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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. [2] [page needed] The first known Europeans to encounter Guiana were Sir Walter Raleigh, an English explorer, and his crew.
The rich natural history of British Guiana was described by early explorers Sir Walter Raleigh and Charles Waterton and later by naturalists Sir David Attenborough and Gerald Durrell. Southern Guyana is host to some of the most pristine expanses of evergreen forests in the northern part of South America.
Before the arrival of European colonials, the Guianas were populated by scattered bands of native Arawak people. The native tribes of the Northern amazon forests are most closely related to the natives of the Caribbean; most evidence suggests that the Arawaks immigrated from the Orinoco and Essequibo River Basins in Venezuela and Guiana into the northern islands, and were then supplanted by ...
Guyana – previously known as British Guiana, is the only nation state of the Commonwealth of Nations on the mainland of South America. [1] Bordered to the east by Suriname , to the south and southwest by Brazil and to the west by Venezuela , it is the third-smallest country on the mainland of South America.
British rule ended on 26 May 1966 when Guyana was given independence from the United Kingdom by the Guyana Independence Act 1966, [1] which transformed British Guiana into an independent sovereign state. Elizabeth II was Queen of Guyana; however, she did not reside in but only visited Guyana once during her reign as Queen of Guyana.
Its population is approximately 860,000. It is one of the five non-Spanish-speaking territories on the continent, along with the states of Brazil and Suriname , the French overseas region of French Guiana and the British Overseas Territory of the Falkland Islands .
Guyana sent a team to compete at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China.Four representatives of Guyana qualified to take part in the Beijing Games–Adam Harris, Marian Burnett, and Aliann Pompey in track, and Niall Roberts in swimming–and Pompey advanced past the first round in her event, progressing to semifinals.
The governor of British Guiana was the Crown representative in British Guiana. The office existed from 1831 when the colonies of Demerara-Essequibo (see Demerara and Essequibo (colony) ) and Berbice united as British Guiana until 1966 when Guyana attained independence.