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26.04.2017
14.01.2016
Plantation uprisings / Judges, Masters, Diviners: Slaves’ Experience of Criminal Justice in Colonial Suriname
Chapter 14: To rise or not to rise.
The opportunities for a large-scale slave revolt.
A casual observer of the 18th century Surinam slavery system might have predicted a development akin to that in Saint-Domingue. All the conditions for a large-scale rebellion by the black population seemed to be present in optima forma. Eugene Genovese has outlined the circumstances leading to a higher probability of slave revolt:
(1) The master-slave relationship had developed in the context of absenteeism and depersonalization as well as greater cultural estrangement of whites and blacks;
(2) economic distress and famine occurred;
(3) slaveholding units approached the average size of one hundred to two hundred slaves, as in the sugar colonies, rather than twenty or so, as in the Old South;
(4) the ruling class frequently split either in warfare between slaveholding countries or in bitter struggles within the slaveholding country;
(5) blacks heavily outnumbered whites;
(6) African born slaves outnumbered those born into American slavery (Creoles);
(7) the social structure of the slaveholding regime permitted the emergence of autonomous black leadership;
(8) the geographical, social and political environment provided terrain and opportunity for the formation of colonies of runaway slaves strong enough to threaten the plantation regime.”
It seems at first sight that the situation in Surinam fitted this model rather well.
Absenteism and cultural estrangement.
Absenteeism was rampant in Surinam. Apart from the earliest period, few Surinam planters lived on their estates. They preferred to reside in Paramaribo and in many instances, it took them days to reach their plantations by boat. Consequently, they were only dimly aware what went on there most of the time. The majority did not seem to be very interested anyway. They were driven by an animus revertendi, a desire to return to their homeland with their fortune made. In many instances, their eagerness for maximum profit overrode any humanitarian concerns they might have had. As the saying goes in Holland: what one does not know does not hurt. The Surinam plantation owners preferred not to know. After the Amsterdam stock-exchange crisis of 1773, the situation worsened. Many of the new plantation owners were Dutch investors, who had little knowledge of agriculture and who only tried to recoup their losses as much as possible. They gave free reign to callous administrators and directors. The latter, in the 17th and 18th centuries especially, were mostly recruited from the lower rungs of white society, in particular from the ranks of former soldiers and sailors. Accustomed to harsh discipline themselves and obliged to deliver a maximum crop by their patrons, they were not unduly bothered by altruistic feelings either. So, Surinam exhibited the classic features of too much absenteeism.
Just as important was the fact that masters and slaves had totally different cultures, with only limited influence on each other. This was partly the result of the fact that the bondsmen formed a large numerical majority and spent most of their time with little or no white supervision. However, it was also partly the result of a deliberate policy of the whites. Being such a tiny minority, they were in danger to be swallowed up by their subjects: biologically through miscegenation and culturally through ‘negroization’. Therefore, they strove to keep people of color apart from white society and to keep some cultural accomplishments exclusively their own, in particular those with a ‘boundary defining character’ (like language and religion). The whites jealously guarded these: they did not want their slaves to speak Dutch, or to become Christian. In later times, they relented a bit and saw some advantage in converting slaves to Christianity, but by then it did not matter anymore.
Economic distress.
Surinam has shown the characteristics of a volksplanting only for a very limited period. By the time slavery became entrenched, it was already clear that Surinam would be an exploitation colony par excellence, geared to produce commodities for the world market and largely oblivious to the needs of its own population. One result of this attitude was the fact that production for the home market was often neglected. This was the case with timber, for example: Surinam had an abundance of high quality wood, but people were often forced to import timber from the United States to build their houses. It was even more apparent in the production of food. All through the slavery era, there were plantations that specialized in the cultivation of victuals, but most of their products went to Paramaribo and they never produced sufficient quantities anyway. Especially during the early period, the lowland planters preferred to put all their energy into the cultivation of cash crops, hoping that they would be able to buy the foodstuffs they needed for their slaves at home or abroad. Often this was indeed possible, but when droughts, floods, or other calamities resulted in a particularly meager crop, the slaves went hungry. Some planters were even forced to let them fend for themselves in the forest. In the 18th century, the situation improved somewhat because the coffee grounds often produced more plantains than they had use for, but even then, many planters could buy only a minimal amount of food –just enough to keep their slaves from running away or being unable to work. The ‘frugality’ of the planters was even more visible in the distributions of ‘luxuries’ as meat, fish, salt, tobacco and clothes. These always had to be imported, which drove up the prices, and they were often unavailable when the trade routes were cut off during one of the many wars that plagued the Caribbean during this period. However, it was not only stinginess that withheld food and clothing from the slaves: in later times, many plantations fared so badly that they could hardly afford the barest necessities.
