Raymond T. Smith

Copyright 2000:   All Rights Reserved

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CHAPTER I

NATURAL RESOURCES

THE facts of outstanding importance that must influence every stage of any discussion of British Guiana are, that it is a British colony; it has a land area of approximately 83,000 square miles but the bulk of its 557,960 people live and work on only 4 per cent. of its surface; the population is racially heterogeneous and growing rapidly; its economy is primitive being based mainly on the plantation cultivation of sugar, the extraction of bauxite, and the cultivation of rice; the vast majority of its people desire political independence and an increased standard of living.  In many ways it is a typical underdeveloped colonial territory, but its small population.  its proximity to and relations with the West Indian federation, its relatively unexploited hinterland, and its recent political history each serve in one way or another to give it a place of special interest in the Caribbean and even in the pan-American area.

ECOLOGICAL REGIONS

British Guiana lies on the north-east shoulder of the South American continent, between one and nine degrees of northerly latitude and between 57° and 61° of westerly longitude.  Behind a north-easterly facing coast-line of some 270 miles the land stretches south for about 450 miles to its border with Brazil.  It is flanked by Surinam on the east and Venezuela on the west.  Though larger by far than any of the old British West Indian colonies, its small population and mainly uninhabited territory make it less important economically and politically than either Trinidad or Jamaica for the present.

    It is usual to regard the country as falling into three or four geographical zones such as coastal strip, forest, savannah, each having distinctive characteristics.  A threefold scheme such as this, while being adequate for the kind of general outline required here, could be further elaborated to cover other important geological, soil, and climatic variations.

I.  Coastal Zone

This is a densely populated and intensively cultivated ribbon of land running along most of the coast-line and for a short distance along the banks of the principal rivers.  Origin­ally cleared from mangrove swamp in the eighteenth century, most of it lies below the level of the sea at high tide.  It has been made habitable and cultivable by the construction of complex and costly sea defences and drainage canals.  The coastal zone is composed of alluvial deposits overlaying white sands and clays, and it varies in width from about ten to forty miles.  Cultivation rarely extends beyond about ten miles which represents the present limit of the drainage and irriga­tion schemes, and in any case the rich coastal soils quickly give way to infertile sandy soils farther inland.  The soils of the coastal areas are mainly compact clays, pegasse and riverain silts, with thin bands of reef sands occurring here and there.  The pegasse (tropical peat) soils are usually found behind the coastal clays, and are not extensively used for agricultural purposes usually being toxic and declining rapidly in fertility when cultivated.  The reef sands are less fertile than the heavy clays but are suitable for market‑garden crops when fertilized.  The bulk of agricultural produce is grown on the coastal clays and riverain silts, though cultiva­tion does not extend very far up the rivers.  About 500,000 acres of the coastal zone are under cultivation and another 400,000 are used for cattle rearing.

2.  The Forest Zone

South of the coastal plain the land rises to a gently un­dulating area of scrub plain and forest.  Stretches of white sand are broken through by rock structures of various kinds and this is the area of present mineral exploitation, particularly bauxite, gold, diamonds, and manganese.  The soils of the interior are sandy and relatively infertile for the most part, but they support various kinds of forest cover with one or two areas of savannah.  Five main forest types are distinguished covering a total of about 70,000 square miles or about four‑fifths of the total land area.  Rain‑forest occurs on loams, lateritic earths, and loamy sands, while the other principal type, seasonal forest, tends to occur on lighter soils.  On the white sands and thin soils a dry evergreen forest is found.  Marsh forests and swamp forests are found on the pegasse and alluvial clays where these are not drained and cleared.  It is estimated that about l,000 different types of timber are to be found in the forests of British Guiana, and many of these are marketable if they can be extracted and processed.  Of the 70,000 square miles of forest it is estimated that s4,000 square miles are exploitable or potentially exploitable but at present extraction is severely limited by lack of accessibility and the most opti­mistic estimate is that during the next twenty or thirty years no more than 14,000 square miles will be accessible.  There is already a considerable export trade, particularly in hard­woods such as Greenheart (ocotea rodiaei) which is widely used for marine constructional work, and there is no doubt that British Guiana’s forests constitute a national asset of the greatest importance.  In 1957 a local company was formed for the manufacture of particle board which will utilize certain types of timber that are not at present marketable.

