In the first published account of the massive U.S. covert intervention in British Guiana between 1953 and 1969, Stephen G. Rabe uncovers a Cold War story of imperialism, gender bias, and racism. When the South American colony now known as Guyana was due to gain independence from Britain in the 1960s, U.S. officials in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations feared it would become a communist nation under the leadership of Cheddi Jagan, a Marxist who was very popular among the South Asian (mostly Indian) majority. Although to this day the CIA refuses to confirm or deny involvement, Rabe presents evidence that CIA funding, through a program run by the AFL-CIO, helped foment the labor unrest, race riots, and general chaos that led to Jagan's replacement in 1964. The political leader preferred by the United States, Forbes Burnham, went on to lead a twenty-year dictatorship in which he persecuted the majority Indian population. Considering race, gender, religion, and ethnicity along with traditional approaches to diplomatic history, Rabe's analysis of this Cold War tragedy serves as a needed corrective to interpretations that depict the Cold War as an unsullied U.S. triumph.

A transcription of a text published in British Guiana in 1948 listing 4351 individuals together with their occupations and some details of their accomplishments. This directory must have been very useful at the time of its original publication, but after nearly 70 years is of little if any practical commercial value. It has been reproduced purely for the purpose of informing current and future generations in Guyana of their ancestors and their accomplishments. From a genealogical perspective therefore, it may serve some useful purpose.

Borderless Empire explores the volatile history of Dutch Guiana, in particular the forgotten colonies of Essequibo and Demerara, to provide new perspectives on European empire building in the Atlantic world. Bram Hoonhout argues that imperial expansion was a process of improvisation at the colonial level rather than a project that was centrally orchestrated from the metropolis. Furthermore, he emphasizes that colonial expansion was far more transnational than the oft-used divisions into "national Atlantics" suggest. In so doing, he transcends the framework of the "Dutch Atlantic" by looking at the connections across cultural and imperial boundaries. The openness of Essequibo and Demerara affected all levels of the colonial society. Instead of counting on metropolitan soldiers, the colonists relied on Amerindian allies, who captured runaway slaves and put down revolts. Instead of waiting for Dutch slavers, the planters bought enslaved Africans from foreign smugglers. Instead of trying to populate the colonies with Dutchmen, the local authorities welcomed adventurers from many different origins. The result was a borderless world in which slavery was contingent on Amerindian support and colonial trade was rooted in illegality. These transactions created a colonial society that was far more Atlantic than Dutch.

Clem Seecharan has written a useful documentary history of Bechu, the first Indian to testify before the Royal Commission in 1897. Now who was this Bechu? He was, in Seecharan's words, "an indefatigable gadfly," who in letters to the local press revealed the conditions of Indian indentureship: poor wages, sexual exploitation of women by overseers and managers, and the virtual impossibility for Indians to obtain justice because of the collusion between colonial authorities and the planters. This knowledge we owe to economic historian Alan Adamson who "discovered" Bechu in the 1960s. Yet the man himself remained somewhat of a mystery, something Bechu himself seems to have cultivated. Seecharan has now filled a number of lacunae in our understanding with this two-part volume. The first section focuses on Bechu and the British Guianese environment in the late nineteenth century, while the second part includes letters and memoranda by Bechu (and reactions to them by local opponents).

This book is a history of the three Guianas, now known as Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. Though histories of each of the countries exist, this is the first work in a century to consider the three countries as a group, and thus the first to present the history of all three as a comparative and overarching study. Special emphasis has been given to the story of how each colony was administered by Britain, the Netherlands, and France respectively, and how these differing colonial administrative policies have given rise to three vastly different cultures. Because the geographical area of the Guianas is relatively small, the indigenous population at the time of contact was relatively uniform across the area, and the external pressures on the three colonies over their histories exhibited significant similarities, the book presents the Guianas as an ideal laboratory in which to study the effects of imperialism and cultural assimilation practices. The book also briefly considers the present political and cultural status of the three polities and makes some projections about their possible futures. In all, the book presents a complete history from prehistory until the present day covering the entirety of the Guianas region, relating a colorful history from a little-studied corner of the world.