| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 1,637 (0.18% of total pop.) [1] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Georgetown and Enterprise | |
| Languages | |
| Chinese and English (Guyanese Creole) | |
| Religion | |
| Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, Evangelical Christianity, Buddhism, and Chinese folk religion including (Taoism and Confucianism) | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Chinese Caribbean |
The first numbers of Chinese arrived in British Guiana in 1853, forming an important minority of the indentured workforce. After their indenture, many who stayed on in Guyana came to be known as successful retailers, with considerable integration with the local culture. The most notable person of Chinese ancestry was the Former Guyana President Arthur Chung, was independent Guyana's first President from 1970 to 1980, and the first Chinese head of state of a non-Asian country.
Fourteen thousand Chinese arrived in British Guiana between 1853 and 1879 on 39 vessels bound from Hong Kong by the British Raj officials to fill the labor shortage on the sugar plantations engendered by the abolition of slavery. Smaller numbers arrived in other British colonies such as Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname. The Chinese achieved considerable success in the colony, a number of them having been Christians in China before the emigration. [2] Some, particularly in the early years, were "the offscourings of Canton--goal-birds, loafers and vagabonds," who swiftly deserted the plantations and took to bootlegging, burglary and robbery and kept brothels and gambling houses. [3] Others were fleeing the Punti-Hakka Clan Wars conflicts of Canton. [4] Most were bound under five-year indentures—civil contracts enforced by penal sanctions—to work on the sugar plantations. [5]
Eighty-five percent of these Chinese immigrants were men staying at Guyana, and most returned to China or emigrated to other parts of the Guianas and the Caribbean after completing or escaping their indentures. Those who remained soon turned to trade, competing effectively with the Portuguese and indo,[ clarification needed ] who had also entered as indentured laborers, in the retail sector. Look-Lai reports important Chinese import and wholesale traders by the 1880s and that the 1890s saw Chinese "druggists, butchers, hucksters, cart and boat cab owners, barbers, laundrymen and legal sellers of opium and ganja (marijuana)" and holding 50% of food shops and 90% of liquor shops. [6] By the end of the 19th century, the Chinese had transcended their early reputation for criminality and come to be regarded as worthy, law-abiding, industrious citizens. [3] [7]
Unlike other communities of overseas Chinese, the Chinese of Guyana swiftly abandoned traditional Chinese customs, religion and language. [8] Their eager acceptance of Christianity contrasted sharply with the strong attachment of other overseas Chinese communities to their ancestral religions and to Christian missionary conversion efforts. [9] : 279 Many of the first generation Chinese Guyanese were Christians while in China, and most others converted swiftly on arrival. They built and maintained their own Christian churches throughout the colony and paid their own Chinese-speaking catechists. [3] In 1860, Mr. Lough Fook, who had come from China to spread the gospel among the immigrants, established The Chinese Baptist Church of British Guiana, first at Peter's Hall and later at Leonora. [10] An Anglican missionary, Wu Tai Kam, arrived in the colony from Singapore in 1864 and successfully proselytized among the immigrants. [9] : 279 He was given a government stipend as missionary to the Chinese immigrants, and was instrumental in founding the Chinese settlement at Hopetown. For those who were lucky enough to marry the few Chinese women in the colony, or to have migrated as families, domestic life was characterized by a sense of good breeding in familial relations. They always hung curtains in their rooms, and decorated them with looking-glasses and little pictures; their homes were regarded as models of cleanliness and comfort. [9] The descendants of the Chinese from China spoke and wrote English fluently, so that by the 1920s there was no longer a need for Chinese-speaking pastors. [10] In the first years of the 20th century, prosperous Guyanese Chinese began sending their sons and daughters to England for university. [5]
By the mid-twentieth century, the descendants of the original immigrants had assimilated so completely into mainstream British colonial culture that they had become uninteresting to anthropologists. [7] Anthropologist Morton Fried found them completely at home in European culture and its local manifestation, with no ancestral cult, no ancestral tablets, no ceremonial burial ground or permanent record of genealogy and no trace of Chinese medicine. The grandchildren and great grandchildren of the original immigrants did not even know the Chinese characters for their own names. The young anthropologist declared with exasperation, "these people are scarcely Chinese." [11]