In addition to timber the forests are also the source of an industry for the collection and export of balata.  Balata is the coagulated latex of the bullet‑wood tree (Manilbara bidentata), and is used for electrical insulation, in the manufacture of golf balls, &c.  The manufacture of charcoal in the upper reaches of the Demerara and Essequibo rivers is an old-established industry, and firewood is collected and widely used in sugar factories and some small power stations.

Most of the known mineral wealth of the country, which consists in bauxite, gold, diamonds, columbite, and manganese, falls within the forest and savannah zones.  The extractive industries will be discussed in Chapter IV and it may merely be noted here that further geological exploration, mapping, and the development of communications may reveal unexpected mineral deposits.  It should also lead to a more intensive use of deposits that are at present uneconomic to extract.  A widespread belief in the ‘vast untapped resources of the interior’ has been a constant, and often politically influential, element throughout Guiana’s history.

3.  The Savannahs

The main savannah area, the Rupununi, lies in the south­western part of the country and comprises an area of about 6,000 square miles.  The Kanuku mountain range divides this area into a northern and southern section and accounts for about 1,750 square miles of its area.  Another ‘intermediate’ savannah area of some 2,000 square miles, enclosed by forests, lies about sixty miles inland from the mouth of the Berbice river.  Both the Rupununi and the intermediate savannahs are used for cattle grazing, but the quality of the soils and of the grasses they support is poor, with the result that the number of stock per acre is very small.  Apart from the open grasslands in these savannah areas, there is a limited amount of land suitable for cultivation in the foothills of the mountains and along the flood plains of the principal rivers.  At present these are used by small groups of Amerindians who practise shifting cultivation.

CLIMATE

The main features of the climate are the high but variable rainfall, high humidity, and the relatively narrow range of variation in temperature.  Rainfall in the coastal zone averages about go inches per annum but a variation between 60 and 1 20 inches is common.  Two wet seasons, from the middle of April to the middle of August and from mid-November to the end of January, are normal but the variability is such that one wet or one dry season may not materialize in a particular year.  As one moves inland the amount of rainfall gradually decreases until in the Rupununi which lies in the rain shadow of the Pakaraima and Kanuku mountains it averages about 60 inches falling between May and August only.  Temperatures on the coast show little diurnal or seasonal variation.  From 1846 to 1956 the mean shade temperature averaged 80 4° F.  with a diurnal variation of about 15° F.  The relative humidity is high; mean relative humidity varies from 88 per cent.  in the mornings to 75 per cent.  in the afternoons, but on the coast the steady sea-breezes mitigate its effect, and make the climate extremely pleasant for a low- lying tropical country.  In the interior the temperatures are somewhat higher and the range rather wider.  British Guiana lies to the south of the hurricane belt so that it is free from at least one natural disadvantage.

