Chapter II

THE present-day borders of British Guiana are of relatively recent creation and represent the limits of British power and influence in the area rather than the limits of any original natural or social units. To the archaeologist, anthropologist, culture historian, or geographer the Guiana region is best defined as an area of land bounded by the Orinoco river on the west and north-west, by the Amazon river and the Rio Negro on the south and south-west, and by the Atlantic Ocean on the east and north-east. The anthropologist or archaeologist interested in plotting the cultural boundaries of Amerindian tribes in the prehistoric and historic periods is sometimes obliged to go beyond these confines, and some authorities would include even the islands of Trinidad and Majaro in the Guiana region.

It would be misleading to suggest that the prehistory of this region is known with any certainty, but recent work has led to the establishment of a tentative sequence of periods based upon the excavation and examination of archaeological remains for the prehistoric period, and upon a study of language and culture distribution for the historic period.[1] So far as many of the Amerindian peoples are concerned the historic period began very recently, and there are some groups about which so little is known that they should be considered to be still in the prehistoric period. Rouse has synthesized the existing information into a series of hypotheses about the distribution and movements of tribes within the area.[2] He supposes that the Guianas were settled some time before A.D. 900 by Indians who spoke languages different from the main Arawakan and Cariban groups of later times, and whose present-day descendants are the tribes called Warrau, Shiriana, Waica, and Guaharibo. It is necessary here to explain the different meanings which have been attached to the terms Arawak and Carib; terms which are generally applied to the main tribal groups found in the Guianas. Whilst the earliest explorers applied the terms to specific tribal groups, the Spaniards in the sixteenth century gradually came to use the word Carib for any Indian group which was hostile to Europeans, and the word Arawak for friendly peaceful groups. Further confusion in the meaning of the terms was introduced when they were used to designate the two main linguistic stocks of the region. Rouse suggests that Arawakan and Cariban are more useful designations for these linguistic stocks.

The supposition is that the earliest inhabitants of the Guiana region spoke non-Arawakan and non-Cariban languages, possessed a simple nomadic hunting, gathering, and fishing culture and made none of the pottery which distinguishes later periods. Around A.D. 900 Arawakan-speaking tribes with a more complex culture based on shifting agriculture and manufacturing a distinctive type of pottery moved into the area. It is presumed that they moved down from the region of the Orinoco, and it is possible, though unproven, that Cariban speaking groups either came in simultaneously or were perhaps already there practising the simple nomadic culture of the early period. It must be stressed that the ‘periods’ refer only to the sequence of introduction of various traits of material culture. In fact both the rudimentary hunting and fishing (Marginal) and the more advanced settled agriculture (Tropical Forest) cultures persisted far into the historic period.

It was suggested at one time that the Tropical Forest culture was in fact a debased form of a more complex, Circum-Caribbean culture the remains of which have been found in Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and parts of Venezuela.[3] Later research has shown that the pattern of settled agriculture found in the Guianas probably pre-dated the Circum-Caribbean culture with its more marked development of ceremonial and religious buildings and artefacts, and probably had little or no connexion with it. The general picture of the Guiana region in the prehistoric period is one of cultural and linguistic diversity among rather small groups which were generally mobile rather than stationary over long periods. Arawakan- and Cariban-speaking groups seemed to have been interspersed, particularly along the coast of what is now British Guiana. Nowhere in the region was there development of a very complex culture, much less a civilization comparable to that of the Maya or Aztecs.

