Anyone knows if Syrians came to Guyana? I know quite a number are in TT. My paternal grandmother came from Syria, she was Aramean Christian.

A lot of Syrians used to live in Guyana.

quote:

Originally posted by Terry Ishmael:
A lot of Syrians used to live in Guyana.

I'm interested to know if they were brought over by the British or came over on thier own. Seems strange that Syrians would head for Guyana.

Those that I know all came over by themself and were all traders. Some had stores in Regent Street.

Heard that they were lots of them around in the forties. Had stores in Lombard street also. Most had moved on by the early sixties. They may have been refugees from some stories I've heard.

The Macdeci are.

So I heard, also Elias, think they had a store at the corner of Broad and Lombard streets opposite Sprontons.

http://www.stabroeknews.com/index.pl/article_daily_features?id=56520542

Frankly Speaking
The Immigrants' Arrival And Guyana without "Indians"
By A.A. Fenty
Friday, May 18th 2007
Believe Me. This has nothing to do with Eric P. Or with the alleged marginalization of any group. Nor with one group's claim that there is "President Jagdeo's purposeful "Indianisation" of Guyana.

No - no. I had always planned to throw in my two cents worth of "intellectual provocation", as my contribution to the Anniversary of Arrival Day. The national holiday was May 5, which is the date in 1838 when the Indian "bound-coolie" immigrants first set feet on the West Demerara to begin nearly eight years of arrival and presence numbering some 240,000 persons from the Indian sub-Continent.

The government has implied that the official description is "Arrival Day" - to herald and pay tribute to all the immigrants who arrived after the 1838 African Emancipation. These post-Emancipation immigrants included Syrians, Germans, Maltese, Portuguese-Madeirans, Chinese, 1022 Africans (almost by "default") and the East Indians. But remember, Government prefers that May 5 has little to do with "Indians" only. Ho-ho-ho!

Bound by contracts of indentureship, the Indian immigrants toiled in the abandoned sugar plantations, resuscitated them and the fortunes of sugar, gradually creating the accustomed wealth to the Planters and the British Barons - from Sandbach to Bookers, among others. The freed local Africans, after their exodus from the bondage of slavery and apprenticeship, were busy buying up coastal lands to establish our first village system. Reportedly, the former European master was not too village friendly and many were the insidious impediments, placed in the village-pioneers paths. Many African descendants never-the-less, determined not to return to the land and agriculture. They embraced "schooling" and education and pursued the professions - in the civil service, education, nursing; the police force and the trades.

But what of the Indian coolies? How did they fare on the British Guiana plantations - after their journeys across the Atlantic - Kala Pani - Ocean? And what of them today?

Indians in Dalgetty's House

As usual don't expect me to repeat the histories and analyses of the Indian arrival, presence and settlement. Elsewhere in this newspaper I'll share descriptions of their sufferings whilst not daring to compare indentureship with the savagery of slavery. However suffer and punish the bound labourers did. I suspect that their religion along with other cultural practices they were allowed to retain kept them going. Then too, they were given attractive options! They could claim their return passages to India after their contracts were completed, or they could access Guiana land, real estate, in lieu of return passages. They could access substantial assistance to go into Peasant and Rice farming. All this they exploited with resounding success.

The Guyanese half-Scot, half-African Pan Africanist Tom Dalgetty once claimed that Guyana is an African "House". Those who came to Guiana and met the Africans here were/are mere "tenants" who should know their role and "Place": Dalgetty and his fellow Africanists were not being facetious or ridiculous, as other groups came to regard that claim. The Activists were being dead serious as they experienced alleged "Indianisation" of all structures, institutions and opportunities.

I didn't and don't buy the Dalgetty "African-House" concept. I feel the Amer-indians, even the evil British could lay equal claim to laying the foundation for the Guyana House which African slave labour helped to erect. Withdrawing myself a bit I'll allow Historian at the local university Tota Mangar to remind Tom.

"Guyanese of Indian origin are largely responsible for the prominence of Guyana's rice industry (quite apart from sustaining the country's leading foreign exchange earner, the Sugar Sector); rice was linked to the Indian village settlements which emerged at the time. Indians were integrally involved in cattle-rearing, milk-selling and cash crop cultivation.

