, however, immediately modified this statement by as- serting that they only had a Captain who was the warlord but who had no civil authority. But he did not stop there. He proceeded to make nonsense of his earlier statements by indicating that homicide was rare among them, they lived peacefully together, there was a law which punished adultery by death-publicly, stealing was abhorred by them and rarely occurred, war was declared by beating a drum or sticking an arrow in an open spot.’ Some- what earlier he had commented that they had an inborn sense of justice which shone in all their dealings.°8 COLONIALISM AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN GUYANA It is clear, therefore, that although the Indians did not have written or statute laws they had customary ones which are sometimes more binding that those that are written, and it is certainly incorrect to assert that ‘‘in the case of a secular offence, law and justice were personal matters’’ to them.!° Though personal retribution was tolerated in certain circum- stances, law and justice were societal matters in Amerindian societies, as indeed in all other human societies. It is recognized as a truism today that no society can exist without a generally accepted sy$tem of laws—customary or otherwise. From a careful review of the evidence it appears that the retaliatory law did not apply in circumstances Where both parties involved belonged to the same family or village. One even wonders whether, strictly speaking, it applied among members of the same ethnic groups, living in relatively close proximity to each other.'! Curiously enough, Im Thurn felt that the kanaima ‘system’ helped appreciably in maintaining order in Indian societies.!2 Some years earlier Schomburgk had written that contentions were rare among those of a given village, while Adriaan van Berkel, earlier still, had stated that manslaughter seldom occurred among them."? The political authority which Hartsinck assumed to have been nonexis- tent did, in fact, exist, though its structure and functions differed apprecia- bly from that to which he was accustomed. The societies in question might be called ‘stateless societies’, or societies without hereditary ruling classes and hierarchical social structures. The political system was determined to a large extent by population densities in different areas, which in turn were determined by environmental factors and the stage of economic develop- ment at which the Indians had arrived. The main environmental factors were the swampy conditions of most of the alluvial plain and the density of the forest areasx Economically, while most of the Indians practiced sedentary agriculture, the ‘slash-and-burn’ method of cultivation, plus the total absence of animal husbandry, forced them to move fairly frequently. They therefore found it most convenient to organize themselves into small groups, such as households and villages. The decimation of the population as time went by only served to reinforce this pattern of political organiza- tion. Though Rodway refers to four early ‘kingdoms’ in the northwest,'* the Indians of Guyana are not known to have established any kingdoms in the political sense of the term. a The villages rarely exceeded 100 souls, with each household occupying a single large house or several small ones in one section of the village. The system was obviously patriarchical in origin and it may be argued that it remained largely so throughout the period which concerns us. Even in the nineteenth century it was possible to find settlements comprising a single household. Wilbert states that among the present-day Warraus the ‘‘pater- familias of the extended family is still the main authority... . ”’.'5 < However, the village headman had made his appearance sometime beforeTHE LAND AND ITS EARLY PEOPLES 9 the seventeenth century. Unfortunately, the Dutch records classified Amerindian leaders as ‘Chiefs’ (‘Owls’), ‘Great Chiefs’ and ‘Paramount Chiefs’, but did not draw a clear distinction between the roles of each of these officials. In the late nineteenth century Im Thurn asserted that these offices were nonexistent. It is clear, however, that during the Dutch period there were individuals, whether called headmen, chiefs or otherwise, who were responsible for organizing and sometimes leading large hunting expe- ditions, though apparently any group was free to hunt on its own. Some vil- lages had a Council of Elders who assisted the headman in administering the affairs of the village, such as conducting rituals relating to hunting, planting, and the ancestors; organizing festivals and taking judicial and military decisions. The headman was subject to the views of his Council in most matters, but he had absolute discretion in the actual conduct of battle. At first the office of headman was elective and even in the nineteenth cen- tury when, according to Schomburgk, it had become somewhat hereditary, it was possible for any person to claim a right to it without the late ruler’s family feeling a sense of wrong.'¢ As indicated above, the Indians (with the notable exception of the War- raus) practiced sedentary agriculture with the aid of neolithic tools. They cultivated tobacco and cotton, and a wide variety of food crops such as cassava (manioc), maize (corn), pepper, cacao, pineapple, sweet potato, pumpkin, watermelon and papaw. They supplemented their food supply by gathering a number of vegetables. For the Warraus in particular the starchy pith of the ita palm constituted their staple food. Crop rotation was not practiced; rather, a number of crops were grown side-by-side in the same field, which was left fallow after a few years, as no animal manure or fertili- zers were used. The plough and the wheel were completely unknown. Animal foods were less easy to secure because the Indians had domesti- cated no animals, with the possible exception of small breeds of hunting dogs. Since animals such as cattle, sheep and goats were totally alien to them, they depended upon hunting and fishing for their main source of pro- tein, which the abundant fauna of the country provided in the form of manatees, tapirs, deer, iguanas, and a wide variety of birds, fish, turtles and eggs. There is no indication in contemporary records that the Indians of Guyana experienced a shortage of food; on the contrary, the Dutch de- pended upon them to supply cassava (bread) and fish for their estates. 4The planting and reaping of food crops were the main economic activi- ties of the women, while hunting and fishing were mainly the responsibility of the men. It is often asserted that the men were quite lazy and that they left the women to do nearly all the work. It is true that there was nothing like an equal division of labor between men and women, and the latter might well have done more work than the former. However, while the numerous daily chores of the women have been recognized as being ofteni JO de ios UxeL) kq eur ur pur B (izgt ‘Ares9req ‘snout saad} 10THE LAND AND ITS EARLY PEOPLES 11 burdensome and tiresome, the physical exertions of the men have not gener- ally been appreciated. Apart from cultivating and reaping the crops, the women had such chores as preparing foods and drinks, including the impor- tant alcoholic beverages, piwari and casiri, carrying loads on long journeys and making baskets, hammocks and aprons. The men’s jobs included hunt- ing and fishing, preparing the provision fields, manufacturing weapons and tools for hunting, fishing, cultivating the fields, making boats and going to war; making furniture; cutting wood in the forest, often miles away; mak- ing various musical and other instruments; manufacturing ceramic articles; spinning and weaving materials in some instances; and trading. In general, the women’s tasks related to activities in and around the village or the house, while the men’s tasks often took them far afield. This was especially true of those who indulged in trading or bartering. The volume and distribution of trade in early Amerindian societies in Guyana have not been determined up to now; in fact this subject has received little attention. However, it is known that some trade existed in pre-European days. For instance, archaeological discoveries of pottery originating in one community but with distribution frequencies in neigh- boring’ ones suggest that both migration and trade were factors in such dis- tribution. Again, though the ourali (curare) poison was manufactured almost exclusively by the Macusis of the western Guyana-Brazilian border area it was distributed over a wider area than their home country. The Indians, who were accustomed to -traveling great distances from their homes,*must have been lured among other factors by the desire to obtain valuable commodities which they did not manufacture themselves. In several instances the Indians displayed great originality and technical skill in their manufactures, and it is in this area that their ability to use the materials found in their environment is most evident. Most Europeans, if asked what was the most important item manufactured by the Indians, would probably have mentioned the canoe without hesitation. This was because’ the Indians used their canoes as most countries today use motor transport. The numerous rivers, creeks and itabos (inland waterways cre- ated by swamps) made these vessels essential for communication.'