The borders of the Americas were made after 1492 by armed conflict and grandiose claims- Spain and Portugal even divided the New World of the Americas by a grand treaty, the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. The overall effect of this was the division in Latin America between the Spanish- and Portuguese –speaking regions. This took no account of the prior claims of the original inhabitants or those of other European powers- both disputed these claims. The original inhabitants lost conclusively (“conclusively” may be too strong a term given recent developments in the Americas) but what is significant is that the other European powers were hardly more successful. This lack of success is more remarkable given the declining power of Spain and Portugal (which became an economic colony of Britain at the start of the eighteenth century) and the growing power of the Netherlands, France and England. The Dutch ruled Brazil for a while in the 17th century; elsewhere Spanish rule was only challenged successfully in marginal territories on the mainland like British Honduras and the Guianas and in those regions north of what are now the most southerly regions of the USA and in the Caribbean archipelago (though even here Spain held on to most of the largest islands). The Spanish mainland empire was divided into vice-royalties within the boundaries of which a number of countries achieved their independence: as a consequence border disputes were and are many. The boundaries of the vice-royalties were not themselves marked with any precision.
The unsettled border between British Guiana and Venezuela became of importance to the British at the time of the gold rush of the 1840s. At that time Venezuela failed to respond to British overtures; when gold and diamonds became important in the late nineteenth century the Venezuelans started to pay attention. Joseph fills in the detail of this history admirably clearly and begins his careful and detailed study with the opening of the dispute in the 1890s. This might have well been decided by the stronger (Britain) had it not been for the vocally belligerent support of the U.S.A. for Venezuela. It is unlikely that Britain and the U.S.A. would have come to blows on this issue but the self-confidence of an Imperial power near the peak of its strength and influence did not play well with its ex-colony. Joseph quite rightly points out the hypocrisy of the U.S.A. in its anti-imperial protestations just when it was about to launch its own imperial war against Spain. Britain agreed to arbitration as did Venezuela- the tribunal consisted of five members, two British nominees, two Venezuelan and a neutral chairman. The last was a Russian and the Venezuelans opted to be represented by Americans (their subsequent complaints of not being represented are one of the more bizarre aspects of the affair). Their legal representatives were an American and a Mexican. The decision confirmed the present border. The matter might have rested there had it not been for the Mexican who declared that the British had bullied everyone (this did not surface until the 1940s). Doubtless the Venezuelans felt that British power had prevailed and popular sentiment along those lines was widespread, but until 1961 the matter did not become a major diplomatic issue.
The story Joseph tells in great detail (and it needs to be detailed) is one of odd bungling by the British. At first resolute in refusing to reopen a matter that had been settled legally and accepted by both parties they let Venezuela reopen the issue. It is not clear, even from Joseph’s account, whether this was simply an individual’s failure. What is clear is that neither the U.K. nor the U.S.A. were prepared to place their national interests in the Venezuelan economy and the political stability of that country above those of the legal soundness of the original award and, need one add, the national interests of an insignificant and increasingly troublesome colony like British Guiana. Oddly enough the Soviet Union had been surprised at Britain’s allowing the matter to be reopened (had the U.K. taken the Soviet Union seriously on this matter it would have been at least one benefit of our being caught up in the Cold War). Most Latin American countries did not support Venezuela because of their own history of border disputes. The Governors of British Guiana, Grey and Luyt, were aware of the dangers and eventually so was the then government of B.G. The government which took office in 1964 and led the country to independence signed the Geneva Agreement of 1966. This in a sense brought the Anglo-American diplomacy, that contributed so greatly to the mess, to a close but as Joseph reminds us the years since then have not resolved the matter.
The long chapter on the border dispute with Surinam is the best introduction I know to the history of that dispute and the diplomacy surrounding it in the 1960s. This dispute nearly ended in armed conflict and had unexpected consequences. The unexpected consequences were, of course, at the other end of the Corentyne and involved maritime boundaries. The resolution of that dispute can be followed in Shridath Ramphal Triumph for UNCLOS: The Guyana-Suriname Maritime Arbitration, A Compilation & Commentary (Hansib, 2008). It is to be hoped that some government of Surinam years in the future will not follow the Venezuelan example and try to overturn the decision of an arbitration.
