A Brief History of British Guyana

Current scholarship holds that the territory known as Guyana was first settled sometime before 900 A.D. by tribes of Indians whose present-day decendents include the peoples of the Shiriana, Waica, Warrau, and Guaharibo tribes. These early inhabitants were nomads, hunting and gathering for food. Theory holds that they began developing more complex communities after 900 A.D., evidence of which includes advanced pottery. These tribes eventually transformed into agrarian cultures, with religious sites and artifacts. The tribes were not unified in culture, however. Despite the similarities among them, they all possessed different languages and sociological behavior patterns. Within the small region, the cultures displayed much diversity.

This situation existed untouched for hundreds of years. Columbus sailed along the Guyana coast in 1498 but did not attempt to establish a settlement there. No attempts at settlement were made, in fact, until the late 1500s, with the voyages of British explorers such as Raliegh, Keymis, and Berrie. Raliegh was consumed with the legend of "El Dorado," the "lost city of gold," and in his search he came upon the region. The location of Guyana inspired R

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ng that the church services might be efficiently used to expose slaves to European culture and ideals, which, in turn, might make them more willing to accept European values and customs. As long as the church reenforced the idea that Europe and all things white were good, then the services could be useful. This duplicitous policy could not sustain itself for long. Evenutally, missionaries reached the slaves, and the ideas that the missionaries supported and taught came into conflict with the economic growth of the island. The plantation owners depended heavily upon slave labor, and, as the slave trade had been abolished, there was a fixed supply of labor with which the plantation owners had to make do. The slave owners realized that slaves needed to be taken care of in order to provide the most efficient labor, and some slave owners were more humanitarian than others, but slavery was an unquestioned necessity among the economic overclass. While the owners were afraid that increased involvement in religion would lead to the slaves' demanding freedom, they did not act against the missionaries. The British public was in support of missionary work, and the risk of opposing church influence was the possibility that British public opi
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3704
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)