British Guiana

Guyana, 1814–1966. Draft, not yet reviewed

British Guiana was a British colony located on the northern coast of South America. The Netherlands officially ceded the three colonies to the United Kingdom in the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814. In 1831, the administration Essequibo-Demerara and Berbice was combined, and the united colony became known as British Guiana. Guyana became independent of the United Kingdom on 26 May 1966.

Seat of power: Georgetown

No rulers documented for this era yet.

Culture

• The economy was based on cultivation and processing of sugarcane as a commodity crop, dependent on extensive labour by enslaved workers of mostly sub-Saharan African descent.
• Georgetown was the site of a significant slave rebellion in 1823.
• The economy of British Guiana was completely based on sugarcane production until the 1880s, when falling cane sugar prices stimulated a shift toward rice farming, mining and forestry.

Picture

St. George's Cathedral in Georgetown was designed by Sir Arthur Blomfield, opened on 24 August 1892 and reaches a height of 43.5 metres.

Image: Dan Lundberg, CC BY-SA 2.0, file

Sources

• British Guiana (Wikipedia)
• British Guiana (Wikidata)
• About the picture (Wikipedia)

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