The Guianas, sometimes called by the Spanish loan-word Guayanas (Las Guayanas), is a region in north-eastern South America which includes the following three territories:
French Guiana, an overseas department and region of France
Guyana, formerly known as British Guiana from 1831 until 1966, after the colonies of Berbice, Essequibo, and Demerara, taken from the Netherlands in 1814, were merged into a single colony Suriname, formerly Dutch Guiana, until 1814 together with Berbice, Essequibo and Demerara
In the wider context, the Guianas also includes the following two territories:
Guayana Region in eastern Venezuela (Amazonas, Bolívar, and Delta Amacuro states), formerly the Guayana Province, alternatively known as Spanish Guayana (or Venezuelan Guiana) State of Amapá in northern Brazil, known as Portuguese Guiana (or Brazilian Guiana)
The combined population of the three core territories is 1,718,651; 804,567 in Guyana, 612,985 in Suriname and 301,099 in French Guiana. Due to their isolated terrain and geography, the Guianas are one of the most sparsely populated regions on Earth.
History
Pre-colonial period
Before the arrival of European colonials, the Guianas were populated by scattered bands of native Arawak people. The native tribes of the Northern Amazon 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 more warlike tribes of Carib Indians, who departed from these same river valleys a few centuries later.
Over the centuries of the pre-colonial period, the ebb and flow of power between Arawak and Carib interests throughout the Caribbean resulted in a great deal of intermingling (some forced through capture, some accidental through contact). This ethnic mixing, particularly in the Caribbean margins like the Guianas, produced a hybridized culture. Despite their political rivalry, the ethnic and cultural blending between the two groups had reached such a level that, by the time of the Europeans' arrival, the Carib/Arawak complex in Guiana was so homogeneous that the two groups were almost indistinguishable to outsiders. Through the contact period following Columbus's arrival, the term "Guiana" was used to refer to all areas between the Orinoco, the Rio Negro, and the Amazon, and was seen so much as a unified, isolated entity that it was often referred to as the “Island of Guiana.”
European colonization
Christopher Columbus first spotted the coast of the Guianas in 1498, but real interest in the exploration and colonization of the Guianas, which came to be known as the "Wild Coast," did not begin until the end of the sixteenth century. Walter Raleigh began the exploration of the Guianas in earnest in 1594. He was in search of a great golden city at the headwaters of the Caroní River. A year later he explored what is now Guyana and eastern Venezuela in search of "Manoa", the legendary city of the king known as El Dorado. Raleigh described the city of El Dorado as being located on Lake Parime far up the Orinoco River in Guyana. Much of his exploration is documented in his books The Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana, published first in 1596, and The Discovery of Guiana, and the Journal of the Second Voyage Thereto, published in 1606.