ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the major ethnological works and intellectual context of Walter E Roth in the colony of British Guiana from 1906, when he transferred to British Guiana, being assigned as the Stipendiary Magistrate and Medical Officer of the Pomeroon District in the north-west region of the colony. He moved to the Demerara River District, near the capital Georgetown, in the same capacities as magistrate and medic. Roth retired from the Colonial Service in British Guiana in 1928 and became Curator of the Museum of the Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society in Georgetown, which bears his name. In order to understand the place of Walter Roth in the emergence of anthropology in British Guiana it is necessary to set anthropology itself within the broader frame of imperial consolidation in the later 19th century. A central element in this imperial gaze was the lens of 'Science', which made the individual and idiosyncratic observer a source of credible and possibly profitable information.