? Ham- mocks rank next in importance. They were commonly used as beds which could be easily folded up and carried about conveniently, and with almost equal facility could be hung up between two trees or two rafters, at varying levels from the ground. The Indians were thus able to use them as effec- tively in swampy lands as in forest areas. They also offered some protection from stinging insects. They were therefore prized articles to the Indians and to the Dutch later on. There were several other manufactures to which only brief mention can be made here. Incised¢ and ornamented pottery was widely used as house- hold utensils. Threads were made from the ita palm, the silk grass and cot-12 COLONIALISM AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN GUYANA ton. Simple spindles were used with great skill to weave threads, strings and hammocks. Bows and arrows, blowpipes and clubs were the main hunt- ing, fishing and military implements. Ornaments included anklets and neck- laces made of shells, seeds, bones and animals’ teeth. The hunter wore the most prized necklace, made from the teeth of the peccari or bush-hog— the greater the number and the larger the size the more skillful a hunter he was deemed to be among his people. However, his success was not believed to be due solely to his hunting skills but, rather, in no small measure to the intervention of the good spirits on his behalf. In order to ensure their inter- vention, the wise hunter would indulge in the appropriate rituals to propiti- ate the spirits, especially before large hunting expeditions. On another plane, rituals of one kind or another played an important part in maintaining proper relations with the spirit world, a world as real to the Indians as the material one which their natural eyes could discern. It was dominated by numberless elemental spirits, inhabiting inanimate objects such as rocks, rivers and the earth; and animate ones such as animals, birds, insects and human beings. Some of these spirits might be propitiated but most of them had to be contained, avoided or exorcised, as these were the ones thought most capable of inflicting evil on the unwary or errant person. The spirits, the objects they inhabited and the evil force they were thought to manifest were all referred to as Kanaimas. Essentially, they were immaterial, invisible presences. When, however, they inhabited or possessed animate objects they became, in the words of Iris Myers, the “mysterious embodiment (s) of active evil’’.' These objects were often human beings who might become possessed without being aware of it. The individual thus possessed found himself compelled to take certain action contrary to more rational judgment. Some- times he found himself compelled to take revenge for a wrong done to a member of his family, especially in the case of a heinous offense such as homicide. It is necessary to stress here that the human kanaima was under great compulsion to take retaliatory action. Most writers fall into the error of believing that such action was usually a matter of choice by the individual concerned. Both Im Thurn and Myers point out that the kanaima usually belonged to a different ethnic group from the person against whom retalia- tory action was contemplated, '? for, the Indians believed that all evil ema- nated from sources outside the family, village or ethnic group to which the injured individual belonged. All sickness and death were regarded as the work of kanaimas, human or nonhuman, material or immaterial. This was where the piaiman made his contribution. As the family or vil- lage exorcist his duty was to ward off or cast off such evil as outsiders sought to inflict on the community. He was well equipped through training in the arts of exorcism before assuming and filling the role of piaiman, and by hereditary virtues passed on by his father, who himself had been a piai-THE LAND AND ITS EARLY PEOPLES = 13 man. His main power was supposed to lie in his ability to communicate with the spirit world (usually by possession by a benevolent spirit) and discern the cause of and’ remedy for a particular malady, but he was also well instructed in the use of medicinal herbs and cures for psychosomatic ill- nesses. In her study of the Macusis, Iris Myers noted that their remedies were similar to those of modern medical practitioners. These included bal- samic barks and seeds for coughs, dstringents of tannin-type bitter bark for malaria, and teas having diuretic action for bladder problems. Myers also asserted that she witnessed what appeared to have been two genuine cases of psychological healing effected by a piaiman.®® It was this vital role played by the piaiman which made him such an important person in ‘Amerindian societies. Every large village had its own piaiman, while smaller ones, when linked by kinship relations, shared a common one. Though the piaiman’s role was concerned mainly with counteracting evil associated with the kanaimas or lesser spirits that inhabited animate and inanimate objects, some consideration had to be given to greater spirits. Two of these stood above all the rest—God or the Good Spirit, and the Devil or the Evil Spirit. Jawaho was the name most commonly used for the Devil, while different names were used for God, indicating his many roles as Father, Maker, Dweller on High, etc. However, the name which was most familiar to the Indians was Makonaima (Makunaima), translated by various writers as ‘Great Spirit’, ‘God’, and ‘SwmmaitGed’. He was a being remembered in Indian folklore as a former inhabitant of the land, before going back to his home in the skies. Quite a number of marvels are attributed directly or indirectly to Makonaima while on earth, but most of all the carving of hieroglyphs (or petroglyphs) on rocks over a wide area in the Guianas, where they are some- times referred to as timehri. They can be found in the Orinoco, Amazon, Casiquiare, Cotinga and other large rivers; in Guyana they are located mainly at various falls and rapids in the Corentyne, Berbice, Essequibo, Cuyuwini, Potaro and Mazaruni rivers, but they are also found occasion- ally on mountain slopes, as in the case of the Ataraipu, close to the Kwitaro river. Modern writers agree that the vast majority of the engravings were done long before the Europeans arrived but there is some division as to whether the sculptors were ancestors of the Indians presently inhabiting the Guianas. The dominant view is that they were an early set of people who left no lineal descendanis. It can be seen from the description above that the Amerindian societies in Guyana were not highly developed; rather they were what Beckford calls ‘undeveloped’ societies. They were small groups scattered over a wide expanse of territory. The village constituted their largest political unit, though it is possible that several villages joined together to combat a com- mon enemy. Political and social hierarchies, fundamental to the develop-14 COLONIALISM AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN GUYANA. ment of class systems, were largely absent, if not completely so, while the available evidence strongly suggests that no system of slavery or of economic and social exploitation existed among them.»This is explained primarily by the fact that their economy was mainly a subsistence one and the profit motive was virtually nonexistent: Technologically, the communi- ties were pre-iron age ones. However, this point should not be overempha- sized, for a number of pre-iron age societies, including those of the Mayas, Aztecs and Incas, reached a high level of technological achievement. But the absence of iron implements and other features of the Amerindian societies in Guyana imposed certain constraints on the nature and rate of develop- ment there. While the Amerindians had not developed an ideal or perfect society (any more than any other people have been able to do) they had developed manufactures, systems of government, social customs and cosmological ideas which represented a bold and imaginative attempt to come to grips and live in harmony with their environment. It may even be argued that they had forged a way of life that reasonably satisfied their material and social wants. Their misfortune was that they were a neolithic, communal and non- capitalistic people who came into contact and confrontation with an iron age, individualistic and capitalistic people.Two El Dorado and Early Colonization The Dutch were the first Europeans to establish durable settlements in Guyana. Their activities were carried out mainly under the proprietorship of joint-stock companies (the WIC and the Berbice Association) and a family of merchant capitalists (the Van Peres) whose sole objective was to secure as much profit as possible with the minimum of expenditure {Conse- quently, the infrastructure of development was left largely to the colonjsis, who themselves arrived with little capital and even less knowledge of tropi- cal agriculture /These latter saw the country not’as an area of settlement but one of exploitation, where they hoped to make ‘‘a killing’? and return to Europe rich after a few yearsAThis, however, was not to be the pattern of development in the country, at-least not until the second half of the eigh- teenth century (and especially during the British period in the following cen- tury) when substantial fortunes were made“ by a number of individuals. Nevertheless, it was during the early Dutch period that many of the problems associated with the underdevelopment of the country became manifest. These included European mercantilism, scarce investment, ex- ploitation of the scarce labor resource, the export orientation of the econ- omy, European warfare and inefficient administration. ' , Dutch activities in the country must, of course, be viewed in relation to the wider.European activities in the New World and other parts of the globe. Regular contact with the New World began in 1492 with the first of a series of voyages of exploration by Christopher Columbus, on behalf of Spain. At first, the Spaniards concentrated on establishing colonies in the larger islands ofthe western Caribbean where they believed gold mines were located. However, the islands proved to be rather poor in mineral resources and the colonists gradually turned to agricultural and cattle-ranching pur- suits. From the 1520s a new era dawned in Spain’s exploitation of the Americas, with the conquest and looting of Mexico and Peru. 1 Meanwhile, Guiana existed as little more than a geographical expression in the Spanish vocabulary, though by the mid-seventeenth century all the chief participants in the struggle in the New World—Spain, France, En- gland, Portugal and the United Netherlands—had acquired colonies in this 1516 COLONIALISM AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN GUYANA J/ region, while it was rumored in the eighteenth century that Sweden and Prussia were seeking to gain footholds thereXAlthough the Spanish and the Portuguese were the first to acquire territory in Guiana, it was the Dutch who came to dominate the area. By 1750 they had established the colonies \jof Essequibo-Demerara, Berbice and Surinam@.. There were three main periods in European relations with the Guianas: the period of reconnaissance ‘and the quest for gald; the period of trade with the Amerindians in tropical “forSstproducts:aad ‘the period ‘of plantat ‘development. These three periods overlapped in some measure. For in- stance, the search for gold was carried on well into the eighteenth century, long after plantation development had commenged, but by that time it had become spasmodic and had lost its central importance in Europe’s relations with the region.” 