Essequibo

Essequibo was the Dutch wild-coast colony on the Guiana rivers, planted in 1616 and ruled by the West India Company until 1792. Zeelander Joost van der Hooge raised Fort Ter Hoogen from 1616 through 1621 on a ruined Portuguese site on the Mazaruni side-branch whose arms stood hewn in the rock above the gate, soon called See-everywhere, to house a dozen-odd Company families. Around the river plantations rose where the enslaved cultivated cotton, indigo and cacao, governed from the island fort, while Spanish, French and English rivals ringed the coast. A New Middelburg city died in the Second Anglo-Dutch War of 1665. The Company years gave way to direct Dutch rule in 1792, and the Napoleonic wars delivered the colony to Britain, which held it from 1815 and folded it with Demerara and Berbice into British Guiana in 1831. Two centuries of Dutch dikes, forts and plantations left their names on the rivers long after the flag changed.