Although Columbus sailed along the Guiana coast in 1498, no attempts were made at European settlement until much later. During the sixteenth century there were a few attempts at trading along the coast, but it was the voyages of Raleigh in 1595, Captain Keymis in 1596, and Captain Berrie in 1597 that directed European attention to the region. Quite apart from Raleigh’s interest in the legend of El Dorado and the fabulous city of Manoa, he conceived the grand design for an English empire between the Amazon and the Orinoco; an empire which would offset Spanish influence in the Americas, and break Spain’s trading monopoly. His own voyage, like that of Keymis and Berrie, was primarily directed to the discovery of El Dorado, the fabulous and mythical city of gold, but he only succeeded in mapping the coastal area and most of the river estuaries, and in establishing friendly contact with the Amerindians as the others had done. All three published accounts of their voyages, of which Raleigh’s Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empire of Guiana is the best known. Despite the increased interest in the area which resulted from these publications, there was no real diversion of the trend of colonization from the North American colonies as Raleigh had hoped. In 1620 the Pilgrim Fathers decided, after some discussion of Guiana as an alternative, to sail for New England, and this marked the end of any possibility of large migration to the south. The decision was a wise one if account is taken of the hostility of the Spanish and Portuguese in the region, and the absence of any adequate governmental support, to say nothing of the inhospitable nature of the country. England was not the only nation interested in this area. A Dutch navigator, Cabeliau, published an Account of the … Voyage to America, undertaken in 1597-8, in which he mentions having sailed along the Guiana coast without investigating it very closely. His account, along with those of the English explorers, produced a petition to the Dutch States-General for permission to colonize the Guiana coast. Although a charter was not granted until 1621, there is evidence for the fact that a Dutch settlement was established before this and a fort built on an island in the Essequibo river at its confluence with the Cuyuni and the Mazaruni, near the present-day Bartica triangle. This fort, named Kijkoveral, was to remain the seat of Dutch administration in the area until 1718 when it was moved over to the river bank and then some twenty years later down to the mouth of the Essequibo.

The French also had aspirations for trade and settlement in the Guiana region and as early as 1613 a settlement was started in Cayenne. All three nations, Dutch, English, and French, claimed rights in the whole region from the Orinoco to the Amazon, but no one of them could possibly hold more than a small section of it. Each nation started settlements during the seventeenth century: the British at Tararica on Marshall’s Creek in Surinam; the French in Cayenne and Sinamary; and the Dutch on the Essequibo, Berbice, and for a short time on the Pomeroon. All settlers depended a great deal on the goodwill of the Amerindian population--not only for trade, but also for their very survival. Attempts to enslave the Indians met with little success and where it was tried it usually led to trouble. The tendency was to regard Amerindians as allies and trading partners and to import African slaves for manual labour in the settlements and plantations.

At this stage the focus may be narrowed on to that part of the Guiana region which was eventually to become British Guiana, and this involves a closer examination of the Dutch settlements in Essequibo and Berbice.

To understand the story of Dutch activities in the Guiana region during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it is essential to know something of the Chartered Company to which its administration was entrusted. The first Chartered West India Company of the Netherlands was incorporated in 1621 for a period of twenty–four years, the charter being renewed in 1647 for another twenty–five years. In this first half–century it was directed by five ‘Chambers’ of share–holders: the Amsterdam Chamber held four–ninths of the shares; Zeeland two–ninths; Maas (Rotterdam, Schiedam, &c.) one–ninth; the Northern Quarter one–ninth; and the Chamber of Stad en Landen (Groningen and Friesland) one-ninth. Each chamber had a number of directors who in turn elected a council to run the Company. The States–General also nominated one member, making nineteen in all. A new charter granted in 1675 reduced the number of the council to ten, known as the ‘Assembly of Ten’. The primary interest of the Company was in trade, and although they wished to keep their monopoly against the encroachment of private traders, they were rarely able to maintain as many ships on the run as the Essequibo settlers required. The position was further aggravated by changes in the actual responsibility for the region as between the various chambers, and the net result was that the Directors–General in the Guianas rarely received the backing from the Company that would have enabled them to push ahead with the development of the region. On the other hand they were the Company’s agents and as such could not allow full expression to the desires and aspirations of private settlers. The Berbice settlement was under separate management and is discussed separately below.

