Afro-Guyanese

The Dutch West India Company turned to the importation of African slaves, who rapidly became a key element in the colonial economy.[2] By the 1660s, the slave population numbered about 2,500; the number of indigenous people was estimated at 50,000, most of whom had retreated into the vast hinterland.[2] Although African slaves were considered an essential element of the colonial economy, their working conditions were brutal.[2] The mortality rate was high, and the dismal conditions led to more than half a dozen slave rebellions.[2] Slaves produced coffee, sugar and cotton for the Dutch market.[3]

The most famous slave uprising, the Berbice Slave Uprising, began in February 1763.[2] On two plantations on the Canje River in Berbice, slaves rebelled, taking control of the region.[2] As plantation after plantation fell to the slaves, the European population fled; eventually only half of the whites who had lived in the colony remained.[2] Led by Cuffy (now the national hero of Guyana), the African freedom fighters came to number about 3,000 and threatened European control over the Guianas.[2] The freedom fighters were defeated with the assistance of troops from neighbouring French and British colonies and from Europe.[2]

Colonial life was changed radically by the demise of slavery.[4] Although the international slave trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1807,[4] slavery itself continued in the form of "apprentice-ship".[5] In what is known as the Demerara rebellion of 1823 10–13,000 slaves in Demerara-Essequibo rose up against their masters.[6] Although the rebellion was easily crushed,[6] the momentum for abolition remained, and by 1838 total emancipation had been effected.[4]

The system of apprentice-ship was established to create a buffer period for plantation owners; to keep former slaves as labour but providing payment.

Even though there was still a demand for plantation labour, the labour conditions were no better post-emancipation, so former slaves were less inclined to work in the plantation system, favouring self-reliance or skilled work. Some ex-slaves moved to towns and villages, feeling that field labour was degrading and inconsistent with freedom, but others pooled their resources to purchase the abandoned estates of their former masters and created village communities.[4][5] Establishing small settlements provided the new Afro-Guyanese communities an opportunity to grow and sell food, an extension of a practice under which slaves had been allowed to keep the money that came from the sale of any surplus produce.[4] The emergence of an independent-minded Afro-Guyanese peasant class, however, threatened the planters' political power, inasmuch as the planters no longer held a near-monopoly on the colony's economic activity.[4]

Emancipation also resulted in the introduction of new ethnic and cultural groups into British Guiana,[4] such as Chinese and Portuguese indentured labourers, who upon completing their contracts, became competitors with the new Afro-Guyanese middle class. The largest group of indentured labourers came from India, and would later grow into a thriving and competitive class. Unlike future immigrant groups, former slaves were not granted land or passage to their home country, and this, in addition to other race-based treatment and favouritism, created tension among the ethnic groups.[7][8]

By the early twentieth century, the majority of the urban population of the country was Afro-Guyanese.[9] Many Afro-Guyanese people living in villages had migrated to the towns in search of work.[9] Until the 1930s, Afro-Guyanese people, especially those of mixed descent, comprised the bulk of the non-white professional class.[9] During the 1930s, as Indo-Guyanese began to enter the middle class in large numbers, they began to compete with Afro-Guyanese for professional positions.[9]