Overview

In this second volume of Vincent Roth's Guyana memoirs, Vincent is now a mature adult, very sure of himself and bound to his adopted country. What comes over is a picture (a mixed and contradictory one) of Guyana as, on the whole, an enterprising and pioneering society. Much of Roth's work was concerned with surveying the lots of farmers and gold and diamond prospectors - people creating if not great wealth, at least making things happen. But he also has a sharp eye for grandiose follies; interior enterprises built on dreams of wealth but inadequate foundations of knowledge, and the evidence of huge waste found in the ruins of mines etc. His accounts of roadbuilding and ideas for agricultural schemes suggest possibilities not yet realised in the Guyana of the present. Roth's memoirs, whilst revealing colonial petty-minded bureaucracy, jumped-up officialdom and incompetence, nevertheless gives a picture of country that worked, where the mail reached the remotest parts of the interior, but where the obliterating power of nature over human effort had to be constantly resisted. Again, whilst the reader gets a quite impressive picture of the efforts of the colonial bureaucracy to bring all parts of the country under its control, Roth also reveals the undercurrent of untamed lawlessness in the smuggling, illegal mining and cross border incursions. Vincent's greatest contempt is reserved for the idle and it is very clear that though the colonial authorities must have often regarded him as a bumptious irritant, they could never deny his huge energy and constant hard work.

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9781900715553

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Vincent Roth arrived in British Guyana at the age of 18. By the time he left for Barbados in 1964, he had spent 30 years in the interior working as a surveyor and magistrate. He contributed immensely to the development of Guyana as a journalist, naturalist, historian, rebuilder of the national museum, and founder of the zoo in the Botanical Gardens. He wrote several books on Guyanese history and wildlife.

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