During the seventeenth century Dutch traders penetrated far into the interior of Guiana from Essequibo, Berbice, and from another settlement on the Pomeroon which lasted until it was conquered and disbanded by the English in 1665. Cotton, dyes, and wood were obtained from the Indians in exchange for trade goods, but the cultivation of crops such as sugar gradually came to be of equal and then of greater importance. By 1704 the Company operated some plantations on the river banks near Fort Kijkoveral and private cultivations were also spreading slowly down the river banks. An extensive trade network spread as far south as the Rupununi and to the west as far as the Orinoco, but eastward in the Demerara region there were only two trading posts. During the next twenty-five years the shift from trade to the more profitable business of sugar cultivation was accelerated, a trend confirmed by the transfer of the administrative centre to Flag Island (known as Fort Island) at the mouth of the Essequibo river in 1738.

In this same year a new Secretary to the Company arrived in the colony; a man with whose name, Laurens Storm van ’s Gravesande, is associated a period of expansion and development. On the death of the Commandeur, Gelskerke, in 1742, Storm van ’s Gravesande was provisionally appointed in his place and this was confirmed in 1743. He remained Commandeur until 1772 and died in retirement at his plantation Soestdijk in Demerara in 1775.

All historians of Guiana have laid stress on Storm van ’s Gravesande’s work in developing the region and in opening up Demerara. His dispatches to the directors of the Company have been translated into English and a published selection of them gives a very detailed picture of the growth of Essequibo and Demerara during the middle of the eighteenth century.[4] He was undoubtedly an energetic and enlightened man, dedicated to the country as few have been since, but the developments which took place under him were largely inspired by the lure of the substantial profits to be had from the cultivation of plantation products on the rich coastlands. English planters played a prominent part during this period, many of them moving across from the depleted soils of Barbados and the other islands whence they received both economic and military support that was often of the greatest use to Storm.

In 1746 the Demerara region was declared open to settlement and with great rapidity the river banks were put under cultivation. So quickly did the new settlement develop that a Commandeur of Demerara (Storm’s eldest son) was appointed in 1750. Amongst the very earliest settlers were a number of English from Barbados of whom one Gedney Clarke was the most important.[5] By 1760 Storm reported that the English were in a majority in Demerara, but a register compiled by him in 1762 shows only 34 out of 93 plantations owned by Englishmen. Others may have acted as attorneys or managers for Dutch owners. The same register indicates that Essequibo had 2,571 slaves on 68 private plantations in 1762, while Demerara had 1,648 slaves on 93 plantations. As Storm himself remarks, these numbers are probably far too low since many planters made false returns to avoid taxes. However, similar registers, and probably similarly incorrect, for 1769 show that Essequibo had 92 plantations with 3,986 slaves and Demerara 206 plantations with 5,967 slaves.

These slaves were, of course, mainly Africans, many of them brought by the new settlers from the Dutch and British West Indian Islands. Since the growth of cultivation in both Essequibo and Demerara depended upon a sufficiency of slave labour and upon its tractability, these became problems of increasing magnitude as time went by. The Company of which Storm van ’s Gravesande was the representative claimed a monopoly in the slave trade to the Guianas, but Company’s ships were infrequent and brought few slaves. Consequently their price was high. The English settlers and their friends in Barbados were able to run a profitable trade in smuggled slaves, which were at one and the same time cheaper and of great benefit to the development of the region. Storm frequently mentions his inability to stop such smuggling, and despite one or two cases being brought to the Court of Justice little seems to have been done about it. In view of the latter-day incentives legislation to increase industrial investment in the West Indies it is interesting to note that in the eighteenth century new colonists in Demerara and Essequibo were given free land and ten years’ exemption from poll-tax.

As the area of land under cultivation gradually expanded the ratio of slaves to whites similarly increased, thus posing a problem of control. Each colony was supposed to have some sort of garrison, originally intended to protect the trading interests of the Company, and the soldiers were paid by the Company. Storm makes many derogatory references to the soldiers of the Essequibo and Demerara garrisons, but whatever their quality they were far too small in numbers for any sizeable operations. In 1763 Storm reported that the Demerara garrison consisted of one sergeant, two corporals, a drummer, and fourteen men, while that in Essequibo had one sergeant, one corporal, a drummer, and eighteen men, four of whom were disabled. The settlers themselves, burghers as they are always called, were liable for militia duty but were badly organized and could rarely agree on who was to take command in an emergency. Storm van ’s Gravesande saw very clearly that his main strength lay in friendly relations with Amerindian groups, who, being supplied with arms, were prepared to fight off Spanish encroachments or to subdue slave rebellions and track down runaways. Even so, the possibility of slave insurrections became increasingly acute and in 1763 the slaves in Berbice staged a rebellion which threatened to spread to Demerara.

