U.S. Intervention in British Guiana
U.S. Intervention in British Guiana

Author: Stephen G. Rabe

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2006-05-26

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 0807876968

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In the first published account of the massive U.S. covert intervention in British Guiana between 1953 and 1969, Stephen G. Rabe uncovers a Cold War story of imperialism, gender bias, and racism. When the South American colony now known as Guyana was due to gain independence from Britain in the 1960s, U.S. officials in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations feared it would become a communist nation under the leadership of Cheddi Jagan, a Marxist who was very popular among the South Asian (mostly Indian) majority. Although to this day the CIA refuses to confirm or deny involvement, Rabe presents evidence that CIA funding, through a program run by the AFL-CIO, helped foment the labor unrest, race riots, and general chaos that led to Jagan's replacement in 1964. The political leader preferred by the United States, Forbes Burnham, went on to lead a twenty-year dictatorship in which he persecuted the majority Indian population. Considering race, gender, religion, and ethnicity along with traditional approaches to diplomatic history, Rabe's analysis of this Cold War tragedy serves as a needed corrective to interpretations that depict the Cold War as an unsullied U.S. triumph.

Borderless Empire
Borderless Empire

Author: Bram Hoonhout

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2020-01-15

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 0820356077

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Borderless Empire explores the volatile history of Dutch Guiana, in particular the forgotten colonies of Essequibo and Demerara, to provide new perspectives on European empire building in the Atlantic world. Bram Hoonhout argues that imperial expansion was a process of improvisation at the colonial level rather than a project that was centrally orchestrated from the metropolis. Furthermore, he emphasizes that colonial expansion was far more transnational than the oft-used divisions into "national Atlantics" suggest. In so doing, he transcends the framework of the "Dutch Atlantic" by looking at the connections across cultural and imperial boundaries. The openness of Essequibo and Demerara affected all levels of the colonial society. Instead of counting on metropolitan soldiers, the colonists relied on Amerindian allies, who captured runaway slaves and put down revolts. Instead of waiting for Dutch slavers, the planters bought enslaved Africans from foreign smugglers. Instead of trying to populate the colonies with Dutchmen, the local authorities welcomed adventurers from many different origins. The result was a borderless world in which slavery was contingent on Amerindian support and colonial trade was rooted in illegality. These transactions created a colonial society that was far more Atlantic than Dutch.

Cheddi Jagan and the Politics of Power
Cheddi Jagan and the Politics of Power

Author: Colin A. Palmer

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2010-11-02

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 0807899615

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Colin Palmer, one of the foremost chroniclers of twentieth-century British and U.S. imperialism in the Caribbean, here tells the story of British Guiana's struggle for independence. At the center of the story is Cheddi Jagan, who was the colony's first premier following the institution of universal adult suffrage in 1953. Informed by the first use of many British, U.S., and Guyanese archival sources, Palmer's work details Jagan's rise and fall, from his initial electoral victory in the spring of 1953 to the aftermath of the British-orchestrated coup d'etat that led to the suspension of the constitution and the removal of Jagan's independence-minded administration. Jagan's political odyssey continued--he was reelected to the premiership in 1957--but in 1964 he fell out of power again under pressure from Guianese, British, and U.S. officials suspicious of Marxist influences on the People's Progressive Party, founded in 1950 by Jagan and his activist wife, Janet Rosenberg. But Jagan's political life was not over--after decades in the opposition, he became Guyana's president in 1992. Subtly analyzing the actual role of Marxism in Caribbean anticolonial struggles and bringing the larger story of Caribbean colonialism into view, Palmer examines the often malevolent roles played by leaders at home and abroad and shows how violence, police corruption, political chicanery, racial politics, and poor leadership delayed Guyana's independence until 1966, scarring the body politic in the process.

