BRITANNICA

Guyana

WRITTEN BY: Bonham C. RichardsonJack K. Menke

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Alternative Titles: British Guiana, Co-operative Republic of Guyana

ARTICLE CONTENTS

Guyana, country located in the northeastern corner of South America.

Indigenous peoples inhabited Guyana prior to European settlement, and their
name for the land, guiana (“land of water”), gave the country its name.
Present-day Guyana reflects its British and Dutch colonial past and its
reactions to that past. It is the only English-speaking country of South
America. Since Guyana gained its independence in 1966, the country’s chief
economic assets have been its natural resources, mainly its pristine
rainforests, sugarcane plantations, rice fields, and bauxite and gold reserves.
Despite those riches, Guyana remains one of the poorest countries in South
America. Some geographers classify Guyana as a part of the Caribbean
region, which they deem to include the West Indies as well as Guyana,
Belize, Suriname, and French Guiana on the South American mainland. The
capital and chief port of Guyana is Georgetown.

Guyana

Guyana

Guyana

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Guyana

Guyana

flag of Guyana

National anthem of Guyana

OFFICIAL NAME

Co-operative Republic of Guyana

FORM OF GOVERNMENT

unitary multiparty republic with one legislative house (National Assembly

[651])

HEAD OF STATE

President: David Granger

HEAD OF GOVERNMENT

Prime Minister: Moses Nagamootoo

CAPITAL

Georgetown

OFFICIAL LANGUAGE

English

OFFICIAL RELIGION

none

MONETARY UNIT

Guyanese dollar (G$)

POPULATION

(2019 est.) 745,700

POPULATION RANK

(2018) 166
POPULATION PROJECTION 2030

813,000

TOTAL AREA (SQ MI)

83,012

TOTAL AREA (SQ KM)

214,999

DENSITY: PERSONS PER SQ MI

(2018) 9.8

DENSITY: PERSONS PER SQ KM

(2018) 3.8

URBAN-RURAL POPULATION

Urban: (2018) 26.6%

Rural: (2018) 73.4%

LIFE EXPECTANCY AT BIRTH

Male: (2017) 64.5 years

Female: (2017) 69.2 years

LITERACY: PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION AGE 15 AND OVER LITERATE

Male: (2014) 86.3%

Female: (2014) 85%

GNI (U.S.$ ’000,000)

(2017) 3,466

GNI PER CAPITA (U.S.$)

(2017) 4,460

1Excludes three nonelected ministers and the speaker.

DID YOU KNOW?

The land area of Guyana is slightly smaller than that of Idaho.

Guyana is almost 80% forest.

The national holidays of Guyana include Catholic, Muslim, and Hindu

holidays.

Guyana’s populace is mainly of colonial origin, although Indians are

scattered throughout the forested interior. The more numerous coastal
peoples are chiefly descendants of slaves from Africa and indentured
workers from India, who were originally transported to work the coastal
sugarcane plantations. Ethnic problems between the last two groups have
played a disruptive role in Guyanese society.

Guyana

Guyana

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Guyana has been a member of the Commonwealth (an international group

made up of the United Kingdom and a number of its former dependencies)
since 1970. Politically, however, Guyana moved on a steady course toward
communism from the time of independence until the death of the first prime
minister, Forbes Burnham, in 1985, after which ties with Western powers
were strengthened, and by the 1990s privatization had begun.

Land

Guyana is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north, by Suriname (along

the Courantyne River) to the east, by Brazil to the south and southwest, and
by Venezuela to the west. Guyana is involved in territorial disputes with both
Suriname and Venezuela that are legacies of colonial rule. Although a United
Nations international tribunal settled a long-standing maritime boundary
dispute between Guyana and Suriname in 2007, the latter still claims the
New River Triangle, a 6,000-square-mile (15,600-square-km) area between
two tributaries of the Courantyne River in southern Guyana. The currently
recognized border between Suriname and Guyana along the Courantyne is
also in contention—Suriname claims sovereignty over the entire river and
thus views its west bank as the border, while Guyana claims that the
thalweg, or deepest channel of the river, is the boundary. The dispute
between Guyana and Venezuela dates from 1895, when the British
government claimed ownership of the Essequibo River basin. An 1899
settlement awarded Venezuela part of the area, but in 1962 Venezuela
claimed all the territory west of the Essequibo.

Guyana

Guyana

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Relief

The narrow plain that extends along the country’s Atlantic coast has been
modified considerably by humans. Much of the area, which measures only
about 10 miles (16 km) at its widest point, has been reclaimed from the sea
by a series of canals and some 140 miles (225 km) of dikes. The coastal
plain’s inland border is generally marked by canals that separate the plain
from interior swamps.

About 40 miles (65 km) inland from the coast is a region of undulating land
that rises from 50-foot (15-metre) hills on the eastern, coastal side of the
region to 400-foot (120-metre) ones on the western side. The area is
between 80 and 100 miles (130 and 160 km) wide and is widest in the
southeast. It is covered with sand, from which it takes its name as the white-
sands (Zanderij) region. A small savanna region in the east lies about 60
miles (100 km) from the coast and is surrounded by the white-sands belt.
The sand partly overlies a low crystalline plateau that is generally less than
500 feet (150 metres) in elevation. The plateau forms most of the country’s
centre and is penetrated by igneous rock intrusions that cause the numerous
rapids of Guyana’s rivers.

