The Guianas are embedded high in the green shoulder of northern South America, an area once known as the “Wild Coast.” They are situated just north of the Equator in a configuration with the Amazon River of Brazil to the south and the Orinoco River of Venezuela to the west. The three Guianas comprise, from west to east, the countries of Guyana (area: 83,000 square miles; capital: Georgetown), Surinam (area: 63,251 square miles; capital: Paramaribo), and French Guiana (area: 35,135 square miles; capital: Cayenne).
Evidently the earliest physical contact between Europeans and the present-day Guianas occurred in 1500 when the Spanish navigator Vincente Yanez Pinzon, after discovering the Amazon River, sailed northwest and entered the Oyapock River, which is now the eastern boundary of French Guiana. As early as 1503 French colonists attempted to settle the island upon which Cayenne is built. Within the boundaries of today’s Guianas, the land was originally occupied by Amerindians of Carib and Arawak language-families, and from the late 1500’s onwards was almost interchangeably settled by Spanish, British, Dutch, and French traders, adventurers, agriculturists and colonists. Gradually the land was sorted into areas controlled exclusively by either British, Dutch or French interests. The former British domains became independent on May 26, 1966 as the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, and the former Dutch domains became independent on November 25, 1975 as the Republic of Surinam. French Guiana became an Overseas Department of France in 1946 and is an integral part of France.
Many of the species of tropical medicinal plants utilized at present in the Guianaswere introduced in historical eras, and under circumstances, which seem the distance of auniverse away from the conditions that often prevail today. For a long time the NewWorld itself was only a vague vision. The earliest European acquaintance with tropicalvegetation had actually been the result of Alexander the Great’s invasion of northernIndia in 326 B.C., at which time the banyan tree (Ficus bengalensis) was first observedby the Western eyes of the conqueror’s Greek forces (Stearn, 1976, 1988; Desmond,1992). Information about the wondrous banyan fig tree with its dangling aerial rootsflowed back to Greece and was recorded by the classical Greek scholar Theophrastus.The impressive Indian vegetation was soon largely forgotten by Europe; indeed, theliterature was later sometimes suppressed for being of pagan (non-Christian) origin.The first travelers came to South America primarily in search of gold, spices, and new souls for the Church, for in the 16th century, the divine scheme of the universe was the redemption of sinners in a disobedient world prior to the second coming of Christ.Thus the discoverers, after praying to the Madonna of the Navigators for protection,sailed to bring news of “The Redeemer” to the “misguided” peoples of America.