Who is Who in British Guiana - 1945 - 1948
Who is Who in British Guiana - 1945 - 1948

Author: Erwin Brewster

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2012-09-05

Total Pages: 736

ISBN-13: 132985991X

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A transcription of a text published in British Guiana in 1948 listing 4351 individuals together with their occupations and some details of their accomplishments. This directory must have been very useful at the time of its original publication, but after nearly 70 years is of little if any practical commercial value. It has been reproduced purely for the purpose of informing current and future generations in Guyana of their ancestors and their accomplishments. From a genealogical perspective therefore, it may serve some useful purpose.

Guiana and the Shadows of Empire
Guiana and the Shadows of Empire

Author: Joshua R. Hyles

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2013-12-04

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 0739187805

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This book is a history of the three Guianas, now known as Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. Though histories of each of the countries exist, this is the first work in a century to consider the three countries as a group, and thus the first to present the history of all three as a comparative and overarching study. Special emphasis has been given to the story of how each colony was administered by Britain, the Netherlands, and France respectively, and how these differing colonial administrative policies have given rise to three vastly different cultures. Because the geographical area of the Guianas is relatively small, the indigenous population at the time of contact was relatively uniform across the area, and the external pressures on the three colonies over their histories exhibited significant similarities, the book presents the Guianas as an ideal laboratory in which to study the effects of imperialism and cultural assimilation practices. The book also briefly considers the present political and cultural status of the three polities and makes some projections about their possible futures. In all, the book presents a complete history from prehistory until the present day covering the entirety of the Guianas region, relating a colorful history from a little-studied corner of the world.

Bechu
Bechu

Author: Clem Seecharan

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9789766400712

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Clem Seecharan has written a useful documentary history of Bechu, the first Indian to testify before the Royal Commission in 1897. Now who was this Bechu? He was, in Seecharan's words, "an indefatigable gadfly," who in letters to the local press revealed the conditions of Indian indentureship: poor wages, sexual exploitation of women by overseers and managers, and the virtual impossibility for Indians to obtain justice because of the collusion between colonial authorities and the planters. This knowledge we owe to economic historian Alan Adamson who "discovered" Bechu in the 1960s. Yet the man himself remained somewhat of a mystery, something Bechu himself seems to have cultivated. Seecharan has now filled a number of lacunae in our understanding with this two-part volume. The first section focuses on Bechu and the British Guianese environment in the late nineteenth century, while the second part includes letters and memoranda by Bechu (and reactions to them by local opponents).

Coolie Woman
Coolie Woman

Author: Gaiutra Bahadur

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2013-11-01

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 022604338X

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Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize: “[Bahadur] combines her journalistic eye for detail and story-telling gifts with probing questions . . . a haunting portrait.” —The Independent In 1903, a young woman sailed from India to Guiana as a “coolie” —the British name for indentured laborers who replaced the newly emancipated slaves on sugar plantations all around the world. Pregnant and traveling alone, this woman, like so many coolies, disappeared into history. Now, in Coolie Woman, her great-granddaughter embarks on a journey into the past to find her. Traversing three continents and trawling through countless colonial archives, Gaiutra Bahadur excavates not only her great-grandmother’s story but also the repressed history of some quarter of a million other coolie women, shining a light on their complex lives. Shunned by society, and sometimes in mortal danger, many coolie women were runaways, widows, or outcasts. Many left husbands and families behind to migrate alone in epic sea voyages—traumatic “middle passages” —only to face a life of hard labor, dismal living conditions, and, especially, sexual exploitation. As Bahadur explains, however, it is precisely their sexuality that makes coolie women stand out as figures in history. Greatly outnumbered by men, they were able to use sex with their overseers to gain various advantages, an act that often incited fatal retaliations from coolie men and sometimes larger uprisings of laborers against their overlords. Complex and unpredictable, sex was nevertheless a powerful tool. Examining this and many other facets of these remarkable women’s lives, Coolie Woman is a meditation on survival, a gripping story of a double diaspora—from India to the West Indies in one century, Guyana to the United States in the next—that is at once a search for roots and an exploration of gender and power, peril and opportunity.