The First Issues Collectors Club (2006) website lists British Guiana as the nineteenth country in the world to begin issuing its own postage stamps, just ten years after Great Britain issued the world’s first adhesive postage stamp in May 1840. The list shows British Guiana as being the fourth British colony to issue postage stamps, the earlier ones being Mauritius (1847) New South Wales (1850) and Victoria (1850). Guyana, therefore, was the first British West Indian colony to issue postage stamps – followed by Trinidad in 1851, Barbados in 1852, Bahamas in 1859, and Jamaica in 1860, although private postage stamps were actually issued in Trinidad and Bermuda in 1847 and 1848 respectively. Guyana’s 1850 stamp was an official government approved issue, hence its position on the First Issues Collectors Club list.

Unlike the other British West Indian colonies and most other British colonies of the day, British Guiana’s early stamps do not carry a portrait of the then reigning monarch, Queen Victoria. In fact, it was not until the 1913-16 issues, – on which the portrait of King George V appeared – that British Guiana stamps bore the image of the reigning British monarch. This change, according to the book The Postage Stamps and Postal History of British Guiana (1970) was as a result of instructions to all British colonies and protectorates in 1911, from the then Secretary of State in Britain (L Harcourt) that