1 a x The main reason for the awakening of serious European interest in Gui- ana was the belief in its immense wealth in gold and its association with a lost empire of the Incas. The rumor of such anempire first reached the ears of the Spanish shortly after their conquest of Peru in 1530, Woven into Peruvian myth was the idea that their ancestral home was the great empire of Paytiti, the ‘Tiger Father’, in the Amazon basin. It was said to have reached a level of civilization more advanced than that of Peru. Three other circumstances were to make this tale credible to the Spanish. The flight east- ward of Tupac Amaru, a prince of the Peruvian royal family, at the time of the Spanish conquest of Peru was interpreted by the Spanish as an at- tempt by him to regain his ancestral homeland. Shortly after this an Indian ambassador, not knowing about the conquest, visited Peru and fell unwit- tingly into the hands of the Spanish. When asked about his homeland, he gave a description of the legend of El Dorado (el hombre dorado)! which, falling on the gullible ears of the Spanish, confirmed them in their belief in the existence of a great empire somewhere to the east of the Andean mountains. The third event was the tale which came to the ears of the Spanish in 1590, about half a century after the search for El Dorado had begun. It linked the story of El Dorado with a golden city and the name of an Indian group, the Manaos (Manoas, Manaus, Mahanoas). The new addition came about as a result of the story told by Juan Martinez de Albujar in that year. He was the sole survivor of a Spanish expedition that had gone in search of El Dorado about fourteen years earlier, He had been captured by a group of Indians in the Caroni river area and lived with them for several years. Eventually, he decided to return to his countrymen, escaped from the Indians, and made his way via Trinidad to Margarita. There he related the story of his capture, embellishing it considerably. He alleged that he had been taken blind-folded to the residence of the emperor, situated in the great city of Manoa, a city so large that the journey through it had occupiedEL DORADO AND COLONIZATION 17 nearly the entire day. During his stay he had been treated kindly by the emperor and on his departure had been given a large quantity of gold, most of which had unfortunately been seized by brigands in Orinoco. He added to this story the detail about the emperor and his courtiers bathing them- selves in gold dust. It was this tale which linked the lost Inca empire with the people and city of Manoa. Though he had apparently not indicated the precise geographical position of Manoa, before the end of the century it had become associated with the ‘laguna de la Grand Manoa’, the supposed Lake Parima (Amucu), in present-day Guyana. Albujar’s description had, however, linked the story of the gilded king decisively with a people who really existed. The Manaos at the time apparently lived in modern Brazil, on the shores of the Urabaxi (ancient Jurubesh), on the southern side of the Rio Negro, between Boa Vista and Santa Izabel. By this time ‘Guiana’ had become a synonym for ‘gold’ in European myth and legend as the site for El Dorado moved eastward across the South American continent and came finally to rest there. This area lured persons, some to fortunes and others to their graves. El] Dorado like a curse took its heavy toll of human lives, many falling prey to hunger, diseases, animals, and wars with Indians. This scene of human wastage and destruction was repeated time and again in the history.of Guiana, both among those who sought riches and glory, and among those who were sacrificed like pawns jn a game of chess. The expedition of Don Pedro Malaver da Silva was the first to link Gui- ana with El Dorado. In 1576 he landed with about 160 men on the Guiana } coast, somewhere between the Essequibo and Oyapok rivers, and attempted ; to make his way from there into the interior, but due to diseases and Indian : attacks only one person survived. In 1584 Antonio Berrio began a series ot explorations, also in Guiana, though he did not traverse much of the region because of difficulties in finding an easily accessible route overland from the right-bank tributaries of the Orinoco, since the path was blocked by the, NS ) Sierra de Imataca, the 5,000-foot mountain range which runs parallel wit it. But from stories heard. from the Orinoco Indians he presumed that the mountain encompassed a great inland lake, that of the El Dorado legend. When he heard about Albujar’s story on his return from one of his expedi- tions in 1590 he became even more convinced about the existence of the golden city. He therefore occupied Trinidad and began preparations for another expedition; but before he could secure the necessary men and finances the English struck. In 1595 Sir Walter Raleigh destroyed-the small Spanish settlement in Trinidad and took Berrio prisoner. Raleigh himself had come in search of El Dorado. After extensive inquiry at home and abroad he became con- vinced that it lay exactly where Berrio believed it to be located. He sailed up the Orinoco but encountered problems similar to that experienced by18 COLONIALISM AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN GUYANA Berrio. In the following year he sent Lawrence Keymis, his lieutenant in the late expedition, to reconnoiter the area more carefully. Keymis divided his followers into two groups, sending one up the Essequibo river while he him- self traveled up the Orinoco with the other. But the only positive result was the increased knowledge they gained about the Essequibo river and an in- land lake somewhere around its upper reaches. Keymis might well have heard about the small Lake Amucu which overflowed in the rainy season, making it appear as an extensive lagoon. He named this lake Parima, declaring jit to be a vast inland lake. Yet another expedition was dispatched in late 1596 by Raleigh under Captain Leonard Berrie. He exploréd the Marowini, Corentyne and Oyapok rivers in search of a route to El Dorado and collected further information about Essequibo and its tributaries. Raleigh himself was unable to follow up these voyages because of his im- prisonment in England from 1603 to 1617 on conviction for high treason. In the latter year he was released from prison by undertaking to find a rich gold mine for the king near the right bank of the lower Orinoco river. He was specifically enjoined not to become embroiled in conflict with the Span- ish but this is precisely what happened., Worse still, he failed to find any mine and returned to England heartbroken. He soon lost his head on the executioner’s block.. . | It‘should be emphasized here that Raleigh’s second voyage was con- cerned with finding a gold mine, rather than El Dorado. It is possible that by this time he had come to the conclusion that El Dorado was either a myth or only a dim reality#In fact, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries wit- nessed only spasmodic attempts to find the city, and by the early nineteenth century, especially after the publication in 1804 of the carefully researched work of the German explorer Alexander von Humboltt, El Dorado had passed entirely into the realm of myth. Nevertheless, the quest for it had profound effects upon the region from Bogota to Guiana. It led to the dispatch of numerous expeditions into the deep interior of the northern part of South America, often resulting in great loss of life. It also increased European geographical knowledge of the area considerably and resulted in the acquisition of some gold from the Indians. Finally, and most decisively in the long run, it led to European colonization of the area.” This last point deserves further comment. From around the last three decades of the sixteenth century European interest in El Dorado became linked with the wider project of colonization of Guiana, The first attempt at colonization in this area seems to have been carried out by the Spaniard, Don Diego Fernando de Serpa, in 1569, when a small settlement was established at Cumana. From there he moved south- ward with some of his followers with the intention of founding a more per- manent settlement along the Orinoco river, but fierce Indian resistance put an end to his life and the early attempts at colonization. It was not untilEL DORADO AND COLONIZATION 19 1591-92 that the Spanish were able to establish a permanent settlement in Guiana, at St. Thomé, which remained the only Spanish possession in Gui- ana before 1723. The failure of the Spanish to establish a more viable colony in the area should not obscure the fact that from an early period they had entertained grand ideas about founding a large settlement there. In 1590 Berrio had been appointed by the imperial government ‘‘Governor of the province of El Dorado, otherwise called Guiana’. He had also outlined a vast project to colonize the area. Raleigh was obviously inspired by Berrio (whose secret correspondence on the subject he had seized) in putting forward his own ideas about coloni- zation. He aimed to destroy Spanish power in the Americas and replace it by that of the English. Guiana was crucial to this objective since England could use it as her beachhead to expand inland, undermining Spanish power and winning for herself a permanent place in the imperial world. The quest for El Dorade was also important to this plan, for this would increase her financial resources and help her to build up the fighting power necessary to oust the Spanish. Raleigh wanted to secure royal patronage and financial support for his project and so he painted a picture of Guiana as being a land of great natural and human resources, which only needed some enterprising men and some capital to develop it. At the same time the marvels of Guiana so enthralled him that he often failed to distinguish between fact and myth. For instance, he repeated quite glibly the story that in the deep hinterland of Guiana could be found men whose heads grew beneath their shoulders. This was obviously a more twisted version of the tale that the Spaniards had collected about the Ewaipanoma, a people living along the Caroni river, whose shoulders were said to be so high that they were on the same level with their heads.? It is possible that Raleigh realized that the stories were nothing more than myths, but was using them to arouse curiosity and in- terest in Guiana. His main contribution to the European colonization of. Guiana lies in the publication in 1595 of his book, The Discoverie of the Large and Bewtiful Empire of Guiana. It has been pointed out quite rightly by Timothy Severin that Raleigh’s so-called discovery was, in fact, no dis- covery at all, since the entire country through which he had traveled and every group that he had encountered had already been known to the Span- ish.4 But his book provided a much more accurate geographical account of the area than any previous work. He was also able to combine fact and fic- tion in an enthralling way, so that in short time his book had received fairly wide circulation in English, Latin, German and Dutch. This gives some indication of the popularity of the work and its importance in stirring up interest in Guiana among the European rivals of Spain. 