Beyond the crystalline plateau, the Kaieteurian Plateau lies generally below
1,600 feet (490 metres) above sea level; it is the site of the spectacular
Kaieteur Falls, noted for their sheer 741-foot (226-metre) initial plunge. The
plateau is overlain with sandstones and shales that in the south form the
extensive Rupununi Savanna region. The Acaraí Mountains, which rise to
about 2,000 feet (600 metres), rim the plateau on the southern border, and
it is crowned on the western frontier by the Pakaraima Mountains, which rise
to 9,094 feet (2,772 metres) at Mount Roraima. The Rupununi Savanna is
bisected by the east–west-trending Kanuku Mountains.

Kaieteur Falls

Kaieteur Falls

Kaieteur Falls, west-central Guyana.

Merlinthewizard

Drainage

Guyana’s four main rivers—the Courantyne, Berbice, Demerara, and

Essequibo—all flow from the south and empty into the Atlantic along the
eastern section of the coast. Among the tributaries of the Essequibo, the
Potaro, the Mazaruni, and the Cuyuni drain the northwest, and the Rupununi
drains the southern savanna. The coast is cut by shorter rivers, including the
Pomeroon, the Mahaica, the Mahaicony, and the Abary.

The rivers are part of the watershed of the Amazon and Orinoco rivers, and
the headwaters of the Rupununi in Brazil are often confused with those of
the Amazon. Drainage is poor because the average gradient is only about 1
foot per mile (19 centimetres per km), and there are swamps and flooding in
the mountains and savannas. The rivers are not suitable for long-distance
transportation because they are broken by interior falls, and in the coastal
zone their mouths and estuaries are blocked by mud and by sandbars that
may occur 2 to 3 miles (about 4 km) out to sea.

Soils

The coastal soils are fertile but acidic. The fine-particle grayish blue clays of
the coastal plain are composed of alluvium from the Amazon (the mouth of
which lies east of Guyana, on the Brazilian coast) deposited by the south
equatorial ocean current and of much smaller amounts of alluvium from the
country’s rivers. They overlie white sands and clays and can support
intensive agriculture but must be subjected to fallowing to restore fertility.
Pegasse soil, a type of tropical peat, occurs behind the coastal clays and
along the river estuaries, while silts line the banks of the lower rivers. Reef
sands occur in bands in the coastal plain, especially near the Courantyne and
Essequibo rivers. The rock soils of the interior are leached and infertile, and
the white sands are almost pure quartz.

Climate

High temperatures, heavy rainfall with small seasonal differences, high

humidity, and high average cloud cover provide climatic characteristics of an
equatorial lowland. Temperatures are remarkably uniform. At Georgetown
the daily temperature varies from the mid-70s to the mid-80s °F (mid-20s to
the upper 20s °C). The constant heat and high humidity are mitigated near
the coast by the trade winds.

Rainfall derives mainly from the movement of the intertropical front, or

doldrums. It is heavy everywhere on the plateau and the coast. The annual
average at Georgetown is about 90 inches (2,290 mm), and on the interior
Rupununi Savanna it is about 70 inches (1,800 mm). On the coast a long wet
season, from April to August, and a short wet season, from December to
early February, are sufficiently well marked on the average, but in the
southern savannas the short wet season does not occur. Total annual rainfall
is variable, and seasonal drought can occur in July and August when the
southeast trade winds parallel the coast. Variations in Guyana’s climatic
patterns have a determining effect on tropical crop production.

Plant and animal life

Many plants of the coast, including mangroves and various saltwater

grasses, grow in shallow brackish water and help to protect or extend the
land. The wet savanna behind the coast has coarse tufted grasses and a
wide scattering of palms, notably the coconut, the truli, and the manicole.
High rainforest, or selva, covers about three-fourths of the land area and is of
extraordinary variety and magnificence. Prominent trees include the
greenheart and the wallaba on the sandy soils of the northern edge, the
giant mora and the crabwood on swampy sites, the balata and other latex
producers, and many species such as the siruaballi and the hubaballi that
yield handsome cabinet woods. The interior savanna is mostly open
grassland, with much bare rock, many termite hills, and clumps of ita palm.

All forms of animal life are immensely varied and abundant, though few,
apart from birds and insects, are normally visible. The tapir is the country’s
largest land mammal, and the jaguar is the largest and fiercest of the cats,
which also include the ocelot; monkeys and deer are the most common
animals. Among the more exotic species are the sloth, the great anteater,
the capybara (bush pig), and the armadillo. Birds include the vulture, the
kiskadee, the blue sacki, the hummingbird, the kingfisher, and the scarlet
ibis of the coast and lower rivers and the macaw, the tinamou, the bell-bird,
and the cock-of-the-rock in the forest and savanna. The caiman (a reptile
similar to the alligator) is the most common of the larger freshwater
creatures. The giant anaconda, or water boa, is the largest of the many kinds
of snakes, and the bushmaster is the most vicious. Lizards are numerous and
include the iguana in the lower rivers. Sharks and stingrays are found
offshore. The snapper and the grouper are common ocean fish, and shrimp
abounds in the muddy currents off the coast. The manatee is also common in
Guyanese waters. Among the freshwater fish is the huge piraucu, which
attains lengths up to 14 feet (430 cm).
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