Guyana

From the Amerindian peoples of the Guiana highlands and three Dutch plantation colonies to British Guiana, a society forged by slavery and indenture, and an independent nation now transformed by offshore oil.

Guyana, the 'land of many waters' on the north-eastern shoulder of South America, was home to Arawak, Carib and Warrau peoples long before Dutch traders planted the colonies of Essequibo, Berbice and Demerara and engineered a coastal world of dams, dykes and sluice-gates below the high-tide line. A sugar economy built on enslaved Africans gave rise to the great Berbice rebellion of 1763 under Cuffy, today the nation's first national hero, and after emancipation in 1838 planters imported indentured labourers from India, Portugal and China, producing Guyana's distinctive Indo- and Afro-Guyanese society. The three colonies, ceded to Britain and united as British Guiana in 1831, moved through the rivalry of Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham to independence on 26 May 1966 and a cooperative republic in 1970. Since the first major offshore oil discovery in 2015, Guyana has become one of the world's fastest-growing economies, while the long-running Essequibo territorial controversy with Venezuela is now before the International Court of Justice.