The Chinese continued to prosper in the retail trades and contributed substantially to the development of the colony's gold, diamond and bauxite resources, and to its professional community and its political, religious and sporting life. The three pillars of the community were the Chinese Association, the Chinese Sports Club and St. Saviour's Church, an Anglican house of worship founded, funded and pastored by the Chinese Guyanese. [12]
The 20th century saw substantial emigration by the Chinese Guyanese professional class, a process accelerated following independence, making the Chinese Guyanese principally a diaspora community today. [13] In 2012, 7.72%, of foreign-born Guyanese nationals were born in China. [14]
The history of Guyana begins about 35,000 years ago with the arrival of humans coming from Eurasia. These migrants became the Carib and Arawak tribes, who met Alonso de Ojeda's first expedition from Spain in 1499 at the Essequibo River. In the ensuing colonial era, Guyana's government was defined by the successive policies of the French, Dutch, and British settlers. During the colonial period, Guyana's economy was focused on plantation agriculture, which initially depended on slave labor. Guyana saw major slave rebellions in 1763 and 1823. Following the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, 800,000 enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and South Africa were freed, resulting in plantations contracting indentured workers, mainly from India. Eventually, these Indians joined forces with Afro-Guyanese descendants of slaves to demand equal rights in government and society. After the Second World War, the British Empire pursued policy decolonization of its overseas territories, with independence granted to British Guiana on May 26, 1966. Following independence, Forbes Burnham rose to power, quickly becoming an authoritarian leader, pledging to bring socialism to Guyana. His power began to weaken following international attention brought to Guyana in wake of the Jonestown mass murder suicide in 1978.
British Guiana was a British colony, part of the mainland British West Indies. It was located on the northern coast of South America. Since 1966 it has been known as the independent nation of Guyana.
Coolie is a pejorative term used for low-wage labourers, typically those of Indian or Chinese descent.
The music of Guyana encompasses a range of musical styles and genres that draw from various influences including: Indian, Latino-Hispanic, European, African, Chinese, and Amerindian music. Popular Guyanese performers include: Terry Gajraj, Eddy Grant, Dave Martins & the Tradewinds, Aubrey Cummings, Colleˊ Kharis and Nicky Porter. Eddie Hooper The Guyana Music Festival has proven to be influential on the Guyana music scene.
Indo-Caribbeans or Indian-Caribbeans are people in the Caribbean who trace their ancestry to the Indian subcontinent. They are descendants of the Jahaji indentured laborers from British India, who were brought by the British, Dutch, and French during the colonial era from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century. A minority of them are descendants from people who immigrated as entrepreneurs, businesspeople, merchants, engineers, doctors, religious leaders, students, and other professional occupations beginning in the mid-20th century.
A Portuguese Guyanese is a Guyanese whose ancestors came from Portugal or a Portuguese who has Guyanese citizenship. Around 1,910 people identified as Portuguese Guyanese according to 2012 census
The Guianas, also spelled Guyanas or Guayanas, is a region in north-eastern South America. Strictly, the term refers to the three Guyanas: Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, formerly British, Dutch and French Guyana. Broadly it refers to the South American coast from the mouth of the Orinoco to the mouth of the Amazon.
Indo-Guyanese or Indian-Guyanese, are Guyanese nationals of Indian origin who trace their ancestry to India and the wider subcontinent. They are the descendants of indentured servants and settlers who migrated from India beginning in 1838, and continuing during the British Raj.
Guyanese literature covers works including novels, poetry, plays and others written by people born or strongly-affiliated with Guyana. Formerly British Guiana, British language and style has an enduring impact on the writings from Guyana, which are done in English language and utilizing Guyanese Creole. Emigration has contributed to a large body of work relating the Guyanese diaspora experience.
Afro-Guyanese are generally descended from the enslaved people brought to Guyana from the coast of West Africa to work on sugar plantations during the era of the Atlantic slave trade. Coming from a wide array of backgrounds and enduring conditions that severely constrained their ability to preserve their respective cultural traditions contributed to the adoption of Christianity and the values of British colonists.
