guyanatimesgy.com
OCTOBER 25, 2015
Sunday Times Magazine 7
Times Heritage
1913 –1945 A
s most Guyanese would know from school history classes, bauxite mining in Guyana had its genesis in George Mackenzie. Mackenzie was an American (though some historians say he was Scottish) who had arrived in the-then colony of British Guiana in 1913.
along the Demerara River. However, one year later he established the Demerara Bauxite Company, and in 1917 Guyana exported its first bauxite ore shipment out of an area known as Three Friends. Three Friends was a sparsely populated village along the Demerara River,
British Guiana stamp shows mining of bauxite
It has been said that in 1915, after telling land owners he was setting up an orange orchard, Mackenzie (said too to be a geologist) bought up large areas of land
said to have a history going back to 1759 when a land survey established the village, named after its three founding residents – and former naval officers–:
Messrs Spencer, Blount and John Dalgleish Patterson. According to Guyana. org, Patterson, a contractor for the Dutch colony of Essequibo-Demerara at the time, owned plantation Christianburg, which was a choice place for retirement of British naval officers after 1803. Geological surveys showing the potential for bauxite in the region can be traced back to the late 19th century. Bauxite was discovered in a belt stretching across the country from the North West District to the Corentyne River, with large deposits identified in the Pomeroon, the Essequibo around Bartica, Mackenzie, Ituni, Canje, and Orealla. However, even after a government geologist, Sir John Hamilton, was able to identify the composition of the deposits in 1910, it was not until George Mackenzie founded the Demerara Bauxite Company that the resource was exploited. A paper presented in London in 1916 on the occurrence of bauxite in Guyana generated such interest in the USA that the Aluminium Company
Town Hall, British Guiana n.d.
Parliament Buildings 1923
Some three miles out of Linden, one of a few “blue lakes” that appeared in some mined out areas during the era when bauxite mining was at its peak. The name “blue lake” was given to them by Linden residents
of America (Alcoa) in the same year incorporated the Demerara Bauxite Company (DEMBA). Shortly after, DEMBA secured leases on large areas of bauxite-bearing land in the vicinity of the area purchased by Mackenzie. In 1916 mining of bauxite started, and hundreds of people from the coastal areas migrated there in search of employment. Wismar, on the western bank of the Demerara River, was formed by the influx of immigrants from various European countries, mainly Germany. The German settlers named the settlement Wismar after a German town of the same
name. Some of the Germans who settled there were originally recruited by the British Guiana government as part of an alternative labour supply for the sugar plantations, after most of the freed Africans refused to work there. It became a larger settlement following emancipation when many former African slaves, who refused to work on the sugar plantations, migrated to live there. A slump in the bauxite industry between 1930 and 1936 caused much hardship, until trade picked up just before 1939 and particularly during the Second World War of 1939-1945
when the demand for aluminium was high. The Berbice Bauxite Company, a subsidiary of American Cyanamid, started production of chemical grade bauxite for the manufacture of alum at Kwakwani up the Berbice River in 1942. In 1943 DEMBA extended its operations to Ituni, about 35 miles south of Mackenzie, and by the end of the decade Guyana was the world's second largest producer, accounting for 17 percent of world production. With the expansion of mining, the working population grew and most of the workers settled permanently in the area.