Essequibo

Guyana, 1616–1815. Draft, not yet reviewed

Essequibo was a Dutch colony in the Guianas and later a county on the Essequibo River in the Guiana region on the north coast of South America. It was a colony of the Dutch West India Company between 1616 and 1792 and a colony of the Dutch state from 1792 until 1815. Using funds of the West Indian Company (WIC), van der Hooge built a new fort called "Fort Ter Hoogen" from 1616 to 1621, though the fort quickly became known amongst the inhabitants as Fort Kyk-Over-Al. It formally became a British colony in 1815 until Demerara-Essequibo was merged with Berbice to form the colony of British Guiana in 1831.

Seat of power: Fort Kyk-Over-Al

No rulers documented for this era yet.

Culture

• Around the river, plantations were created where slaves cultivated cotton, indigo and cacao.
• Essequibo was occupied by the British in 1665 (along with all other Dutch colonies in the Guianas), and then plundered by the French.
• Under governor Laurens Storm van 's Gravesande, English planters started coming to the colony after 1740.

Picture

Fort Zeelandia on Fort Island in the Essequibo River delta was built in 1743, replacing an earlier wooden fort built in 1726, and is among the oldest structures in Guyana.

Image: C. van Henemann, Public domain, file

Sources

• Essequibo (colony) (Wikipedia)
• Essequibo (Wikidata)
• About the picture (Wikipedia)

Text adapted from the Wikipedia articles listed as sources, CC BY-SA 4.0.