Chinese Jamaicans are Jamaicans of Chinese ancestry, which include descendants of migrants from China to Jamaica. Early migrants came in the 19th century; there was another moment of migration in the 1980s and 1990s. Many of the descendants of early migrants have moved abroad, primarily to Canada and the United States. Most Chinese Jamaicans are Hakka and many can trace their origin to the indentured Chinese laborers who came to Jamaica in the mid-19th to early 20th centuries.
Jan Lowe Shinebourne, also published as Janice Shinebourne, is a Guyanese novelist who now lives in England. In a unique position to be able to provide an insight into multicultural Caribbean culture, Shinebourne's is a rare and distinctive voice : She grew up on a colonial sugar plantation and was deeply affected by the dramatic changes her country went through in its transition from a colony to independence. She wrote her early novels to record this experience.
The Indian indenture system was a system of indentured servitude, by which more than 1.6 million workers from British India were transported to labour in European colonies, as a substitute for slave labor, following the abolition of the trade in the early 19th century. The system expanded after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833, in the French colonies in 1848, and in the Dutch Empire in 1863. British Indian indentureship lasted till the 1920s. This resulted in the development of a large South Asian diaspora in the Caribbean, Natal, East Africa, Réunion, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Fiji, as well as the growth of Indo-Caribbean, Indo-African, Indo-Mauritian, Indo-Fijian, Indo-Malaysian, and Indo-Singaporean populations.
Chindian ; is an informal term used to refer to a person of mixed Chinese and Indian ancestry; i.e. from any of the host of ethnic groups native to modern China and India. There are a considerable number of Chindians in Malaysia and Singapore. In Maritime Southeast Asia, people of Chinese and Indian origin immigrated in large numbers during the 19th and 20th centuries. There are also a sizeable number living in Hong Kong and smaller numbers in other countries with large overseas Chinese and Indian diaspora, such as Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname and Guyana in the Caribbean, as well as in Indonesia, the Philippines, the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.
Chinese Trinidadians and Tobagonians are Trinidadians and Tobagonians of Han Chinese ancestry. The group includes people from Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Overseas Chinese who have immigrated to Trinidad and Tobago and their descendants, including those who have emigrated to other countries. The term is usually applied both to people of mixed and unmixed Chinese ancestry, although the former usually appear as mixed race in census figures. Chinese settlement began in 1806. Between 1853 and 1866 2,645 Chinese immigrants arrived in Trinidad as indentured labour for the sugar and cacao plantations. Immigration peaked in the first half of the twentieth century, but was dramatically lowered after the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949. After peaking at 8,361 in 1960, the unmixed Chinese population in Trinidad declined to 3,800 in 2000, however slightly increased to 3,984 in 2011.
Chinese Caribbeans are people who are predominantly of Han Chinese ethnic origin living in the Caribbean. There are small but significant populations of Chinese and their descendants in all countries of the Greater Antilles. They are all part of the large Chinese diaspora known as Overseas Chinese.
The people of Guyana, or Guyanese, come from a wide array of backgrounds and cultures including aboriginal natives, African and Indian origins, as well as a minority of Chinese and European descendant peoples. Demographics as of 2012 are Indo-Guyanese 39.8%, Afro-Guyanese 30.1%, mixed race 19.9%, Amerindian 10.5%, other 1.5%. As a result, Guyanese do not equate their nationality with race and ethnicity, but with citizenship. Although citizens make up the majority of Guyanese, there is a substantial number of Guyanese expatriates, dual citizens and descendants living worldwide, chiefly elsewhere in the Anglosphere.
Women in Guyana are a cross-section of Asian, African, and indigenous backgrounds. British colonization and imperialism have contributed to the sexism against Guyanese women in the household, politics, and education.
The Indian community in Saint Kitts and Nevis is made up of Indo-Kittitians, Indo-Nevisians, non-resident Indians and persons of Indian origin. Indo-Kittitians and Indo-Nevisians are nationals of Saint Kitts and Nevis whose ancestry lies within the country of India. The community originated from the Indian indentured workers brought to Saint Kitts and Nevis by the British in 1861 and 1874 respectively. By 1884, most of the community had emigrated to Caribbean nations with larger Indian populations such as Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Suriname.
Plantation Peter's Hall was a plantation on the east bank of the River Demerara in Dutch Guiana and British Guiana. It was probably laid out in the mid-eighteenth century and by the early nineteenth century had over 200 slaves before that institution was abolished in the British Empire.
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