The Berbice settlement was quite separate from the Essequibo and Demerara colonies for over 200 years after its founding in 1627. In that year one Abraham van Pere of Vlissingen was permitted by the Zeeland Chamber to settle forty men and twenty youths in the Berbice river provided they kept clear of the other Dutch trading areas. Van Pere was himself a merchant and he was permitted to run the colony as ‘patroon’, that is as a sort of feudal lord, appointing his own local Commandeur. The house of van Pere remained in control of the colony until 1714, when it passed into the hands of another group of four Amsterdam merchants who assumed rights as patroons. In 1720 a new joint-stock company was formed in order to raise more capital. With the founding of the Berbice Association, as it was named, the intention was to open new plantations for the production of cocoa, cotton, indigo, and coffee. The West India Company still maintained a general jurisdiction over the area, with a monopoly of the slave trade and the right to claim payment from the Association for each ship trading with Berbice.

In 1732 the States-General issued a charter to the Berbice Association which established it as a separate body from the West India Company, to which latter, however, the Association was to pay 600 guilders annually and from which it was to continue to buy slaves. The directors of the Berbice Association were empowered to appoint a Governor (who also had to swear an oath of allegiance to the States-General) and to levy head-tax and impose customs duties. The Association’s estates in Berbice were under the management of master-planters who were in turn supervised by a General Superintendent. In addition to this there were at this time ninety-three private plantations in the Berbice river and twenty in the Canje Creek. By 1762 the population of the colony had reached 346 whites, 3,833 Negro slaves, and 244 Indian slaves. A great slave revolt broke out in February 1763 during the course of which the slaves virtually controlled the colony for eleven months. They attempted to make a treaty with the Governor--granting them their freedom and occupation of the upper reaches of the Berbice river in exchange for leaving the Dutch in undisturbed possession of the lower reaches. Of course no such treaty was entered into; armed support was obtained from Holland, the slaves recaptured, and their leaders executed in the most barbarous fashion it was possible to devise. Roasting alive over a slow fire was a favoured method. At one period during the rebellion there appeared to be the possibility of its spreading to Demerara but the Demerara border was blocked by a detachment of Amerindians, and Gedney Clarke sent reinforcements from Barbados to the Demerara river on his own initiative.

Disturbances of one kind and another were common amongst the slaves right up to the time of emancipation, but there were no other really large-scale rebellions and no settlements of runaways were allowed to continue in the bush as in Surinam.

Although the colonies of Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice were not finally ceded to Britain until August 1814, British influence was increasingly felt from 1781 onwards, and effective British control dates from 1796. After Holland joined Russia, Sweden, and Denmark in the ‘Armed Neutrality’ agreement during the American War of Independence, Britain declared war upon her, and English ships engaged in a series of occupations of Dutch colonies. In February 1781 Demerara was taken first by privateers and then by two ships of Admiral Rodney’s fleet which accepted the surrender of Demerara and Essequibo. In October of the same year Lieut-Colonel R. Kingston was appointed Governor of the Two Rivers. The British occupation proved to be short-lived since a French squadron (France being allied with Holland, of course) recaptured the territories early in 1782. The Comte de Kersaint, commander of the French force, assumed direct control of the colonies and very quickly set about making improvements. He is mainly famous for his proclamation declaring the intention to build a capital city at the mouth of the Demerara river. Before this time Demerara was administered from Borsselen island, well up-river, and for some years there had been discussion of the desirability of moving the headquarters nearer to the mouth. In 1748 a Brandwagt, or small guard-house, had been erected on the east bank of the river at its mouth, and when Lieut-Colonel Kingston became Governor he immediately proposed building further fortifications on this site, and moving his headquarters there. But it was the Comte de Kersaint who issued the most ambitious and civic-minded proclamation and actually made a start in laying out a town. He proclaimed:

That it is considered necessary, from the great extent of this river and its banks, to have a Capital, which will become the business centre, where Religion will have a temple, Justice a palace, War its arsenals, Commerce its counting-houses, Industry its factories, and where the inhabitants may enjoy the advantages of social intercourse.

