Guyanese Food History

Historical period

Amerindian cassava and river food systems; Dutch settlement from the early seventeenth century in Essequibo, Berbice and Demerara, and the POLDERS and sea defences they engineered, which is why the coast is habitable and why it floods; sugar on those polders with enslaved African labour, and the BERBICE SLAVE UPRISING of 1763 under Cuffy, now a national holiday; British takeover in 1803 and the Demerara rebellion of 1823; EMANCIPATION in 1834-38 and the VILLAGE MOVEMENT that followed; INDIAN INDENTURE from 1838 to 1917, plus Portuguese Madeirans from 1835 and Chinese from 1853; rice as a smallholder crop; independence in 1966; the food import bans and shortages of the 1970s-80s, when flour and split peas were banned and the country cooked from cassava and rice flour — a documented episode that shaped a generation of home baking; and the oil economy from 2019.