The sugar cane plantations were no longer making anyone rich. Diamonds and gold were also discovered but not in any great quantity. So why are we here again. To fight communism? So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
The British must have loved this portrait of a local Lucayan Indian fishing with a bow and arrow. A version of this portrait lasted from George V through to Elizabeth II. It does have an exotic flair. Alas Guiana had been changed forever by the British. They had brought in first Africans and then post slavery contract worker Indians to work the sugar cane plantations. How the two groups interacted was the real story of Guiana, not the few and far between Lucayans.
Todays stamp is issue A41, a 2 cent stamp issued by the Crown Colony of British Guiana on October 1st, 1934. It was a thirteen stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $1.90 used.
British Guiana was first discovered by Sir Walter Raleigh, His settlements did not last though as they were soon taken over by the Dutch, who also started the large scale importation of African slaves to work on sugar cane plantations. The British retook the area during the Napoleonic wars when Holland was occupied by France and therefore distracted from defending their colonies. In 1834, the British Empire banned slavery and the freed blacks were not anxious to continue on the plantations at the meager pay offered.
Britain still had India though, and a large number of Indians came as contract laborers. The plantations were consolidated under the Booker group, a British food wholesaler. Most Indians stayed after their labor contract expired. The colony became half and half ethnically with only a few British and Lucayans. As the British rule was winding down, an African decent politician named Forbes Burnham was trained at the London School of Economics and groomed to take over the colony for independence. This ignored the large Indian community and an American educated, Hindu (Kurmi caste), dentist named Cheddi Jagan formed a rival political party. To the British shock and horror, the Indian party won the pre independence election. While in America, Jagan had married a Jewish communist wife and ran in Marxist circles. During the cold war it would not have done for the British to have a colony go immediately communist post independence. So after the election, a state of emergency was declared, and the British tried to figure a way to give the colony to Burnham. This was done but delayed independence for a decade. Ironically, but not surprisingly, once independent Burnham ruled in the African president for life style and surprise, he was also a communist and nationalized the Booker plantation system. The sugar cane production only continues in now Guyana as the European Union buys the sugar at double the market rate as an aid scheme. The USA provides for free a grain supply to keep the country fed. One and a half percent of the country immigrates out every year, mainly Indians and mainly to the USA and Canada. They are currently trying to attract the Chinese to come in and take over the sugar industry.
British Guiana is a famous place from a stamp collecting perspective. In the early 1850s there were a tiny number of stamps issued and printed poorly by the local newspaper publisher. The circular cottonreel stamps are quite valuable. A more professional stamp printed in London followed in 1852 but when these stamps ran out a local badly printed copy became the most valuable of all. The 1 cent magenta stamp from this sold in 2014 for $9.5 million, the most valuable stamp in history.
Well my drink is empty and I will poor another to toast the Lucayan Indian fisherman. I hope he caught his families dinner. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting