What is the connection between chilly Labrador (in Canada), and the steamy tropical world of Guyana? Well, more than you'd imagine. I'll be exploring their shared history over the next few posts.
Historically, both were extremely important colonies to Britain, particularly in Georgian and Victorian times. They weren't however acquired at the same time. Newfoundland had been in English hands since the 1580s, and Labrador had joined it in the 1750s. Guyana (then called Berbice and Demerara), however, wasn't part of the British Empire until the end of the Napoleonic war. After that however, there were some striking similarities in the way they were run (by a 'plantocracy' in Guiana, and a 'fishocracy' in Labrador). The two colonies even seemed to share a strange, Georgian vocabulary, and a taste for place-names like ‘Profit’ and ‘Success’.
Better still, ancient trade routes, I discovered, had once run between the two; molasses heading north for fishermen, salted cod going south for the slaves (in fact, Newfoundlanders still drink Guyanese dark rum, known to them as ‘Screech’).
And dried fish is still an important part of the Guyanese diet (though not so much cod these days). Once, most of it was shipped from here, Battle Harbour (see photo).
By 1862, Battle was the capital of fish, and ‘the most lawless and disorderly place on the whole coast.’ There was no law, no police, no representation, and the place was terrorised by dogs. But the killing and ‘making’ of cod was industrial; over two-and-a-quarter million pounds of ‘Labrador Cure’ were being shipped out every year (along with 5,000 barrels of herring for New York). Much of that fish would keep the cane-cutters going, not only in Guiana but across the Caribbean.