The expiration in 1982 of the Protocol of Port-of-Spain reheated a border dispute between Venezuela and Guyana that had been frozen since 1970, Almost at once, Venezuelan ultranationalists asserted the need to recover by force the Essequibo region of Guyana--two-thirds of that country--which Venezuela had long claimed. While rejecting force as a solution, the Venezuelan government has indicated that the Protocol will not be renewed, thus pushing the economically and politically vulnerable Guyana toward new and uncertain negotiations. This book describes the actors and their stake in the conflict, the capacity of each to develop the disputed region, and the implications of the Venezuelan claim for both sides. Incorporating a critical examination of the conflict's historical-legal background, Dr. Braveboy-Wagner chronicles the progress of the dispute through its various stages and describes the attempts of both sides to elicit outside support, especially from other Third World nations. Finally, she assesses the possibilities for a solution by force and by compromise and considers the potential for U.S. involvement.

This volume, the first of a three-part documentary of the Guyana-Venezuela border issue, gives a general overview of the early history of the colonization of the Essequibo region forming the large western part of Guyana. It presents the background to the origin of the territorial dispute which developed from 1840 and examines the opposing views of proposed boundary lines and the long trail of diplomatic exchanges between Venezuela and Great Britain (the colonial ruler of Guyana, then known as British Guiana). It concludes with the involvement of the United States in support of Venezuela, eventually leading to the international arbitration for a “full, perfect, and final settlement” and the arbitral award which delineated the territorial boundary in 1899.

This paper was the dissertation submitted in 1996 to complete her Master of Arts Degree in Latin American Studies at the Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS) of the University of London. It sought to provide a scholarly account on the circumstances under which the nineteenth century Anglo-Venezuelan territorial dispute on the Esequibo region was resolved, . However, its main purpose is to discuss to what extent the events leading to the arbitration of 1898, and the arbitration decision itself, can be considered at the same time a victory to the United States, the last triumph to the declining British presence in the Western Hemisphere, and one of the greatest failures in the history of the Venezuelan foreign policy

International Armed Conflict Since 1945 is a bibliographic handbook that briefly describes each of 269 international wars and other war-threatening conflicts occurring between 1945 and 1988. .

This book is about Anglo-American involvement in the reopening of the border controversy between Guyana, formerly British Guiana, and Venezuela. The dispute over the border commenced in the mid-nineteenth century when Venezuela asserted a claim to some two-thirds of the territory of the British colony. Great Britain’s refusal to refer the delimitation of the border to arbitration developed into a major crisis in Anglo-American affairs in 1895. The United States had assessed the issue as a major challenge to the Monroe Doctrine and it would provoke the two English-speaking powers close to military conflict. In 1899, an arbitral tribunal met in Paris and agreed unanimously on the boundary line between British Guiana and Venezuela. That boundary line has been universally accepted. In 1962 at the height of the Cold War, Venezuela repudiated the award claiming that it was a “political deal”. Fidel Castro had assumed power in Cuba and there were anxieties about the spread of Communism in the Americas, particularly in British Guiana during the pre-independence premiership of Marxist oriented Cheddi Jagan. Cedric Joseph examines the primary documents relating to the diplomacy of the administrations of John F Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. He explores their special relationships, sympathies and acute predisposition towards Venezuela that permitted the reopening of the boundary issue and ultimately sacrificed the territorial integrity of Guyana. He also establishes the collusion between Suriname’s claim to territory in Guyana and the Venezuelan claim.