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Less abstractly, migration in Guyana has to be explained in terms of the changing needs and power of the plantations, the colonial authorities, and the mining companies that until recently dominated Guyanese society. Most particularly, from the 1870s onwards the necessity of indentured labour was increasingly questioned, in part because land monopolisation, population growth and contrived stagnation had resulted in a growing relative surplus population and in part because technological innovations had made employment in the sugar industry mostly seasonal. Initially reflecting their desire to retain an adequate labour supply and to avoid the costs of return voyages, the plantocracy encouraged immigrant workers to settle in Guyana once their period of indentured labour had been completed. The performance of the Guyana National Co-operative Bank, set up in 1970 partly to rectify that situation, will be …