Ever since the 1880's Indian immigrants have also displayed high occupational profiles in a number of off-plantation activities including being cab-drivers, barbers, tailors, carpenters, boat-builders, charcoal-makers, goldsmiths, porters, small-scale manufacturers and fishermen. Today, Guyanese of Indian origin are found in every sphere of national activity including business, the professions politics and trade unionism." (End of Mangar quote.)

I merely add that these "tenants" have exhibited sacrifice and enterprise. These immigrant-tenants of Dalgetty's house are today numerically, economically and politically powerful. Frankly Speaking, they seem to have taken over, bought outright, that Guyana House!

I agree that today's "Africans" have the right to shared opportunity with and equal status to any other group in this land. But another consideration is this: sometimes you get out of a situation, commensurately what you put into it.

Imagine, no "Indians" ever!

Now for my paragraphs of pure speculation for more intellectual provocation.

Sometimes when I read ACDA, Dalgetty and Phillips. Alexander and Baptiste, I use my flight of fancy to imagine Guyana with no Guyanese of Indian Origin. What would have happened I wonder?

There are numerous mono-cultural single-ethnic societies in this world. All European, All-African, all Chinese. Of course, mankind conjures up differences of opinions and approaches all the time. An all-African Guyana would have been no different I suspect. Conflicts through class, jealousy, control, power would have surfaced - all the frailties of human nature.

But would the all-Afro Guyanese have developed into top commercial entrepreneurs and manufacturers, explorers and importers? Bringing in their own, motor-vehicles, cement, pharmaceuticals and clothing? Would they have actually owned more gold and diamond claims, stone quarries and sand pits? I know they did some of that in the early days and controlled the professions. But I'm wondering about a modern-day all-African Guyana with say a Forbes Burnham at the helm? What say or think you?

The down-side of that now hypothetical scenario is that, Alas, there would have been in an all-African Guyana - no dhal, no curry in abundance, no Diwali, no Shakira Baksh, no Olive Gopaul, no Lloyd Luckhoo or Shridath Ramphal, no Kanhai or Chanderpaul no Tassa Drums. No Allan Fenty!

Yes, close your eyes and imagine this Dear Green Land without the "East Indians". Then wake up!

Ponder

Hail the new Gail Teixeira - Minister Manickchand.

Let's approach CARICOM regarding our participation in Carifesta 2008 in the Bahamas.

Are you going to our neighbour's Festa de Junino? In Boa Vista, Brazil?

Great Mother's night show by Winfield James. But too long! We can get too much of a good thing, Winfield.

Where is the nearest African Mission? Will a top African Troupe be invited for Emancipation? Or Brazilians from Bahia?

The West Indies will triumph in England! I say so!!

'Til Next Week!

http://www.landofsixpeoples.com/gynewsjs.htm

And yet, indeed, such acts were done by each successive regime in Guyana, both in colonial Guiana and independent Guyana. But the idea of Guyana as a distinct cooperative cosmopolitan society contributed to by various European immigrants such as Dutch/Flemish, French, English, Danish, Swedish, Spanish, German, Maltese, and later others of Syrian origin, was first introduced by Guyana’s famous Dutch Governor, Storm Van Gravesande, between the 1740’s and 1770’s.

http://www.landofsixpeoples.com/gynewsjs.htm

Emancipation and the present
Viewpoint
By Kweku McDonald
Guyana Chronicle
August 6, 2002

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EMANCIPATION commemoration signifies the important termination of a system of work relation that epitomised "man's inhumanity to man".

Slavery out of Africa to the New World was the exploitation of primitive communal societies in an emerging crude form of capitalism, according to many historians and social scientists.


It can be concluded that Europe's trade relations with the east in the 17th century was the spur of Columbus's exploration of the high seas. His subsequent settling in the `New World' and establishment of feudo-capitalistic productive relations saw the utilisation of African labour in the inhumane material relations of production called slavery.


Why did so many people of Sub-Saharan African succumb to the domination of such a system, in one of the darkest aspects of human history?


A variety of reasons, all related, have been put forward by learned scholars. Reasons ranging from economic sufficiency under existing systems of primitive communalism, the vastness and resourcefulness of the African continent in supplying the needs of its people, to the admission that such a system existed in Africa before the Atlantic slave trade, have been theorised.


This brings us to the descendants of these subject peoples in the Diaspora, today. They find themselves in non-homogenous societies, having to forge common goals of nationalism and all the variables it entails, such as shared economic development.


This is true of multi-cultural societies as obvious as Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and Fiji, to the not so obvious as the USA.