4 The interest and enterprises of the various European nations in Guiana must of course be viewed in the context of the larger struggle they were20 COLONIALISM AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN GUYANA. waging against Spain in the Americas and in Europe itself. Up to that time Spain was unquestionably the dominant power in the Americas. She had claimed the entire area 300 leagues west of the Azores as her exclusive preserve and for about a century had sought to make good her preten- sions by papal writs recognizing her claims, injunctions forbidding for- eign nationals to enter the area without her permission, and military and naval power.-Nevertheless, her power had suffered continuous erosion in the sixteenth century due largely to the activities of alien corsairs and privateers preying upon her ships in the Atlantic and Caribbean seas, and her vulnerable towns and harbors. If Catholic France could find nothing in holy writ giving authority to the Pope to divide the non-Christian world between Spain and Portugal, still less could Protestant England and the Netherlands, which had recently repudiated both the.secular and the reli- gious power of the papacy. They had to secure ‘a place in the sun’, even if this meant poaching on the Spanish domains or ‘singeing the king of Spain’s beard’. Thus the French, and later on the English and the Dutch, carried on predatory activities against Spain in the New World and in Europe—the last two rivals dealing particularly telling blows against her in the late sixteenth century. By this time they had established a wide network of illicit trade with Spanish America, the Dutch network embracing such places as Margarita, Cumand, Rio de la Hacha, Santa Marta, Tierra Firme, Hispaniola and Cuba._ In spite of the advances made by other Europeans against Spanish power in the New World, they were unable to set up durable settlements there before-the seventeenth century. Not least among the factors responsi- ble for this was the retaliatory power of Spain against fixed, as distinct from mobile, enemy positions there. But the English and the French, and the Dutch with greater boldness, were becoming increasingly convinced that Spain could only bé brought to heel and themselves achieve greamess in Europe and the Americas by the establishment of colonies in the latter area. This could be seen in the proposals put forward by Raleigh in England and Willem Usselincx in the Netherlands. The English were the earliest of Spain’s enemies to attempt to colonize Guiana, but all their enterprises there during the first two decades of the seventeenth century were unsuccessful. We shall simply mention the at- tempts of Charles Leigh on the Oyapok river between 1604 and 1606; Sir Thomas Roe on the Amazon in 1610; Robert Harcourt on the Oyapok be- tween 1609 and 1613; and Roger North, again on the Oyapok in 1620. The English finally established a colony in part of present-day Suriname but this was ceded to the Dutch in 1667. (he earliest French attempt was around 1602 under the aegis of René Marée, Sieur de Montbariot, thougtrthe exact location of the settlement-remains uncertain. Several other settlements were attempted in Oyapok and Cayenne between 1613 and 1652, but it was onlyEL DORADO AND COLONIZATION 21 c——“sauianowm ° INNAND - INNYVZVAN 3 m 3 s 3 8 2 5 3 voluve Mazaruni-Cuyuni confluence22. COLONIALISM AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN GUYANA in 1664 that they were able to establish a permanent foothold on the conti- nent through the seizure and retention of a small Dutch settlement in Cayenne. The date of the earliest Dutch contact with and settlement in Guiana remains uncertain. Hartsinck, Rodway and a few other historians claim that by 1580 they were trading along the coast.5 On the other hand, Goslinga asserts that there is no certain record of their trading presence there before 1593, when the Spanish captured ten of their ships trading in dye along the coast. They were apparently also trading at that time in tobacco, mainly along the Venezuelan coast. Still, up to 1597 the Wild Coast was largely unknown to them. For instance, in that year the Dutchman, Enkhuisen, received a license from the States General, or Netherlands government, to sail ‘‘to the unknown and-unnavigated havens of America, to wit, the laid of Guiana.’””” r ~ . : The first extant Dutch record of an actual voyage to Guiana is that of Cabeliau (Cabeljau), clerk of the ship Zéeridder, in 1598. The expedition in which he participated traversed the entire Wild Coast and visited all the main rivers of present-day Guyana: He clairned that before that time the Dutch did not know many of the rivers, etc. of the Wild Coast.® It was also in 1598 that the first extant map of Guyaria was produced. At the be- ginning of the following century enterprises to Guiana became more regular and these were accompanied by ificreasing interest in colonizing the area.” In 1603 an anonymous writer, most likely Willem Usselincx, produced’ a document outlining the advantages of colonizing Guiana and followed this up in 1608 with a more substantial one. In the following year Hugo Grotius’ Mare Liberum appeared in print, stressing that the Spanish had no right to monopolize the New World. All these developments clearly signaled that a new era had dawned in Dutch relations with that part of the globe. “Thete lest spied ebaie-conee ae the dates of the earli h set- Uements on the Wild Coas Dalton and Webber believe thata fort was éstablished there i-t580, but this date has been rejected by other writers, including Goslinga who suggests that 1595 is a more likely date: in that year the Dutch established the fortified trading posts of Orange and Nassau on the Amazon river. In 1613 they had four settlements between the Amazon and Orinoco rivers and in subsequent years they established settlements at Oyapok (c.1615 and 1626), Cayenne (1626 and 1658), Marowini (c.1650) and Commowini (¢.1650).!° » The records of the early European colonizing experiments on the Wild Coast bear out two striking and somewhat contradictory features. On the one hand the area ‘was considered as offering great. bilities for eco- nomic exploitation; on the.other it proved extremely difficult to colonize it effectively. At the outset, of course, the area was particularly attractive toEL DORADO AND COLONIZATION 23 the rivals of Spain (and Portugal) for several reasons. It was relatively remote from the Spanish centers of power in the New World and this was likely to make it easier to establish settlements without much interference from Spain. The lower reaches of the rivers were generally quite accessible, thus allowing a fair degree of inland trade with the local inhabitants, who cultivated or collected numerous plant products of high commercial value, = and who were also thought to possess large quantities of gold, silver and other precious metals.*The large Indian force might also be exploited for agricultural and mining purposes. Finally, the area might be used to create colonies which would challenge the dominance and superiority of Spain in the New World. European merchants and adventurers had hoped for quick profits, but the reality was quite otherwise. + One major reason for this was that contrary to their hopes, the Spanish (and to a lesser extent the Portuguese) did not leave them alone. Though Guiana without gold held little attraction for Spain at the time, and though she was quite occupied with exploiting and attempting to hold on to Mexico and Peru—the fairest jewels in her colonial crown—she nevertheless refused to cede an inch of ground or a blade of grass to her rivals. Not only did she regard any cession as contrary to the letter and spirit of the arrange- ments made in 1492 and 1494, but considered it a sign of weakness, the thin end of the wedge that might prize open and lay bare her empire in all its nakedness and vulnerability. Consequently, she pursued a policy of con-, * tinuous harassment and destruction of all rival settlements in any part of her ‘so-called’ domains. Thus the monopolistic practices pursued by Spain at this point sounded the death knell for many ambitious but feeble attempts at colonization by her rivals. What the Spanish failed to do the Indians did, and what the Indians left undone diseases completed. After a while none but the hardiest and sometimes the most reckless came out voluntarily to the region, and the lack of a significant white presence proved for a long time a hindrance to European attempts to exploit the area, Added to this was the fact that there was little private capital available in England and France at the time for colonial ventures, while the governments of these two countries were not much interested in colonization, or at least in financ- ing colonial projects. Even royal patronage was not readily forthcoming where private capital was prepared to back the scheme. The English govern- ment under James I was particularly anxious not to antagonize the Spanish and played a major role in undermining Raleigh and North’s colonizing schemes. The Dutch were different from-the English and French in so far as they had much greater surplus capital to invest in overseas undertakings. Most of this surplus was in the hands of the capitalists in Amsterdam. As Peter Geyl points out, in the context of the early seventeenth century, “‘So great was the surplus capital at Amsterdam that it could not all find employment‘ 24 COLONIALISM AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN GUYANA in commercial enterprises or government loans. . .’’