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History

Early history

The first human inhabitants of Guyana probably entered the highlands during
the 1st millennium BCE. Among the earliest settlers were groups of Arawak,
Carib, and possibly Warao (Warrau). The early communities practiced
shifting agriculture supplemented by hunting. Explorer Christopher Columbus
sighted the Guyana coast in 1498, and Spain subsequently claimed, but
largely avoided, the area between the Orinoco and Amazon deltas, a region
long known as the Wild Coast. It was the Dutch who finally began European
settlement, establishing trading posts upriver in about 1580. By the mid-17th
century the Dutch had begun importing slaves from West Africa to cultivate
sugarcane. In the 18th century the Dutch, joined by other Europeans, moved
their estates downriver toward the fertile soils of the estuaries and coastal
mud flats. Laurens Storm van ’s Gravesande, governor of Essequibo from
1742 to 1772, coordinated these development efforts.

Guyana changed hands with bewildering frequency during the French

revolutionary and Napoleonic wars (mostly between the British and the
French) from 1792 to 1815. During a brief French occupation, Longchamps,
later called Georgetown, was established at the mouth of the Demerara
River; the Dutch renamed it Stabroek and continued to develop it. The British
took over in 1796 and remained in possession, except for short intervals,
until 1814, when they purchased Demerara, Berbice, and Essequibo, which in
1831 were united as the colony of British Guiana.