RIVERS AND DRAINAGE AND IRRIGATION PROBLEMS

The word Guiana is of Amerindian origin and is reputed to mean ‘Land of Waters’.  No more fitting name could be devised for the country in view of the past and present importance of water-control as the condition for profitable occupation of the land.  Apart from the problems created by the low-lying nature of the densely populated coastlands, the complex river systems which cover the whole country create special problems of their own.  Being part of the watershed system of the Amazon and Orinoco rivers, British Guiana is traversed by rivers carrying huge quantities of water from deep within the hinterland.  Heavy and fluctuating rainfall results in extensive flooding all over the country, and even in the forest and Rupununi savannah areas extensive swamp conditions are to be found.  Up to the present the question of controlling water supplies has only been important in the coastal zone, but future extensions of the habitable area of the colony will have to take the same problem into account.  Although the river systems are extensive, covering the whole country in fact, they are of limited navigational value owing to the presence of rapids not very far inland and to the existence of bars at their mouths.  Three of the principal rivers, the Demerara, Berbice, and Courantyne, have extremely low- lying drain basins, which greatly reduces the possibility of their ever being used for the generation of hydro-electricity on a large scale.  Some of the tributaries of the other main river, the Essequibo, rise in the Pakaraima mountain range and have a sufficient number of falls and rapids to make the construction of generating plants feasible provided that the problem of transporting the power to places where it is needed can be overcome.  Despite the limitations on navigation the rivers do provide the main means of transportation to and from the timber-extracting and mining areas.  The Demerara river is navigable by shallow-draught ocean-going vessels for 60 miles above its mouth, the Essequibo for about 40 miles, the Berbice for 100 miles, and the Courantyne for 60 miles.  Light river craft are used on many of the other rivers and creeks as well as on the drainage canals in the coastal zone.  It seems likely that good drainage and irrigation will be necessary for profitable land use almost anywhere in the country, but so far the problem has been mainly confined to the area of intensive use, the coastal zone.  Much as one may admire the initiative and skill of the planters who first settled the Guiana coastlands, each reclaiming as he did his own section of land from the sea, it is less easy to find cause for admiration at subsequent improvements.  Even today the basis of the whole system of drainage and irrigation is the individual ‘estate’ of about 2,000 acres, though most of the sugar plantations are now developed to a stage where each one has an integrated system embracing its whole area of up to 14,000 acres.  The simplest and most common lay-out of an estate consists of a long narrow parallelogram of land up to seven miles long by about a quarter to half a mile wide, stretching inland from a narrow sea frontage.  It has a sea‑wall at the front to keep out the sea at high tides, a dam at the opposite end to keep out swamp‑water, dams running the whole length of either side, and a main drainage canal equipped with a sluice to permit of the discharge of accumu­lated rain water into the sea at low tide if necessary.  Until very recently all the operations of digging, weeding, and cleaning these drainage and irrigation trenches were per­formed by manual labour.  Recently drag‑line excavators have been introduced but have still not completely replaced ‘shovel‑men’.

The obvious necessity is for more comprehensive systems of water‑control embracing very large areas of land, but capital, organization, and determination have all been lacking in some degree until recently.  New schemes are at present being planned, and some are in operation, but they represent only a fraction of what will be necessary if the area of land under cultivation is to be substantially increased.

POPULATION

The population of British Guiana has been built up from successive waves of immigrants of widely differing race and culture.  The autochthonous Amerindian population is, oddly enough, the least assimilated to a common Guianese culture, mainly on account of its having been free to retreat into the forests and savannahs of the hinterland in the face of European settlement and economic activity.  The other principal ethnic groups, Negro, Indian, (Chinese, and Portuguese, were brought for work on the riverain and coastal plantations and were thus incorporated into one system of economic organiza­tion and political control.  Although British Guiana can be regarded as one of the ‘melting pots’ of the New World, there has so far been less than enough heat generated to produce a new alloy without significant trace of the constituent elements.  All the inhabitants of British Guiana enjoy the common citizenship of Great Britain and the Colonies; they stand equal before the law except for certain ordinances relating specially to the Amerindians and to the marriage of non‑Christian East Indians; and they all speak one language, English, with the possible exception of a few remote groups of Amerindians.  But for many social purposes it is customary to classify the population according to race.  The social significance of this classification will be discussed more fully later; here the con­cern is with its demographic meaning, but it should be noted at once that these ‘racial’ classifications are social categories and are not based upon any rigid criteria of physical charac­teristics or personal genealogy.  There is a certain element of vagueness surrounding any one of the categories in a society where there are no rigid barriers of legal status or social discrimination and where miscegenation is not uncommon.  Some idea of the problems of allocation and the meaning of the categories may be gained from the following excerpt from the 946 Census Report.

Census Questions.  Enumerators were instructed to assign each person enumerated to one of the following ‘racial’ groups: ‘Portuguese’, ‘Other White’, ‘Black’, ‘East Indian’, ‘Syrian’, ‘Chinese’, ‘Other Asiatic’, ‘Aboriginal Indian’, or ‘Mixed or Coloured’.  Enumerators were advised that where there was any doubt, race or colour must depend on the statement of the person concerned.  ‘Mixed’ was not to include inter‑mixtures of European races, which should be described as ‘White.’  ‘Mixed’ was to include, however, all mixtures of African and European or African and Asiatic races.[1]

The odd mixture of ‘race’ and ‘nationality’ involved in these categories reflects distinctions made by Guianese in everyday life.  Thus Portuguese, or rather persons of Portuguese descent, are always distinguished from ‘Europeans’.  The category ‘Mixed’ is a residual one within which distinctions are commonly made in terms of degree of mixture, but on the other hand many persons who are biologically ‘mixed’ identify themselves for some social purposes with one or other of the main ‘racial’ groups.