. '' However, the Amsterdam capitalists showed greater interest in trading with Northern Europe, the Levant, the Mediterranean and the East than with the Ameri- cas. It was therefore largely the merchants of Zeeland who pigneered the Dutch undertakings in this quarter. But the Zeelanders themselves Were on the whole more interested in establishing a commercial rather than a colo- nial empire. Like the British in the mid-ninéteenth century, they regarded colonies as millstones around their necks and thought that they could secure quicker and bigger profits by trading than by farming. Later they were to modify their views and attempt to establish a few viable agricultural colo- nies. But the lack of attention to the early settlements in Guiana speeded up their demise or helped to keep them in a state of infancy for some time. Most of them were crudely erected trading posts, located along the coast or the lower banks of the rivers. Here and there a few larger settlements existed, indulging in the cultivation of tobacco, sugar and indigo, in addi- tion to trading with the Indians. This is certainly the picture which emerges in respect of the settlement at Kijkoveral on the Essequibo river, which was probably in existence from around 1613.!7 In spite of the various setbacks experienced by the embryonic colonies, by the second decade of the seventeenth century the coastline had become a hive of activity by Europeans seeking to whittle down the power of Spain in the New World and secure a place for themselves there. The Dutch were creating the greatest problems for Spain, especially in regard to the inter! ing trade. They were also struggling for their independence from Spain in Europe. In 1609 the Truce of Antwerp was signed between the two parties, allowing a twelve-year respite from war. It did not settle permanently the causes of conflict between them, nor did it prevent the Dutch from continu- ing their inroads into the commercial monopoly of- Spain in the Indies. Their increasing intrusion synchronized with their maritime and commercial activities in the Far East, West Africa, Brazil and Europe—in fact, in all the important maritime areas of the globe. In 1602, with a view to promoting their eastern trade, they formed the Dutch East India Company (VOC) which was heavily capitalized by the merchants of Amsterdam. Their activities in the west were also increasing, so that by the 1620s they had gobbled up about half the entire export trade of Brazil (an appanage of the Spanish crown since 1580), while their trade with West Africa had also become significant, It is in this context of increas- ing Dutch trade on a global level that one must view the formation and activities of the Dutch West India Company (WIC). The Company was organized in 1621, the same year that the Truce of Antwerp came to an end, though the idea of its formation had been mooted several years before. As early as the first decade of the century, Willem Usselinex had put forward an elaborate plan of colonization based on theEL DORADO AND COLONIZATION 25 establishment of such a company. He called for the capitalization of a company backed mainly by funds from the States General, and stressed the economic rather than the military importance of such a company. It was to be primarily one engaged in founding and administering plantation settle- ments and promoting bilateral trade between them and the metropolis. This would develop the nation’s commerce and industry further and would ulti- mately prove to be a greater asset than the VOC. It took some years before the Company was actually founded and when it came into existence it was against a background of strong opposition from influential persons in the Netherlands. Not least among these were the Directors of the VOC who did not want a second major company similar to theirs in operation, although its activities were intended to complement rather than to compete against those of the VOC. The hostile attitude of the Amsterdam capitalists helps to explain why the Company was never heavily capitalized. Apart from the VOC, there were those who wanted to prolong the peace with Spain and who rightly saw the formation of the Company as a threat to that peace. This threat became even more evident when the Regents (or Peace Party) were overthrown by the Orangists (War Party) in the Netherlands. While the preamble to the Company’s charter spoke only of peace and commerce, it was obvious that war was to constitute an important aspect of its activities. Contrary to what Usselincx had anticipated, the public showed little interest in purchasing the shares, so that. it took two years before the original share capital was subscribed fully. In the end the States General had to come to its rescue by contributing the major share, with Amsterdam, Zeeland and the other provinces contributing the remainder.!> QTrade and war held about equal weight in the actual operation of the Com- pany, while plantation development lagged far behind. The Directors be- lieved that the volume of trade would be so great that substantial dividends would accrue to the shareholders. As it turned out, the only substantial divi- dend the Company paid came from the profits of war.'* In keeping with its desire to promote trade rather than plantation colonies the WIC between 1634 and 1648 sponsored the foundation of a number of entrepéts to promote trade in the Caribbean—Curagao, St. Eustatius, Aruba, Bonaire, etc.—especially with the Spanish possessions. They were. never intended to be agricultural colonies and never became such. Even on the Wild Coast, where the Company also had settlements, these were viewed more as trade centers than agricultural colonies. This was the situation in Essequibo until the second half of the seventeenth century, when it turned its attention to sugar cultivation, Berbice was conceived in slightly different terms, perhaps because the WIC djd not actually establith that colony, but rather farmed out the right’to colonize the area to Abra- ham van Pere, a member of the Zeeland Chamber. The colony also had a26 COLONIALISM AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN GUYANA slightly better beginning than that at Kijkoveral. Within a year or two after its foundation in 1627 about sixty white men were residing there (though, according to a contemporary Spanish source, in 1637 it had only forty Dutchmen).!5 The colonists cultivated tobacco for a little while and later changed to sugar. The situation in respect of Berbice and Essequibo highlights some of the basic contradictions in Dutch, and indeed European, colonial enterprises in the Americas. In spite of the fact that the Dutch owned the colonies in ques- tion, ‘they showed no commitmént to developing them rationally and sys- tematically. Most of the capital that they invested in New World enterprises was used to purchase slaves for sale to the Spanish, Portuguese and, later, the English and French colonies. Credit was given and finance capital “Zinvested more readily in alien colonies, in hope that the merchants and others concerned would be able to expand the profits they secured from them. Thus the Dutch played a major role inthe foundation and early de- velopment of the sugar plantations in the English and French West Indies. So important was this contribution that some writers refer to the Dutch as the ‘foster fathers’ of those colonies~The WIC also poured a large amount of capital into northeastern Brazil, which they had captured from the Por- tuguese in 1630. By contrast, the nascent colonies in Essequibo. and Berbice were starved of capital, credit and skills for.a long time and did not develop at rates comparable to those of the French and English colonies: ¥ For instance, the number of settlers remained small, while there was a chronic shortage of manpower due to the failure to obtain voluntary Amerindian or involuntary African labor on an appreciable scale. The Amerindians were prepared to trade with the Dutch but not to do regular work for them. Attempts to coerce them to work often led to conflicts, a situation which, from the Dutch viewpoint, had to be avoided. The shortage of African labor was due to the fact that the slave mer- chants could secure higher prices for their cargoes in foreign colonies than in Guyana. The situation concerning Berbice was particularly interesting, since from around 1634 Van Pere had secured permission from the WIC to acquire slaves directly from Arguin on the African coast. He appears to have sent those few he obtained to the Dutch Windward Islands in the Caribbean where he also had colonies. Thus, according to a contemporary Spanish record, in 1637 Berbice had only twenty-five slaves.'® , ’ Essequibo was facing other problems at the time. The volume of trade continued to be rather small, and the situation was aggravated by the activi- ties of English, French and Dutch illicit traders who refused to recognize the WIC’s claim to monopoly of the trade. The situation was so depressing that in 1632 the Company passed a resolution to recall the settlers and aban- don the colony; but the Zeeland Chamber came to the rescue. It undertook to lodék after the administration and financing of the colony, in the name of : “Jg EL DORADO AND COLONIZATION 27 the parent Company and made a contract with Van Pere—and later with other private traders trafficking with Brazil and the Caribbean—to ship the products from Essequibo (almost exclusively annatto) to Europe. In spite of this, the years after 1632 were hardly different from the earlier ones. Several colonists had been driven to the nadir of despair and were anxious to return home. The fact is that the harsh realities of life in Guyana were not and could not be ameliorated by the measures that the Dutch had taken 80 far to improve the situation; there was not sufficient motivation to make either Essequibo or Berbice viable. This was reflected in the way both the States General and the WIC approached the tasks of governing and financ- ing the colonies. Like every other imperial power, the Dutch were faced with the task of establishing an effective administration to allow them to exploit the mate- tial and human resources of their colonies. In the case of Guyana, however, for a long time the States General made little attempt to place the adminis- tration of these colonies on a sound footing. The lack of close supervision over the colonies by this body closely résembled the state of affairs in the English and French \Caribbean colonies during the early seventeenth century. But the governments of both England and France’ assumed direct political responsibility much earlier than the Dutch government. On the other hand, the Spanish and Portuguese governments had from the outset exercised close supervision over their colonial possessions. In spite of these differ- ences, the Dutch imposed similar restrictive practices on the colonists and attempted to secure substantial economic returns with little capital inputs into the economies. Dutch administration in Guyana was a maze of overlapping jurisdiction among the different colonial institutions. In theory, the authority of the States General was paramount as it was responsible for overseeing all colonial affairs~Its wide-powers allowed it to interfere from time to time in the business of the Guyana colonies, either when issues were formally brought before it by the WIC or