This is perhaps the only instance of an European colony, among thousands throughout the world, which has arrived at some magnificence without the establishment of either town or village.[6]

When the colonies were restored to the Dutch in 1784 the new town was already established and growing rapidly. It was named Stabroek in honour of the President of the Ten and became the seat of the Directeur-Generaal of both Demerara and Essequibo thus recognizing the prior importance of Demerara. By 1789 there were 88 houses in Stabroek and the inhabitants consisted of 238 whites, 466 slaves, and 76 free coloured people.

After the resumption of Dutch control a period of intensified conflict began between the colonists and the Company which foreshadowed all the subsequent conflicts between local interests and those of the metropolitan power. In order to understand this conflict it is necessary to discuss the growth of the machinery through which the colonies were administered. Until the formation of the Chartered West India Company of the Netherlands in 1621 one cannot speak of ‘government’ in this region unless one is considering the political organization of the Amerindian tribes. Even after the Company was formed its posts were really trading depots, and it was not until the spread of private settlement in the eighteenth century that colonization really got started. Until 1831 Berbice was administered quite separately from Essequibo and Demerara and never had any real representative institutions, being governed directly on behalf of the Berbice Association. The Essequibo settlement had been founded a little before 1621 and until about 1690 its affairs were administered solely by a Commandeur appointed by the Company. By about 1690 the Company had several plantations on the banks of the Essequibo river near to Fort Kijkoveral,[7] and they had become important enough to require a manager for each. These managers, along with the Commandeur and the Company’s Secretary, constituted a council which sat to manage the Company’s affairs or to form a court of justice when necessary. In addition to these Company officials there were a few free settlers operating plantations but they had no voice in the running of the colony. By 1701 the Essequibo settlement, including four trading posts as far apart as the Mahaicony Creek and the Pomeroon river, consisted of only sixty-seven Europeans including free settlers.[8] In 1698 a head-tax of 2½ guilders (4s.2d.) per annum was levied on each slave belonging to private settlers and this money was paid into a fund known as the Company’s taxes or Company Chest. Provision was also made for an acreage tax on private plantations, but this was never actually levied. The thirty or so private planters owned about 800 slaves and their contribution to the costs of administration was small. On the other hand they were not represented in the government of the colony.

During the early part of the eighteenth century there was a gradual move from the river banks down to the coast and when the seat of government was moved to the mouth of the Essequibo river in 1739 the Company instructed that the Council of Policy and Justice should consist of six members: the Commandeur, Secretary, three servants of the Company and one representative of the colonists, who were not servants of the Company. In 1743 Gravesande, who was now Commandeur, created a College of Kiezers or Electors for the purpose of nominating representatives of the private planters for the Council. The College of Kiezers consisted of six burgher officers, who were officers of the militia, membership in which was obligatory for every settler in the colony. These constitutional arrangements formed the basis of a system of administration, features of which persisted until 1928.

