AN ACHING INDUSTRIAL VOID. ^ 



By J. Van Sertima. 



Into the vocabulary of the political economist of British Guiana an 

 unusual word has been lugged — Colonisation. Its connotation varies 

 with the psychology of those who use it, but it seems to mean the import- 

 ing of labour forces and their utilisation under conditions more improved 

 and more inviting thau those attaching to the system of introducing 

 East Indian coolies, as we have known it for the past seventy years. 

 British Guiana owes whatever economic progress it has made chiefly to 

 East Indian immigration, whatever alloy in the beneficence may be 

 found by the inquisitive and the fault-finder. In the language of acting 

 Governor Cox in a despatch (1909) to the Secretary of State, " the 

 history of indentured labour in this Colony is in fact more than half of 

 the history of the colonisation of British Guiana." For reasons which 

 need not be entered into here, a period— let us hope it is but a temporary 

 one — has been put to the system referred to. From the point of view 

 of the Colony's material interests it was not an ideal system, for until 

 the number of inhabitants to the square mile (300,000 to 91,000) in- 

 creases, the varied requirements of the colony cannot be met by the 

 temporary residence of labourers who are to be returned to their home 

 with their families at the end of a very limited period. It is settlers, not 

 carpet-baggers, that are wanted. This is a conclusion that has been 

 reached by various shades of public opinion, in the recent canvassing of 

 this question of Colonisation. The interest that has been evinced in this 

 connection has been remarkable, alike for its vividness and its universality, 

 recalling the agitation which issued in the reform of the colony's political 

 constitution in 1891. Upon every one not afflicted with intellectual 

 anfractuosities or incurable prejudices, it has been borne in that British 

 Guiana has long been hungering after man-power, without a sufficiency of 

 which there can be no regeneration, no development. The colony, which, 

 along with Cape Colony, was secured by the eijdit million Dutch loan, 

 remains an estate of the British Crown, undeveloped and neglected, as if 

 in expiation of the crime of being the only British possession on the 

 South American continent. It has now lost its pride of place, albeit it 

 offers a splendid field for hardy pioneers of the mettle which has done so 

 much for the development of the Dark Continent. 



The Colonial Government, it is true, have made attempts at colonisa- 

 tion before now, but as these were ill-conceived and- entered upon 

 apparently half-heartedly, they failed of their object. Land settlement 

 was the card — settlement on unoccupied estates to which a large area of 

 land suitable for cultivation or grazing purposes was attached. It was 

 hoped to secure the settlement of these estates by offering lots of land 

 to the immigrant in lieu of return passage to India. In the words of a 

 former Government Secretary, " none of these experiments succeeded, 

 and the failure is to my mind partly attributable to the position of the 