when it believed that pressing cigeum- stances merited its unsolicited intervention. But such interventionwas strictly limited in practice, especially in the early years of colonization, It was concerned with concentrating its energies and resources on pressing affairs in Europe and allowing the WIC to promote its colonial interests in the New World. The WIC itself (the XIX) paid scant attention to the development of the colonies in Guyana; it showed more concern with establishing entrepots—or rather farming out the right to do so—in order © promote trade-with the other European colonies in the New World and obtaining wealth through robbing the Spanish treasure fleets on the high seas. It was composed of five chambers: Amsterdam, Zeeland, Maze (comprising Rotterdam, Delft and Dordrecht), North Quarter (six West Friesland towns), and Friesland and28 COLONIALISM AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN GUYANA Gronigen (town and country). The two main chambers were Amsterdam, with eight representatives on the directorate of the XIX, and Zeeland, with four representatives. There was considerable bitterness, jealousy and ani- mosity between each of the chambers and especially between the two major ones. Each chamber kept its own treasury, built its own warehouses, fitted out its own mercantile fleet and insisted that the ships return to the ports from whence they had set out. In 1628 the XIX took the decision to reserve the area on the African coast between Cape Palmas and the Cape of Good Hope to itself, while farming out the administration of the other areas of its charter to its individual chambers. By this arrangement Zeeland became responsible for the administration of the Dutch Guiana colonies.!7 That chamber was itself composed of three subdivisions— Middelburg, Vere and Vlissingen—each of which displayed a high degree of particularism. Narrow regulations had to be passed defining the role of each of these subdivisions. This was an ominous concession to parochialism and was clearly an ill wind that blew nobody any good. It certainly helped to produce disharmony and administrative inefficiency in the WIC. ,. In 1627 and,1628 the WIC put together certain general regulations for “=the founding and administration of new colonies. Each proprietor was to undertake to settle sixty colonists comprising at least twenty families within four years on the territory allocated to him. He was to have exclusive land, water and mineral rights over the area, and also limited civil and criminal jurisdiction over the colonists. Finally, the new settlement ws to be exemp- ted from all forms of taxation by the WIC for ten years. The WIC also thought of setting up a Central Council under the chair- manship of the Commander of Cayenne to have on-the-spot oversight of affairs in the colonies on the Wild Coast. Briefly, it entailed sending a representative from each of the colonies to the Central Council. Bach colony was also to send a report to the Council concerning its affairs once every six months, though this was later extended to once every year. The Council was to have appellate jurisdiction over all sentences passed in the colonies involving fines of more than f.50. At the same time, individual proprietors were to be responsible for the formulation of specific laws for the good government of their colonies, which were to be sent to the WIC for approval before any colonists could be sent out. The laws were to be in keeping with the ‘civil and criminal code made by the Company or here- after to be made.’”!8 Though by no means comprehensive, this plan of administration was intended to bring about some uniformity among the colonies. However, it appears that the Council was never actually set up, largely because most of the efforts at colonization proved ephemeral. In spite of this, Berbice and Essequibo, and later Demerara, developed similar administrative institu- tions. At the outset the only institution of any consequence was that of theEL DORADO AND COLONIZATION 29 Governor or Commander; all local administrative, judicial and executive powers were concentrated in him until the last two decades of the seven- teenth century. He saw his responsibility as governing in the interest of the proprietor rather thafi the colonists, but he often carried out his duties inefficiently. It is not surprising, therefore, that by the 1640s the colonies had advanced economically little beyond the condition in which they found themselves when they were first established.'% The middle decades of the seventeenth century saw several important developments which had profound impact both upon the WIC and the colonies in the New World. For the colonies in Guyana the impact was mainly negative, although some of the developments could have had posi- tive effects on them. The year 1640 witnessed the acme of the WIC’s power. In that year it bearded the Spanish in their own den and defeated them in the battle of Itamaraca. By this time its blows and knocks against Spain had reduced her to a shadow of her former might and made her anxious to secure a peace treaty with the Netherlands government. This treaty was finally signed in 1648, much to the regret of the War Party in the Netherlands, and especially the Directors of the WIC. The Treaty of Miinster (Westphalia), as it was called, recognized Dutch jurisdiction over the territories which they held in the Americas at that date. It also recognized their right to reconquer the Portuguese possessions that they had once held in Brazil, some of which had now been wrested from them by the Portuguese. But the treaty was silent, or at best ambivalent, on the question of Dutch right to colonize still ‘unoccupied’ lands in the Americas; nor did it speak to the issue of the Spanish and Dutch boundary limits in Guiana. As it was, these issues became major points of contention between the two parties later on. Some years before the treaty had been signed (in 1641 to be precise) a ten-year truce had been arranged between the Netherlands and Portugal. It did not settle the issue of Dutch occupation of northeastern Brazil but, like the Treaty of Miinster later on, it was seen as a muzzle on the WIC, which depended heavily on the profits of war for its revenue. After 1648 the Com- pany had to jettison this mode of securing income. To make matters worse, around the mid-seventeenth century it became engaged in a ruinous finan- cial attempt to maintain its hold on Brazil} where it had invested substantial capital in order to build up the sugar industry. In the end it was forced to concede defeat with the loss of Recife, its last possession there. The end to privateering meant that the Company had to try to recoup its losses by more peaceful means. Had the Directors been more farsighted they might have turned their attention to developing viable plantation colo- nies, as the VOC was doing in the East Indies. However, tradition died hard in the case of the WIC. Even before the era of colonization the Dutch had _ made their livelihood and in fact had secured substantial wealth from fish-30 COLONIALISM AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN GUYANA ing, shipping and trade in general.2? Having made themselves the center in Europe for the exchange and distribution of goods, they—or at least the WIC—found it difficult to shift to more sedentary pursuits; therefore, the Company and a large number of private traders continued to carry on con- traband trade with the Spanish Indies. As Charles Wilson has pointed out about this trade in the period immediately after 1648, ‘Its reward was to be seen in the heavily protected fleet of thirty to fifty ships that arrived in the Dutch ports every autumn carrying the silver with which Spain paid for timber, grain and food sold by the Dutch.’?! The WIC did not enjoy a monopoly of the foreign trade, as licensed and unlicensed private traders competed with the Company for the carrying trade. The truth is that in spite of its continued participation in the trade the WIC was in a parlous financial condition. In 1647, when its charter was renewed for a further twenty-five years, the VOC gave it a subsidy of f.1,500,000. At the same time the States General strongly enjoined it to put its financial house in order. But this was not to be, and it continued to chart a course which led ultimately to its financial ruin and demise. It is against this background that Dutch enterprises on the Wild Coast must be viewed around the mid-seventeenth century. The colonies already established continued to cry out for assistance. On the other parts of the -coast, fresh attempts were made at colonization and as before most of them ended in failure. Nevertheless, from around 1650 a new development began to take place to the west of the Essequibo river. In that year a group of Dutchmen from Tobago started a colony at the junction of the Pomeroon and Moruka rivers.”2 In the following year they were joined by another set of colonists, many of them Jews fleeing Brazil, which was gradually being reoccupied by the Portuguese. The settlement appears to have been in- dependent of that on the Essequibo and it is not even certain whether at the outset it had the official backing of the WIC. Nevertheless, it slowly took root, engaging in some trade with the Indians and beginning the cultivation of sugar, but it was not until the following decade that it became an impor- tant colony. Up to that time no private enterprise had been allowed in Essequibo,* due to the monopolistic policy of Zeeland, which attempted to keep any but Company officials out of the settlement and trade with that colony. This policy brought the Chamber into frequent conflict with Amsterdam which saw that some private enterprise was necessary to the proper development of the colony. A certain measure of private emterprise had already been allowed by the Company with various areas under its jurisdiction. In 1633, with the sanction of the States General, it had authorized Dutch nationals to carry on privateering along the Brazilian coast on payment of certain ‘rec- cognition’ (licensing) fees. Two years later the Caribbean had been opened to privateering and trade, with the exception of those places in which the Com-EL DORADO AND COLONIZATION 31 pany carried on trade. Amsterdam wanted a more liberal policy than this, one which would allow any Dutch national to trade in the entire area of the charter, subject to the proper ‘recognition’ fees. Zeeland refused to grant this concession in respect of Essequibo since ‘free trade’ was likely to benefit the merchants of Amsterdam, who would soon have monopolized the trade. As it was, while the Leeward Islands and Suriname were thrown open to free trade in the seventeenth century and Berbice in 1732, it was only in the late eighteenth century that this was conceded in the case of Essequibo. The Zeeland Chamber, however, modified its monopoly in the seventeenth century to allow any Zeelander to trade directly with the colony; in the following century, it also allowed a very limited trade with the British North Americans. On the other hand, it was quite willing and even anxious to allow private persons to settle in Essequibo in hope that they would introduce the capital and skills needed for an upturn in the for- tunes of the colony. The size of the European population in the colony—exclusively Com- pany personnel—cannot be determined at this point, but Lincoln Burr suggests that around 1642 it was not more than thirty persons, involved exclusively in trade with the Indians.”