The period during which Storm van ’s Gravesande was Commandeur (1742-72) was the period during which Demerara was settled and developed to a point where it became more important than its parent colony, Essequibo. So rapidly did Demerara grow as an area of coastal plantations after 1746 that by 1750 it had become necessary to appoint a separate Commandeur. Gravesande was made Directeur-Generaal of the two colonies and his son, Jonathan Samuel appointed Commandeur of Demerara. The two colonies still shared a Court of Policy and a Court of Justice, but these courts were now separated and only in the Court of Justice were the independent settlers represented by two members elected by the College of Kiezers of Essequibo. Demerara continued to grow rapidly, having been thrown open to free settlement. In 1767 there was another change in the constitution of the Court of Policy whereby two ‘burghers’, or independent settlers, were given seats. Demerara was now given a College of Kiezers of its own and it elected one member, the other member being elected by the Essequibo College. In 1773 four new public offices were created; those of Fiscal, VendueMaster, Captain Commandant, and Predicant. The Fiscal not only supervised the collection of the Company’s taxes but also acted as the law officer of the government in the same manner as a modern Attorney-General. The Vendue-Master was given the sole power of making public sales in the colony. The Captain Commandant took over command of all local forces and the Predicant was the minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. At the same time further reforms were made in the constitution. Demerara had become so important that it was decided by the Directors of the Company, and approved by the States-General, that there should be separate Courts of Policy and Justice for each of the colonies of Demerara and Essequibo and that in each colony there should be four free planters elected by the Colleges of Kiezers to the Courts of Policy. The other members of the Courts of Policy were to be the Directeur-Generaal, the Fiscal, the Vendue-Master, and the Captain Commandant, but the Directeur-Generaal had a casting vote thus giving the Company’s servants a majority of one over the free planters. The members of the Courts of Policy were also to constitute the Courts of Justice except that the Fiscal had no seat in the latter.

By this time the costs of administration were much higher though the head-tax on slaves remained the same and a small customs duty of 2 per cent. hardly added anything to the Company Chest. It had become the custom for the planters to pay extraordinary taxes for special purposes, and these funds were kept in a separate account known as the Colony Chest. Periodic efforts to increase the taxes for the Company Chest were vigorously resisted by the planters though they usually agreed to the payment of taxes for the Colony Chest.

After the disorganization consequent upon the British and French occupation of the colonies during the American War of Independence a period of reorganization and constitutional reform ensued. It is not necessary to go into all the details but the main result was an intense dissatisfaction on the part of the planters at the proposal that the number of their representatives in the Courts of Policy and Justice should be reduced to three as against the Company’s five, and that the head-tax on slaves should be increased to 6 guilders (10s.). The colonists not only refused nomination but refused to pay the increased taxes levied by what they termed the ‘pretended council’. As a consequence of the conflict and of the number of petitions sent to Holland, a committee (foreshadowing future Commissions of Inquiry) was formed there to consider the planters’ grievances. This committee drew up a report recommending a ‘Concept Plan of Redress’, and two commissioners were appointed by the States-General to proceed to Demerara to implement the proposed reforms. Since this Plan of Redress was taken as the basis for the constitution after Britain acquired the colonies, it is worth outlining the constitutional arrangements to which it gave rise.

The Plan[9] provided that there should be one Court of Policy for both colonies to consist of the Directeur-Generaal, the Commandeur of Essequibo, the Fiscal of Essequibo, the Fiscal of Demerara, two colonists of Essequibo, and two colonists of Demerara. The Directeur-Generaal was to have a casting vote. Two Courts of Justice were to be established, one in each colony, and they were to consist in Demerara of the Directeur-Generaal, six colonists, and one Adviser; in Essequibo of the Commandeur, six colonists, and one Adviser. These provisions gave the colonists a much greater voice in the colonies’ affairs, and the procedures for their elections were regularized. In each colony the size of the College of Kiezers was increased to seven, and the members were to be elected for life by those colonists possessing twenty-five or more slaves. The only duty of the College of Kiezers at this time was to submit a double nomination whenever it was necessary to replace a member of the Court of Policy or Justice. From these nominations the Council concerned selected the new member by ballot. Since provision was made for the yearly retirement of one colonist Councillor from the Court of Policy and the retirement of two colonists every two years from the Courts of Justice, the Colleges of Kiezers had to meet at least annually, and although their powers were minimal they could form the nucleus of planter activity and their existence demonstrated the recognition of ‘colonist’ versus ‘Company’ or ‘official’ interests.

The Plan was put into effect by the Commissioners in 1789, and after their return to Holland they reported most unfavourably on the Company’s administration. Consequently the charter was not renewed and the colonies passed under control of the States-General in 1792, now being known as the United Colony of Demerary and Essequebo.