In the eyes of many people, even the inhabitants, 18th century Surinam was the epitome of a prosperous plantation colony. In the early part of the century, when the prices of the commodities it produced were high, this was indeed the reality. Money poured in and the planters were quick to spend it in the most conspicuous manner possible. The apparent prosperity made the planters eligible for ample credits and generous loans and this enabled them to maintain a high level of consumption a few decades longer. However, during the latter part of the 18th century, Surinam lived far above its station. The conditions for plantation agriculture were not exactly ideal. Land was plentiful, but land suitable for plantations was not and it had to be prepared by a costly procedure. Slaves were hard to come by and the fact that Surinam was located outside the main trade routes made them very expensive. As a result, the production costs compared unfavorably with those in other parts of the Caribbean, especially the French colony Saint-Domingue and (in later times) the Spanish colony Cuba. Fortunately, the Dutch market could absorb all of Surinam’s production (in fact much more).
In the 19th century, the number of plantations fell drastically and the remaining ones barely survived by a process of shifting to sugar, modernization of the production and much subsidy (mostly by hapless stockholders, who wasted the chance to invest their money more productively in the Netherlands). What it boils down to, is that Surinam has been a genuinely prosperous colony only during a few decades: it merely managed to give that impression a while longer because of high prices in the developing world market and the misuse of credit that was never paid back. Economically speaking, the situation of most Surinam plantations for most of the time was precarious and only in favorable circumstances the slaves were not victimized by this.
A predominance of large plantations.
During most of the slavery era, sugar plantations formed the majority of Surinam estates. They were condemned to a certain minimum size to make it possible to exploit an expensive sugar mill profitably. In the early period, when most of these mills were simple, animal-driven constructions, Surinam plantations could be small: a force of 10 to 20 slaves was not unusual. However, when water mills (and in later days steam mills) came in vogue, the production capacity increased and additional slaves were needed. Plantations with more than a hundred bondsmen became the norm in the 18th century. Even the coffee grounds, though much more flexible in the number of hands they employed, were comparatively large. In other plantation colonies, they were often relegated to marginal lands, but in Surinam, they took up some of the most fertile grounds, especially in the Commewijne district. Their overall size was somewhat smaller than that of sugar plantations, but they had more land under permanent cultivation. In the United States, planters owning more than 100 slaves tended to split up their holdings into several independent units, because it made supervision easier and the cotton plantations that predominated there hardly profited from the economies of scale. In Surinam, on the other hand, the few plantations specializing in cotton belonged to the largest in the colony.
While the coffee grounds lost terrain in the latter part of the slavery era, the remaining sugar estates grew in size steadily through a process of concentration: many 19th century estates boasted 200 to 400 slaves. Although this did not facilitate close supervision (which had never been a prime concern for many Surinam planters anyway), it made technological innovation -on a modest scale- possible. For the slaves, this process of concentration held little promise and they often protested the fusion of slave forces vehemently. With regard to the United States, it has often been maintained that the treatment of slaves was much better on small units than on larger ones. In Surinam, size seems to have made little difference. The slaves on large plantations were in some ways better off: they had less supervision and fewer problems to recruit the personnel for a large-scale rebellion.
The opportunities for a large-scale slave revolt.
A casual observer of the 18th century Surinam slavery system might have predicted a development akin to that in Saint-Domingue. All the conditions for a large-scale rebellion by the black population seemed to be present in optima forma. Eugene Genovese has outlined the circumstances leading to a higher probability of slave revolt:
(1) The master-slave relationship had developed in the context of absenteeism and depersonalization as well as greater cultural estrangement of whites and blacks;
(2) economic distress and famine occurred;
(3) slaveholding units approached the average size of one hundred to two hundred slaves, as in the sugar colonies, rather than twenty or so, as in the Old South;
(4) the ruling class frequently split either in warfare between slaveholding countries or in bitter struggles within the slaveholding country;
(5) blacks heavily outnumbered whites;
(6) African born slaves outnumbered those born into American slavery (Creoles);
(7) the social structure of the slaveholding regime permitted the emergence of autonomous black leadership;
(8) the geographical, social and political environment provided terrain and opportunity for the formation of colonies of runaway slaves strong enough to threaten the plantation regime.”