The establishment of checks and balances in the capitalist system to preserve humanitarianism through the universal acceptance of the United Nations Bill on Human Rights has virtually expulsed racist conception from established formal thinking.


Slavery, too, has been an outlawed practice of civilised material relations of production. The lesson we learn through history is that progress out of underdevelopment has always come about through innovations for such in the social relations of production.


In the Diaspora, it is common for black leaders to use Afro-centric ideals to further their goals, namely that of achieving the seat of governance. This is irrespective of the heterogeneity of the nation state they are attempting to rule.


It is proven that such instinctive ethnic mass mobilisation for support is very easy where ethnic idealism prevails over qualitative judgements and choices. It may be argued that Burnhamism in Guyana, Idi Amin's rule in Uganda, George Speight's attempts for equality of indigenous Fijians, and Asian `bashing' in the metropolitan centres of the world, are examples of this phenomenon.


It is obvious that this instinctive reaction of black antagonisms against white is a harnessing of ethnic mass support for self-entrusted intra-group monarchs, not dissimilar to the tribal chieftains in Sub-Saharan Africa that practised slavery with exogenous tribes and clans.


Here white would include East Indians, Portuguese, Syrian and any other differing racial grouping in the Diaspora. Experience has taught us that. It is this `mental slavery' we must emancipate ourselves from.


In Guyana, a troubling twist to this politically instigated ethnic antagonism has exposed itself in the early half of this year. Violent armed robberies were being perpetrated against non-Afro-Guyanese.


The architects and executioners of these heinous acts exercised no restraint in their modus operandi as to indicate their intentions and their centre of operations. In fact the shock they inflicted on society caused a conservative response from its enforcement arms, through the envisioned effect of mass ethnic action and reaction.


How can the methods of high seas pirates, properly condemned in the annals of history and civilised thinking, be utilised in any cause for governance?


As stressed before, it is constructive innovation within systems, of social relations that would bring about progress for any ethnic group in these civilised times. A willingness to accept the demographic realities of heterogeneity, and pursue constructive methods for ethnic group progress, is virtue and wisdom.


It must be remembered, it is the system of social relations that has to be chipped, whittled away and added to - much like a piece of art - if genuine ethnic group advancement is sought.

Most of the Syrians ended up as merchants (there were a few that had stores on Camp Street and Regent Streets). One used to peddle his fabrics and other stuff with a big carrier bicycle on the West Coast Demerara.

quote:

Originally posted by BK:
Most of the Syrians ended up as merchants (there were a few that had stories on Camp Street and Regent Streets). One used to peddle his fabrics and other stuff with a big carrier bicycle on the West Coast Demerara.

Thats right and when they came there was no lebanon, lebanon is a new thing. THem imperialists cut mt. Lebanon from the motherland. Thats why they are referred as syrian.

quote:

Originally posted by Jansher:
Thats right and when they came there was no lebanon, lebanon is a new thing. THem imperialists cut mt. Lebanon from the motherland. Thats why they are referred as syrian.

Yes that part was carved up after the first world war and then later Isral after WWII. Since, I believe that "Old" Syria included Lebanon, Palestine and parts of Jordan then the British and French drew lines in the sand and created so much conflict since then.

quote:

Originally posted by BK:

quote:

Originally posted by Jansher:
Thats right and when they came there was no lebanon, lebanon is a new thing. THem imperialists cut mt. Lebanon from the motherland. Thats why they are referred as syrian.

Yes that part was carved up after the first world war and then later Isral after WWII. Since, I believe that "Old" Syria included Lebanon, Palestine and parts of Jordan then the British and French drew lines in the sand and created so much conflict since then.

And all hell breaking loose today over this old story; i see the Red Cross and Amnesty have condemned Israel for human rights abuses and massive settlements. Palestine is history... with half million jews every years to palestine non of the arabs cominbe can do shyte. Why blame the arabs...

Thats right and when they came there was no lebanon, lebanon is a new thing. THem imperialists cut mt. Lebanon from the motherland. Thats why they are referred as syrian.[/QUOTE]

Right u are. The word "sham" is wrongly translated as "syria" and when we hear it today, we think of the modern nation state,artificially created by the brits. To this day, Jordanians, LEb. etc are still called "shamis" which translates improprely as "syrians." DOn't forget that since Napoleon came there in 1797, and then the brits, there was lot of colonial mentality and peole heard of the new world...they, like enterpreneurs the world over, wanted to come to new territories...