*_At any rate, 1656 the Chamber proposed to make-free land grants to new settlers and exempt them from taxation for five years. After that. time they were.to.pay,.an.annual poll tax acco gar, indigo, cotton or other products}, alternatively they might be asked"t6 pay a@-tax~equivalent to a tenth of their produce. Any cvlonist finding minerals was.to be allowed to mine the same tax-free for five years, after which he was to pay a 10% tax on his profits..Phe colonists ‘wefé als6"t6" bé allowed*to*bring:slaves from Africa, subject to special eepulatons The Chamber only proposed to retain its monopoly of the annatto trade.?5 We do not know how the Directors of the WIC responded to these proposals as a whole, but they certainly disagreed with the suggestion that private traders should be allowed to prosecute the slave trade; nor did they take kindly to the attempts of the Zeeland Chamber to monopolize the an- natto trade. The other proposals would hardly have occasioned a dispute and we can take it that they became the basis for a new thrust at coloniza- tion. Thus in March 1657 the first set of private colonists, twelve in all, arrived in Essequibo.¢ Unfortunately, the new proposals did not provide a new lease of life for the colony. The chronic shortage of capital was not relieved, and faced with this financial problem the Chamber entrusted the colony to the three Walcheren cities of Vere, Vlissingen and Middelburg, in hope that they would succeed where it had failed: The takeover constituted a further devo- lution of authority over the colonies but the results anticipated were not realized. The paltry budget of f.24,000 proposed by the cities was but a drop32 COLONIALISM AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN GUYANA. in a bucket and though it was soon tripled it still could not float the colonial economy. In 1662 the States of Zeeland provided a further subsidy of £.500,000.?7 Other attempts were made to infuse new life into colonial undertakings in Guyana. The cities agreed in 1658 to commission Groenewegen to put the new settlement in Pomeroon on a sound footing. They also decided to send out Cornelis Goliat as engineer, commissary in cliarge of stores, and com- mander of the twenty-five soldiers they proposed to dispatch for the defense of the colony. Goliat arrived in August 1658 along with a number of settlers and the colony, now officially named Nova Zeelandia, was given much attention with a view to increasing its population and establishing new plan- tations. The large fort which the cities hoped to erect there was never built but several colonists were attracted to the colony. In 1658-59 four ships filled with colonists and one with slaves left Brazil for Guyana, chiefly Pomeroon (although some of them went to Essequibo and Berbice). It is also possible that with the temporary closure of the Brazilian slave market to the Dutch, the Guyana colonies were able to obtain more slaves than normally. The Brazilian planters brought with them some capital and great technical knowledge of sugar cultivation. It was from this time that sugar cultivation became an important aspect of the economic life of the colonies, but the first export of sugar from Guyana is said to have been a small ship- ment from Essequibo to Zeeland in 1637.78 The energies thus unleashed gave new lease of life to the colonies, espe- cially to that in Pomeroon. We learn from contemporary English and Span- ish sources that in the early 1660s Pomeroon had a flourishing colony, with several plantations laid out there.?? But this turn of fortune was soon halted by the second Anglo-Dutch War (1665-67) which had a disastrous impact upon that colony and also upon the one in Essequibo. In 1665 an English expedition sent to Guyana under Major John Scott captured the two colonies and disrupted plantation fife fora while. Berbice fared better: not only did it repulse a similar attack, but it/as able to send an expedition, comprising European soldiers from the ggfrison at Fort_Nassau, Indian auxiliaries and African slaves, to relieveEssequibo. By this time the main body of English troops had withdrawn from the colonies, leaving only small detachments to guard them.¥These were unable to hold out due to hunger and lack of ammunition. The garrison in Essequibo quietly surrendered to the force sent from Berbice, while that in Pomeroon was destroyed by a French force. The English were to suffer further reversals; in 1667 their flourishing settlement in Suriname was captured by the Dutch, who eventu- ally retained it by the terms of the Treaty of Breda (1667) which ended this phase of Anglo-Dutch hostilities. In 1668, therefore, the Dutch had four colonies on the Wild Coast— Suriname, Berbice, Essequibo and Pomeroon. The war had demonstrated i /EL DORADO AND COLONIZATION 33 that over the years the defenses of Berbice had been put in a somewhat stronger position than those of Pomgtoon and Essequibo. Berbice did not receive any real setback as a ru th war, but it was the opposite with the other two colonies in Guyan#. of the settlers had fled Pomeroon during the war and nearly all the plantations had been destroyed or aban- doned. The colony continued to exist for a while longer but only in name. For the next two years the Walcheren cities struggled in vain to put it back on its feet. Essequibo, however, was able to recover shortly afterwards and by 1669 was in a sounder position than it had been on any previous occa- sion. The minute books of the Zeeland Chamber for that year mention a cargo of 50,000 to 60,000 Ibs. of leopard wood (letter wood) being shipped from that colony to Zeeland.*° Still, the cities, quite disenchanted with the economic returns they had received from the colonies so far, were unwilling to finance them further and handed them back to the Zeeland Chamber in 1670. As before, the latter hoped for much but did little to improve the con- dition of the colonies. Four years later the WIC itself was in such a desperate financial position that it was forced to wind up its operations, leaving a debt of some £,6,000,000. It never directly brought a colony into being, with the possible exception of that in Essequibo. Instead, it farmed out the privilege of founding colonies to private enterprise and left the colonial governments substantially in their hands. The only obligation it undertook specifically was supplying slaves to the colonies and even this it did rather inefficiently in the case of the Guyana colonies. ‘But then, it may be argued that the Company’s raison d’étre was to pursue the maritime war against Spain rather than founding and administering colonies. The States General looked upon it as an instrument to assist the Mmperial government to “concentrate the public resources on the land war while the Company was expected to finance and carry on a maritime war. . .’’. 3! It did this quite effectively. It also provided the Netherlands with a number of experienced and excellent seamen, stich as Piet Heyn, Joost van de Trappen, Maarten Thijssen and Admiral de Ruyter. As a result, by the mid-seventeenth century the Nether- lands had become the leading maritime nation in Europe. The demise of the Company did not result in the States General taking direct control of the colonies. Rather, a second WIC was founded in hope that it could succeed where its predecessor had failed. It received its charter on September 20, 1674, and began operations on January 1, 1675. It was granted a twenty-five year franchise in the first instance and basically the same powers as its predecessor, though its territorial monopoly was more restricted, extending only to the western coast of Africa, Essequibo, Pome- roon, Curacao, Bonaire and Aruba. It was also granted the exclusive fran- chise to supply slaves to Berbice and Suriname. The new Company decided to place far more emphasis on trade than on war, but even so, it achieved34 COLONIALISM AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN GUYANA. much more modest results than its predecessor. Its trade declined continu ously and by the 1730s was quite negligible. Administratively, it attempte: some streamlining and economy by reducing the number of Directors fron nineteen to ten and cutting their salaries. But the retention of the system o organization into chambers perpetuated the divisions and animosities whict had plagued the first WIC, the results of which were acutely felt in Esse quibo and Demerara, especially from around the mid-eighteenth century During the period 1675 to 1732 several attempts were made, mainly b: private interests in Zeeland, to increase the number of settlements an trading posts on the Wild Coast. A Spanish memorial of around 167 speaks of the existence of about five Dutch settlements of varying sizes (ex clusive of Essequibo and Berbice) and two trading posts there. It als deciares that Pomeroon, where the Dutch had simply maintained a tradin; presence since 1669, had hecome their ‘‘best trading establishment. . . 01 the whole coast, consequently they guard it carefully.’’** This trade wa probably carried on by private persons, for it was only in 1679 that a facto (trading agent) of the Company was stationed there.