[2][page needed] The first known Europeans to encounter Guiana were Sir Walter Raleigh, an English explorer, and his crew.

Raleigh published a book entitled The Discovery of Guiana, but this mainly relates to the Guayana region of Venezuela.

Britain returned control of the territory to the Batavian Republic in 1802, but captured the colonies a year later during the Napoleonic Wars.

[3] The economy was based on cultivation and processing of sugarcane as a commodity crop, dependent on extensive labor by enslaved workers of mostly sub-Saharan African descent.

The wealth they generated had largely flowed to a group of absentee slave owners living in Britain, especially in Glasgow and Liverpool.

[4][page needed] The economy of British Guiana was completely based on sugarcane production until the 1880s, when falling cane sugar prices stimulated a shift toward rice farming, mining and forestry.

Under the Dutch, settlement and economic activity was concentrated around sugarcane plantations lying inland from the coast.

Under the British, cane planting expanded to richer coastal lands, with greater coastline protection.

With the increasing success and wealth of the Booker Group, they expanded internationally and diversified by investing in rum, pharmaceuticals, publishing, advertising, retail stores, timber, and petroleum, among other industries.

[6][page needed] Guianese served in all British forces during the Second World War, and enjoyed veterans' benefits afterwards.

It also served as a refuge for Jews displaced from continental Europe, where the Nazis and Fascists worked to destroy them in the Holocaust.

[7][page needed] British colonists built the first railway system in British Guiana: 98 km (61 mi) of 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge, from Georgetown to Rosignol, and 31 km (19 mi) of 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in) line between Vreeden Hoop and Parika; it opened in 1848.

A Court of Policy exercised both legislative and executive functions under the direction of the colonial Governor (which existed from 1831 to 1966).

The Kiezers were elected, with the restrictive franchise based on property holdings and limited to the larger landowners of the colony.

The membership of the State Council was appointed by the Governor and the House of Assembly and possessed limited revisionary powers.

In the ensuing election of 21 August 1961, the PPP won 20 seats in the House of Assembly, entitling it as the majority party to appoint eight senators.

From 1962 to 1964, riots, strikes and other disturbances stemming from racial, social and economic conflicts delayed full independence for British Guiana.

The leaders of the political parties reported to the British Colonial Secretary that they were unable to reach agreement on the remaining details of forming an independent government.

The British Colonial Office intervened by imposing its own independence plan, in part requiring another election under a new proportional representation system.

Britain expected that this system would reduce the number of seats won by the PPP and prevent it from obtaining a majority.

Venezuela did not accept the Schomburgk Line, which placed the entire Cuyuni River basin within the colony.

After his death, Severo Mallet-Prevost, legal counsel for Venezuela and a named partner in the New York law firm Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle published a letter alleging that the judges on the tribunal acted improperly as a result of a back-room deal between Russia and Great Britain.

Efforts by all parties to resolve the matter on the eve of Guyana's independence in 1966 failed; as of today, the dispute remains unresolved.

The Netherlands raised a diplomatic protest, claiming that the New River, and not the Kutari, was to be regarded as the source of the Courantyne and the boundary.