The last census was taken in 1960, but available estimates are still based on the 1946 census.  The racial composition as enumerated in 1946 and as estimated by the Registrar-General at 31 December 1959 is shown in Tables I and 2.  The growth of population demonstrated by these tables is part of a pattern of population growth which has been typical for British Guiana over most of its recorded history.

Before 1917 annual increases in population were largely due to immigration.  The imbalance between the sexes in the immigrant populations (among Indians the average number of females per 100 males arriving on immigrant ships was about 40) resulted in a low reproduction rate, and high

mortality rates kept the natural increase in population extremely low.  Large-scale immigration ceased in 19l7 but shortly thereafter important changes began to take place in the other two factors affecting population growth: mortality and fertility.  The year 1921 marked the beginning of a sharp fall in mortality rates, mainly due to improved medical facilities and sanitation.  Whereas the average life expectancy in 1920‑2 was 33.5 years for men and 35.8 years for women, by l950‑2 it had risen to 53.15 years for men and 56.28 years for women.[2]  In the period 1891‑1911 the average death‑rate for the total population was 30.7 and this fell until it was only 19.5 in 1941-5.  At the same time the average birth‑rate rose from 30 2 in 18gl‑lgl l to 34 5 in 1941‑5.  The increase in the birth‑rate was mainly due to the lessening of the imbalance in the sex ratio among the more recent immigrants, and within the resident East Indian population.

For the reader unused to thinking in terms of birth‑ and death‑rates it may be difficult to visualize the effect of changes in the balance of forces controlling population growth, but if these trends are expressed in terms of the fact that every year between 1921 and 1946 there were an extra 2,732 mouths to feed, the position is perhaps more clear.  Furthermore this annual increase has been very largely composed of children and old people.  Between 1921 and 1946 there was actually a decrease of 31,300 in the size of the working population while the total population increased by 68,310.  This does not necessarily mean that there was a decrease in the standard of living, but it shows very clearly that a high rate of economic growth is necessary if the standard of living of a rapidly increasing population is to be maintained.  Since 1946 the position has become even more acute because the children born in the early years of declining infant mortality are now adult and reproducing rapidly.  By 1957 the crude birth‑rate had risen to 41.9 per l,000 representing a total number of births in that year of 22,073, whilst the crude death‑rate had fallen to 10.9 per l,000, representing a total of 5,612 deaths.

It is a common fallacy in discussions of British Guiana to state that the rapid increase in population is due to the eradication of malaria following the very successful campaign carried out after the war.  While this campaign was a notable contribution to the health of the country the population ‘explosion’ must be attributed to improvements in health and sanitation which began long before, in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

It is clear from any projection of these population trends into the future that British Guiana’s most rapidly increasing natural resource is likely to be people.  While the country appears to be underpopulated if one calculates that there are only about 6.2 persons per square mile at present, the picture is very different if the population size is viewed in relation to its distribution and to the present state of the economy.  Of the present population of approximately 557,960, only about 20,000 Amerindians and approximately 20,000 other persons live away from the narrow coastal strip.  The coastlands are the most densely populated area with a density of about 180 persons per square mile as opposed to 0.5 in the interior.  Georgetown is the only real city; New Amsterdam is really a small town.  The population of Georgetown was approximately 94,000 in 1955 and growing steadily.  With such a rapid growth in the population the question is already arising as to how a greatly enlarged population will dispose itself on the ground.  So far there has been little tendency for people to migrate in large numbers though it is likely that the volume will increase as the local economy develops and throws up people with ambition who cannot find immediate means of advance locally.  Most writers implicitly assume that the solution to British Guiana’s population problem is to settle more people on small farms, and a substantial proportion of government development expenditure is being applied to making land available for small-farm settlement, most of it in the coastal region.  The question of economic development is discussed in Chapter IV; here it may merely be observed that the population is now becoming available for economic development, but the way it is distributed over the country and the use that is made of labour and skill depends almost entirely on the way development is planned and on how much is invested in the education, training, and organization of the people.  It is not possible to speak of adequacy, inadequacy, or surplus of population except in relation to the kind of development possibilities presented by modern science, British Guiana’s relations with the rest of the world, and the goals her people set themselves.

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