Soon after this new system of government was introduced Holland became involved in the wars of the French Revolution; the Prince of Orange fled to England and the Netherlands were transformed into the Batavian Republic allied with France. In Demerara and Essequibo there was little enthusiasm for the new Republic, but on the other hand the colonies did not openly support the exiled Stadtholder and form an alliance with England. Therefore in 1796 a British expeditionary force from Barbados was sent to occupy the colonies . They surrendered peacefully under generous terms of capitulation with the whole Dutch administration being retained in office and the constitutional arrangements of the Plan of Redress remaining effective .

Shortly before the British assumed control one other event occurred which was to be of considerable constitutional significance later on and this involved the very important question of control of revenue. The existence of two separate public accounts, the Company Chest and the Colony Chest, had always been somewhat anomalous and was, like the College of Kiezers, indicative of the duality of interest of ‘officialdom’ and ‘colonists’. Technically the raising of taxes for the Colony Chest and their expenditure was under the control of the Directeur-Generaal and the Court of Policy but it had become accepted that the colonist, or ‘unofficial’, members of the Court of Policy must agree to the extraordinary taxes that went to make up the Colony Chest. As time went by the colonists began to feel that they had the right to know that Colony Chest funds were being spent to their satisfaction, and although no constitutional mechanism existed to embody such a right, after the Plan of Redress was implemented the colonists sought to get some such mechanism established. Before this happened the Batavian Republic was established in Holland in 1795, the Governor left the colony, and to add to the confusion there was a slave insurrection. Since funds were urgently required to subdue the slave rebellion the members of the Court of Policy met in joint session with the College of Kiezers to discuss the situation. At this ad hoc meeting held on 3 June 1795 it was decided that the Colony Chest should be controlled by a special Combined Council composed of the ‘unofficial’ members of the Court of Policy plus four Kiezers, two from Demerara and two from Essequibo. In the stress of the emergency situation the colonists had managed to gain a concession to which they subsequently clung with great tenacity. When a British expeditionary force assumed control of the United Colony in the following year, it was agreed as part of the terms of capitulation that the ‘ancient laws and usages’ of the colony should remain in force, but the question arose as to whether the recently formed Combined Council, or ‘Colonial Finance Department’ as it was termed, was a part of those usages and laws. It was decided that in fact the Colonial Finance Department was not a properly constituted body, but to meet the wishes of the planters a new plan was adopted to provide for the election of six special Financial Representatives. These were to be elected by residents in possession of twenty-five or more slaves and their sole function was to sit with the Court of Policy, with the right to vote, when it was discussing the raising of revenue by taxation. The Financial Representatives thus acquired virtual control over the imposition of taxes but had neither power over, nor responsibility for, their expenditure.

Although the colonies were returned to the Batavian Republic after the Treaty of Amiens, this was an interlude of less than a year after which they were again occupied in 1803 and this time remained British.

[1] See particularly: John Gillin, ‘Tribes of the Guianas’, in J. H. Steward, ed. , Handbook of South American Indians, iii, 799-860; Irving Rouse, Guianas: Indigenous Period (Mexico, 1953); Clifford Evans, and Betty J. Meggers, ‘Preliminary Results of Archaeological Investigations at the Mouth of the Amazon’, American Antiquity, xvi (1950), pp. 1-19.

[2] Guianas, pp. 97-98.

[3] Julian Steward, ‘American Culture History in the Light of South America’, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology (Albuquerque), iii (1947), 85-107.

[4] C. A. Harris and J. A. J. de Villiers, ed. , Storm van ’s Gravesande: the Rise of British Guiana (1911).

[5] The relations between Barbados and the Guianas were extremely close right through the period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. James Rodwav in his Guiana: British, Dutch and French (1921), asserts that Barbados was first settled by a party from the Oyapok, and that she was indebted to Guiana for her first planting.

[6] James Rodway, History of British Guiana (1891-4), ii, 7.

[7] See above.

[8] Sir Cecil Clementi, A Constitutional History of British Guiana (1937), p. 25. This chapter relies heavily upon this standard work.

[9] Text in Clementi, app.