See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1562-1566.
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GUIANA: The aboriginal inhabitants.
See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: CARIBS.
GUIANA: 16th Century.
The search for El Dorado.
See EL DORADO.
GUIANA: A. D. 1580-1814.
Dutch, French and English settlements and conquests.
"There was one European nation which was not likely to hunt
for a golden city, when gold was to be earned by plain and
matter of fact commerce. The Dutch had as early as 1542
established a systematic if contraband trade with the Spanish
Main; and in 1580 they began to settle in Guiana by planting a
depot on the river Pomeroon, in what is now the county of
Essequibo. In 1599 they built two forts at the mouth of the
Amazon, but were driven out by the Portuguese; and about 1613
they established a colony on the Essequibo, building the fort
of 'Kyk over al', 'Look over all,' on an island where the
Massaruni flows into the Essequibo. The colony was founded by
Zeeland merchants, was known as Nova Zeelandia, and came under
the control of the Netherlands West India Company, which was
incorporated in 1621. Shortly afterwards colonisation began
further to the east on the Berbice river. The founder was a
Flushing merchant, Van Peere by name; he founded his
settlement about 1624, and he held his rights under contract
with the Chamber of Zeeland. … Thus was the present province
of British Guiana colonised by Dutchmen. … While English
discovery was attracted to the west and Orinoco, the first
attempts at English settlement were far to the east on the
Wyapoco or Oyapok river. Here, in 1604, while Ralegh was in
prison, Captain Charles Leigh founded a colony at the mouth of
the river. … In 1609 Robert Harcourt of Stanton Harcourt in
Oxfordshire took up the work in which Leigh had failed. … In
1613 he obtained from King James a grant of 'all that part of
Guiana or continent of America lying between the river of
Amazones and the river of Dessequebe,' which was not actually
possessed or inhabited by any Christian power in friendship
with England. … In 1619 a scheme was started for an Amazon
Company, the leading spirit in which was Captain Roger North.
… The company was fortunate enough to secure the powerful
patronage of the Duke of Buckingham. Harcourt threw in his lot
with them, and on the 19th of May 1627 a royal grant was made
to the Duke of Buckingham and 55 other adventurers, including
the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, who were incorporated
under the title of 'the governor and company of noblemen and
gentlemen of England for the plantation of Guiana.' The Duke
of Buckingham was Governor, North was Deputy-Governor, and the
grant included the 'royal' river of the Amazon. For about two
years the company did some solid work, sending out four ships
and 200 colonists; an attempt was then made in 1629 to bring
the territory covered by their grant immediately under royal
protection, and upon its failure their efforts at colonisation
appear to have gradually died away. The English were not the
only Europeans who tried their hand at settlement in the east
of Guiana. … In 1613, 160 French families settled in
Cayenne. The first colony failed, but in 1624 and 1626 fresh
attempts were made a little to the west on the rivers Sinamari
and Cananama; and in 1643 a Rouen Company, incorporated under
the name of the Cape North Company, sent out three or four
hundred men to Cayenne under the Sieur de Bretigny. Bretigny
ruined the scheme by savage ill-treatment of Indians and
colonists alike, and the remains of the settlement were
absorbed by a new and more powerful Normandy Company." This
failed in its turn, and gave way to a "French Equinoctial
Company," organized under the auspices of Colbert, which sent
out 1,200 colonists and fairly established them at Cayenne.
Colbert, in 1665, placed the colony, "with all the other
French possessions in the West Indies, under one strong West
India Company. Such were the beginnings of colonisation in the
west and east of Guiana. Between them lies the district now
known as Dutch Guiana or Surinam." The first settlement in
this was made in 1630 by 60 English colonists, under a Captain
Marshall.
{1616}
The colony failed, and was revived in 1650 by Lord Willoughby,
then representing the fugitive King Charles II., as Governor
of Barbadoes. In 1663, after the Restoration, Lord Willoughby,
in conjunction with Lawrence Hyde, second son of the Earl of
Clarendon, received Letters Patent "constituting them lords
and proprietors of the district between the Copenam and the
Maroni (which included the Surinam river) under the name of
Willoughby Land." Soon afterwards "war broke out with the
Dutch, and in March 1667 the colony capitulated to the Dutch
admiral Crynsenn. The peace of Breda between Great Britain and
the Netherlands, which was signed in the following July,
provided that either nation should retain the conquests which
it had made by the preceding 10th of May, and under this
arrangement Surinam was ceded to the Netherlands, while New
York became a British possession. … Thus ended for many long
years all British connexion with Guiana. … When at length
the English returned [in 1796 and 1803, during the subjection
of the Dutch to Napoleon, and while they were forced to take
part in his wars], they came as conquerors rather than as
settlers, and by a strange perversity of history, the original
Dutch colonies on the Berbice and Essequibo became a British
dependency, while the Netherlanders retain to this day the
part of Guiana which Lord Willoughby marked out for his own."
These arrangements were settled in the convention between
Great Britain and the Netherlands signed at London in 1814.
_C. P. Lucas,
History Geography of the British Colonies,
volume 2, section 2, chapter 8._
ALSO IN:
_H. G. Dalton,
History of British Guiana._
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