There are some interesting implications of these border disputes. The most serious is to do with Venezuela’s attempt to overturn an award decided by an international tribunal: the effects of this on international law are profound though in practice they would be tempered by political realities. Were the findings of 1899 to be set aside the result might prove worse for Venezuela as the mouth of the Orinoco and the Cuyuni basin could go to Guyana; what it would do is immediately cause a border conflict with Brazil as the 1930s settlement of the Brazil-Guyana border involved territory in the extreme south-west of Guyana that originally was claimed by Venezuela. On the other hand Surinamese claims on the real source of the Corentyne might lead to another possible source well within present Surinam being identified; far from gaining a triangle of land Surinam might lose one.
One obvious lesson of this book is that small insignificant powers should remember that Great Powers have permanent interests and not permanent allies or friends. Joseph might have made this point more forcefully. The fact that Guyana while still a colony got involved in the Cold War (which nearly became the hottest of all wars with the Cuban Missile Crisis) seems to me on the evidence presented here to have minimal bearing on the revival of the Venezuelan territorial claim or even on British or American attitudes from 1961 onwards. To put it another way, had the politics of British Guiana followed more closely the political trends that existed in Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados Venezuela would still have pushed its claim and been favoured, if not supported, by the U.S.A. and the U.K., the latter having made calculations of its own economic interests and the opinions of its major ally with whom it believes and continues to believe it has a “Special Relationship”. This is why Guyana’s relations with Brazil were and continue to be important.
One general reflection: ex-colonies are boringly similar. The Americans, a century after independence, could not resist tweaking the Lion’s tail in 1895 when the Venezuelans rekindled the dispute and could not stomach Imperial Britain’s perceived arrogance then and after 1899. The relationships between ex-colonies and ex-imperial powers fit an all-too-familiar pattern and the size and importance of the ex-colony do not appear to matter. The vogue for Post-Colonial Studies in academic circles has always seemed to me misplaced: Post Imperial Studies concentrating on the ex-imperial powers (far fewer in number) in decline and after their loss of empire would be much more fruitful. Much that needed to be said about ex-colonies was said by Seymour Martin Lipset as early as 1963 in his The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective. Cool heads and learning from the experience of others and ourselves (the land boundaries with Venezuela and Surinam are still in dispute) rather than being trapped in resentments are needed.
One specific reflection: these borders, like all modern borders, except insular ones, in the Americas and those elsewhere in the world have little to do with the borders of the original inhabitants of the land- even a cursory perusal of any good historical atlas would confirm this. This was the point that D. Graham Burnett was making in his Masters of All They Surveyed : Exploration, Geography, And A British El Dorado (University of Chicago Press, 2000). Joseph’s ire is excited by Burnett’s loose writing about Guyana’s “imperial perspective” (I think he meant that Guyanese adopted the imperial British perspective towards Amerindians) though by writing of Venezuela’s “ colonial ambitions” Joseph himself may be guilty of the same sin since Venezuela was claiming what it wants to believe are the imperial borders it inherited from Spain. Joseph is right to criticise Burnett for loose writing on the mechanics of the dispute, including the role of surveyors. Here post-modern theorising, one of the great obstacles to understanding the world, seems to be the culprit. Burnett is even more deserving of Joseph’s criticism for ill-informed comments about Guyana’s foreign policy. The fact that these are supported by reference to Eusi Kwayana leads to a final reflection on our writing about our recent history. Too often this seems to depend on referring to the writings by politicians and people choose their gurus according to political affiliation without subjecting these statements to rigorous tests (historians need to be even warier of evidence that supports than of evidence that contradicts their own interpretations). Appeals to authority are not acceptable in intellectual life, however much they may be in other spheres of human activity.
A few minor caveats are necessary as the editing process seems to have failed occasionally. The text seems to suggest that Devil’s Creek, the informal boundary between Berbice and Surinam, was a branch of the Corentyne (p.204): the footnote (p.273) correctly identifies this now disappeared waterway as about eighty miles west of the Corentyne. The first two paragraphs on page 448 read like the beginning of a treaty, perhaps the inevitable result of a scholar familiar with treaties and Latin syntax. The largest caveat is something beyond the control of the author: the map on page ii is not clear enough to show the extent of the Venezuelan and Surinamese territorial claims, though the reproduction on page 410 of a Venezuelan map showing the “zona de reclamación” makes up for that failure. Chapter Six might have become Chapter Three as it explains Venezuelan perspectives both before and, more importantly, after 1899 and leads naturally into Chapter Three, “Decolonization and Reopening”.
These are, however, minor matters. This is a fine achievement by a fine scholar- perhaps we can induce him to write a history of Guyana’s diplomatic relations in the first decades after independence, while some of the major and minor players are still alive. That so many people who served in the early years are still involved is a tribute to the high quality of our foreign service.
PETER D. FRASER 19th November 2009
