Word: guianas
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Queen Juliana of The Netherlands last week reminded the world that the Dutch are still a colonial power in the Western Hemisphere-by graciously relinquishing part of that power. The Queen proclaimed a new Statute of the Kingdom, giving Surinam (Dutch Guiana) and The Netherlands Antilles complete internal self-government and requiring consultation with the motherland only on such affairs as defense and foreign relations...
...Eustatius, Saba and half of St. Martin) have been Dutch colonies since the 17th century. Dutchmen gained possession of the islands by driving out the Spaniards, who didn't even put up a fight. When the Dutch also tried to push the British out of the part of Guiana now called Surinam, the British countered by seizing New Amsterdam (Manhattan). Later, in the 1667 Peace of Breda, the Dutch traded off New Amsterdam (bought from the Indians for $24) for 55,000 square miles in Guiana...
With 1,600 Marines and Royal Welch Fusiliers aboard, four British warships sped to British Guiana a year ago to enforce London's decision to suspend the South American colony's seven-month-old constitution and thereby stifle its Red-infiltrated government. Since then, restive British Guiana has remained under a state-of-emergency rule by Crown-appointed Governor Sir Alfred Savage...
...London last week, the British government made public the report of a four-man commission appointed to study the Guiana crisis. Its conclusion: "Conditions for sound constitutional advance do not exist in British Guiana today." The report was harshly candid (said the Manchester Guardian: "To read it is like walking into a lamppost in the fog"), and argued that the colony's dominant political organization, the Red-ridden People's Progressive Party, was bent on destroying the constitution after first using its privileges to win unlimited one-party rule. For their activities protesting London's steps against...
...Churchill government agreed with the commission's report, announced in Commons that the state-of-emergency rule will continue in Guiana for at least three more years...