*3 However, the Com pany never completely lost sight of the possibilities of the area and in 168 it sent Jacob de Jonge as Commander of a new settlement with instruction to erect a fort and put everything on a sound footing as soon as possible It however failed to provide the capital necessary to make the colony viable Thus, even with the best will in the world, the Commander could not d much; he had little equipment and only a small labor force. In 1689 the set tlement had only six Europeans, forcing him to rely on four Indian slave and the free Indians to provide most of the labor. In 1688 he informed th Directors that the fort had been completed, but ‘‘everything for want o nails is tied together’’.3# It was also without cannon. As it was, De Jonge’ three years’ residence led to nothing substantial. Few if any plantation were laid out, nor is it certain that his presence enhanced the trading powe of the Dutch in Pomeroon. The colony was conceived in a fit and born i a state of coma. - Anend was brought to its fitful existence in April 1689 when thirty-thre Frenchmen and several Caribs attacked it and put the inhabitants to flight The Commander had intended to return to his residence on the departur of the French but receiving intelligence that they were engaged in hostilitie in Berbice, he decided to retreat to Essequibo. On learning of these develop ments, the WIC decided to abandon the experiment, and ordered al personnel—with the exception of three persons left there to maintain Dutc! claims to the area—to proceed to Essequibo.. The Dutch made no furthe attempt to colonize the area until the late eighteenth century. The older colonies of Essequibo and Berbice survived the vagaries o European warfare in the Americas, but developed rather slowly, especiall between 1675 and 1732. Information on the estates during this period iEL DORADO AND COLONIZATION 35 patchy, but it allows us to conclude that plantation development was still at its embryonic stage up to the 1730s. According to the contemporary writer ‘aan van Berkel, in 1672 there were only five estates along the banks of Berbice. In 1720 there were eight proprietary estates.* In that year the erbice Association decided to establish ten sugar estates in the Canje and rbice river areas, each with a labor force of 100 slaves, and in the next years.it laid out eight new estates, two short of the number projected. he records for 1733 indicate a total of ninety-three land grants to private individuals up to that time for the Berbice river and twenty for the Canje river settlements, though many of them were not under cultivation. A ewly-arrived planter in that colony in 1735 stated that just over eighty inters resided there in that year.*© The situation in Essequibo was worse. ly three or four Company estates had been established in 1700 and five vin 1735. The private estates numbered eighteen in 1687, but around 1700 only twelve of them seem to have been in cultivation. By 1735 the number _ had increased to about thirty. Until then, therefore, the colonies had failed ‘to attract any significant amount of capital, in contrast to Suriname which "was expanding its plantation base steadily. "yo Sugar was virtually the only plantation staple in the colonies up to the iE, eighteenth century, when some attempt was made to cisaraity the economies by cultivating coffee, cocoa, cotton, indigo and rice*Laurens de Heere, Commander of Essequibo (1719-29) tried unsuccessfully to grow "coffee on a large scalé and after a few more attempts by his successor, Her- manus Gelskerke (1729-42), little attention was paid to it as a cash crop in that colony. A similar result was obtained when Gelskerke tried to cultivate “indigo and cocoa as export crops. Sugar therefore remained the main crop “in Essequibo, but later, cotton was grown on a significant scale. Berbice _also paid some attention to producing coffee from around 1721 when it was first introduced into the colony from Suriname. It thrived there much better than in Essequibo and before the end of the century was easily the primary export crop of that colony. Cotton also became an important crop in the _ last years of the century. f Initially, most plantations were situated some distance above the mouths _ of the rivers. The early plantations in Esscquibo were located around Kij- koveral, some thirty miles inland, at the confluence of the Mazaruni and _ Cuyuni rivers (tributaries of the Essequibo river). Similarly, Fort Nassau, about fifty-five miles up the Berbice river, became the nuclear area around which most of the early estates in Berbice were located. These sites were _,chosen in preference to the coastal areas because they offered greater ~socdtrity against external aitacks, they required less work to establish irriga- tion fa s, and they were believed to be healthier. Nevertheless, planta- tions gradually began to spread downriver and also along the coast in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. This last area was found to be much36 COLONIALISM AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN GUYANA more fertile than the riverine ones for the cultivation of sugar and cotton. ; From the description above it is quite clear that up to the early eigh- teenth century the Dutch achievement in Guyana was dismal. The_most important factors accounting for this are occasional epidemics within the coloniesyconflicts with the Indians, European warfare in the circum- Earibbean, lack-oflarge-scale_capital inputs into th economies, and continued inefficiency in the administration of the coloniesgT hese problems had arisen at the beginning and they became more urgent'ds time went by. More will be said on the question of disease in a subsequent chapter, but it must be pointed out here that the colonists were never free from the possi- bility of contracting such diseases as malaria, yellow fever and dysentery, though the longer they resided in the colony the better chance they had of overcoming the first two. Care must be taken not to overemphasize the frequency of the outbreak of diseases, but it is known that these occurred periodically and carried off Africans, Indians and Europeans, as was the case in Essequibo in 1693. ' flndian attacks, while less frequent than during the early days, continued to cause worry. For instance, in 1692 the Indians destroyed a trading fac- tory in Canje. ffhe-Dutch believed that a major reason for such attacks was because they ften bought or captured persons as slaves from among the Indians living in the vicinity of the colonies. In 1686, therefore, the Esse- quibo government made a treaty with the Indians residing in the neigh- borhood of that colony agreeing not to enslave them. While the treaty acted as a brake upon Dutch slave-raiding activities against the neighboring Indians, it-did not solve the problem of the enslavement of Indians—an issue not resolved until the nineteenth century. Up to that time colonists were still allowed to enslave Indians living in the remote hinterland. It is generally believed that Berbice was party to this agreement. Nevertheless, in the following year conflict broke out between the Indians and the Euro- peans there. The’ precise reason for this outbreak is uncertain, but it was rumored that the whites intended to exterminate the Indian chiefs. They did not, of course, need such an opportunity for attacking the whites, for the latter had frequently dealt with them with a heavy hand, driving them from the most congenial areas along the lower reaches of the rivers and generally disrupting their lives. As it was, on one of those rare occasions in the history of Guyana, they joined with African slaves in killing several whites and destroying a couple of estates. The attack, while relatively small-scale, was a further setback to a colony already struggling to stand on its feet. A third and more important reason for the slow development of the colonies was the French attacks in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The depredations occurred during the War of the Grand Alliance (1689-97) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13). While these wars were concerned mainly with European continental issues, they soonEL DORADO AND COLONIZATION 37 spilled over into the colonial arena where the rivalry for trade, empire and booty was quite sharp. The first French attacks were launched in 1689 when some members of Admiral du Casse’s fleet destroyed several estates in Berbice and demanded aranson of f.20,000. Since the colony was already in dire financial circum- stances the Governor signed a draft for payment by the proprietors in Eu- rope. This sum was reduced subsequently to f.6,000 and some hogsheads of sugar, in return for the release of some prisoners whom Suriname had captured during an abortive French attack on that colony shortly before. Berbice was attacked again in 1712, with even more disastrous results; it was ravaged and subjected to a ransom of f.310,000—about f.118,024 payable immediately in slaves, agricultural products and cash, and the remainder by a bill drawn once again on the proprietors of the colony. This time the Van Peres, who were still the proprietors, refused to pay the ransom and the Netherlands government therefore ceded the colony to France. It was governed for a short while by an association of Marseilles merchants. In 1714 some Amsterdam merchants and a member of the Van Pere family agreed to redeem it for f.108,@00, a sum which the French were quite happy to receive for a colony that’ was more bother than profit. The French attacks on Essequibo were not quite as disastrous, but they also added to the burden of life for the settlers whose situation was at the time worse than that of their countrymen in Berbice. Several estates were raided in 1708 and a ransom of f.50,000 was imposed on the colony, paya- ble in slaves, plantation produce and other estate property, and a little cash. The WIC had to pay two-thirds of the ransom and the private planters the other third. The colony was once again harassed, looted and burnt in the following year by the French. The early years of the eighteenth century were therefore a trying time for the colonies, especially since the French were more concerned with bleeding them to death than acquiring and developing them. They lost most of their slaves, sugar mills and estate produce, and nearly all their cash which at the best of times was always in short supply Rehabilitation was a slow and painful process. ‘@ Naturally, few persons cared to settle in colonies which had so often and so nakedly demonstrated their vulnerability to internal and external forces; because of this the settler population remained small. Suriname, while by no means immune to the vagaries of European capitalist conflicts, offered a much better prospect of success for the Dutchman who was hardy and adventurous enough to risk his capital and even his life there. The colony had enjoyed a measure of prosperity under the English. It suffered some setbacks during the early years of Dutch occupation because the English took with them most of their sugar mills and slaves (about 1,200), but the Dutch set about rebuilding it and before the end of the seventeenth century it had become by far the most valuable Dutch colony on the main-