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Individual Paper

12. ‘Africa-Asia’ in an Entangled World: Migrations, Diasporas, Creolities

Revisiting Diasporic Culture and Memories across Oceans II

Colonial Spirits and Their Legacies in the Southern Caribbean (Guyana): African and East-Indian Entanglements

Thursday, June 12, 2025
14:00 - 15:45 GMT
Location: MNB - Réunion 2

    Presenter(s)

  • MM

    Marcelo M. Mello

    Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil

Paper Abstract: In modern-day Guyana (formerly British Guiana) residents of the coastal region of the country are susceptible to other-than-human powers: the spirits of Dutch colonisers, who claim ownership over the land, especially in areas where sugar plantations once
operated. Regarded as the “masters of the land”, or “boundary masters" Dutch spirits demand offerings and the recognition of land rights from their human co-habitants, establishing relationships of Guyanese affiliated to different ethnic groups, especially African-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese (the descendants of Indian indentured labourers). Both groups, which comprise the majority of the Guyanese population, consider these spirits as the ‘first owners’ of the territory. In this paper, far from merely describing narratives about Dutch spirits as a kind of ‘native’ historiography about the early Dutch colonisation of the country, I address territorial sovereignty through the lens of lived and embodied practices of co-habitation between Dutch spirits, East Indians, and African-Guyanese, giving special attention to the ways that both groups establish
proprietary rights over the land through relationships entertained with spirits. I also argue that in assigning territorial rights to such spirits, East Indians and African-Guyanese erase the occupation of the coastal region of the country by Indigenous groups.