This instalment examines some of the major Communication issues as it related to interior development in the 19th Century.

By Gywneth George
During an extended period of British occupation extending over a century or more, very little was done to exploit the rich resources of the interior. This pattern was left by the Dutch who initially settled inland for security reasons, but who eventually moved to the coastlands and became content with the agricultural riches of this area. When the colony was finally ceded to the British, this same pattern continued, and consequently the interior was practically cut off from the economic life of the colony.

Up to the latter part of the nineteenth century, very little was done towards establishing interior communications as the population remained sparse and located only in areas where there was some vibrant economic activity. It was economic pressure in the late nineteenth century which necessitated the exploitation of the interior and demanded communication facilities, especially land communications, to accomplish this.

One of the constraints to interior development had always been the boundary disputes with the neighbouring countries of Brazil and Venezuela. However, of the two claims facing Guyana, the dispute with Venezuela had far more serious consequences because of the magnitude of the claim – almost two thirds of Guyana’s territory in the Essequibo region. Venezuela’s first official claim to Essequibo came in 1844 in the course of  diplomatic exchanges with the British which followed Robert Schomburgk’s boundary surveys. In the early 1850s, gold was discovered within the disputed territory and expeditions were sent out to explore the Yuruari and Cuyuni areas. In 1867, the British Guiana Mining Company was founded to work the Cuyuni discoveries. The discovery of gold served to complicate the boundary issue and escalate tension. Both Venezuela and Guyana had issued what were in effect unilateral declarations in 1850, which stated that they would not occupy or encroach upon the territory in dispute, but neither adhered to this ‘agreement’ with any rigour.

Eventually, after the United States was prevailed upon by Venezuela to take up their case, Britain and Venezuela signed a treaty in Washington in 1897 in which they agreed to establish an international tribunal to lay down the boundary. On October 3, 1899, the Arbitral Tribunal gave its decision which laid down a line corresponding to the existing boundary today. Shortly after this in 1904, the border issue with Brazil was also fixed following the arbitral award of the King of Italy.

These two awards coming at this time were important to interior development, and with it interior communications. The British government now felt free enough to deal with these territories which had so long been disputed. The Paris Award (1899) resulted in the issuing of a Concessions memorandum which declared the whole colony, with the exception of the settled portion of the coastland, as being open to applications for concessions. This was done, using a clearly defined boundary line which was afterwards generally defined as the interior.

Up to 1899 though, very little was done to assist the gold industry except to pocket the royalties acquired from it. It was only in 1884 when the sugar industry went into decline as a result of competition from bounty-fed beet sugar, that some attention was given to diversifying the economy, and hence the exploitation of the interior.

The main impetus for the construction of roads in the interior was the discovery of gold, and later diamonds. According to one writer, it was not until the Gold Commission pointed out in 1895 that high transportation cost was one of the principal impediments to the growth of the industry, that a serious effort was made to construct several interior roads. The discovery of gold in the 1880s stimulated debates on improving communications in the hinterland and public discussions were held with regard to the merits and demerits of the use of roads or railway construction into the interior. This has even led to the myth in a later period that Henry Ford offered to build a road, asking only in return that Ford cars be allowed on the road for twenty years – the scheme was however rejected, according to the source.

However, up to the end of the nineteenth century, it seemed that the argument always leaned heavily towards the preference for railways and hence the frequency of submission of proposals for this venture, especially during the period of the gold and diamond boom. But the question of penetrating the interior by means of land transport always revolved around the social, economic and topographic conditions of the interior. These conditions did not justify the construction of any such system by private promoters without the inducement of speculative concessions which were considered to be unreasonable. The concept of traffic and economic justification entered all proposals.

Opinions varied regarding the most worthwhile line of communication for opening up of the interior. For the greater part, most schools of thought favoured either railway development or the use of the waterways. On the issue of road construction, one writer commented “it is just as great a mistake to expend money upon impossible education schemes or colony roads.”

But the building of railways was a costly venture due to the high cost of necessary machinery and equipment needed for the proposed railway project into the interior. But the railway was favoured for just this reason – it generated income and provided employment for the mother country and this was always the prime thinking of the colonisers. This situation was aggravated by the fact that the imperial government was also hesitant to invest money in a colony where the Constitution vested a planter class with full autonomy over the colony’s finances.

But by 1899, circumstances dictated that three roads (or fair weather trails) to the interior be constructed and maintained by the government, the Barima-Barama, the Potaro-Konawaruk and the Bartica-Kaburi. These were actually trails or cart-roads and not designed for vehicular traffic. The construction of these roads was justified when one considers the loss of time, capital and even lives that were prevented. Such loss was a result of the lack of a safe means of transportation and was also detrimental to the interests of local investors in the gold industry.  These roads facilitated the tapping of the wealth of the gold industry which was situated in these areas. This was evident in the fact that when the rush to the gold fields declined, these roads were left to revert to forest. One writer felt that if the government had assumed a policy of providing easy and inexpensive access to the gold fields, with an absence of troublesome legislations, the result might have been a rapid increase of population with the formation of mining communities and the concomitant blossoming of other industries. As pointed out by one member who testified before the Royal Commis-sion  (1897), the construction of these roads was made possible by the 5% royalty placed on gold. The decision to construct these roads may have also stemmed from the Commis-sioners’ report that while “there can be no question of the vital importance to the colony of maintaining the sugar industry, at the same time if the sugar industry is maintained, the government must be careful not to allow its influence to retard the settlement and opening of new land”. In addition to this, most of the capital invested initially in the gold industry had been provided locally and as two or three weeks were spent in reaching the gold fields, the expenses were heavy as a consequence of this. Additionally, between 1890 and 1893, revenue from gold increased by over 200%. Even though this revenue would decrease in the next two years, the gold industry remained important to the colony as the sugar industry was still in decline.

The imperative to open up the interior was also based on the fact that there was some investment of local capital in the gold industry by some members of the merchant and professional class. However, since the main aim of the roads was to tap the resources of the gold fields, no serious thought was given to the agricultural and other resources of the area, for linking communities, or even establishing townships.

In the absence of this kind of emphasis, economic activities and settlements in the interior continued to be sporadic and scattered. Had serious thought been given to really opening up the interior for development, a national plan could have been devised to link the existing land communication to establish a suitable communications network which may have helped to sustain those economic activities already in existence. When the gold industry declined by the beginning of the 1900s, there was no capital and very limited effort to improve interior communications. This was part of the problem of the syndrome of ‘coastalitis’ as one contemporary writer puts it.