It seems at first sight that the situation in Surinam fitted this model rather well.
Absenteism and cultural estrangement.
Absenteeism was rampant in Surinam. Apart from the earliest period, few Surinam planters lived on their estates. They preferred to reside in Paramaribo and in many instances, it took them days to reach their plantations by boat. Consequently, they were only dimly aware what went on there most of the time. The majority did not seem to be very interested anyway. They were driven by an animus revertendi, a desire to return to their homeland with their fortune made. In many instances, their eagerness for maximum profit overrode any humanitarian concerns they might have had. As the saying goes in Holland: what one does not know does not hurt. The Surinam plantation owners preferred not to know. After the Amsterdam stock-exchange crisis of 1773, the situation worsened. Many of the new plantation owners were Dutch investors, who had little knowledge of agriculture and who only tried to recoup their losses as much as possible. They gave free reign to callous administrators and directors. The latter, in the 17th and 18th centuries especially, were mostly recruited from the lower rungs of white society, in particular from the ranks of former soldiers and sailors. Accustomed to harsh discipline themselves and obliged to deliver a maximum crop by their patrons, they were not unduly bothered by altruistic feelings either. So, Surinam exhibited the classic features of too much absenteeism.
Just as important was the fact that masters and slaves had totally different cultures, with only limited influence on each other. This was partly the result of the fact that the bondsmen formed a large numerical majority and spent most of their time with little or no white supervision. However, it was also partly the result of a deliberate policy of the whites. Being such a tiny minority, they were in danger to be swallowed up by their subjects: biologically through miscegenation and culturally through ‘negroization’. Therefore, they strove to keep people of color apart from white society and to keep some cultural accomplishments exclusively their own, in particular those with a ‘boundary defining character’ (like language and religion). The whites jealously guarded these: they did not want their slaves to speak Dutch, or to become Christian. In later times, they relented a bit and saw some advantage in converting slaves to Christianity, but by then it did not matter anymore.
Economic distress.
Surinam has shown the characteristics of a volksplanting only for a very limited period. By the time slavery became entrenched, it was already clear that Surinam would be an exploitation colony par excellence, geared to produce commodities for the world market and largely oblivious to the needs of its own population. One result of this attitude was the fact that production for the home market was often neglected. This was the case with timber, for example: Surinam had an abundance of high quality wood, but people were often forced to import timber from the United States to build their houses. It was even more apparent in the production of food. All through the slavery era, there were plantations that specialized in the cultivation of victuals, but most of their products went to Paramaribo and they never produced sufficient quantities anyway. Especially during the early period, the lowland planters preferred to put all their energy into the cultivation of cash crops, hoping that they would be able to buy the foodstuffs they needed for their slaves at home or abroad. Often this was indeed possible, but when droughts, floods, or other calamities resulted in a particularly meager crop, the slaves went hungry. Some planters were even forced to let them fend for themselves in the forest. In the 18th century, the situation improved somewhat because the coffee grounds often produced more plantains than they had use for, but even then, many planters could buy only a minimal amount of food –just enough to keep their slaves from running away or being unable to work. The ‘frugality’ of the planters was even more visible in the distributions of ‘luxuries’ as meat, fish, salt, tobacco and clothes. These always had to be imported, which drove up the prices, and they were often unavailable when the trade routes were cut off during one of the many wars that plagued the Caribbean during this period. However, it was not only stinginess that withheld food and clothing from the slaves: in later times, many plantations fared so badly that they could hardly afford the barest necessities.
In the eyes of many people, even the inhabitants, 18th century Surinam was the epitome of a prosperous plantation colony. In the early part of the century, when the prices of the commodities it produced were high, this was indeed the reality. Money poured in and the planters were quick to spend it in the most conspicuous manner possible. The apparent prosperity made the planters eligible for ample credits and generous loans and this enabled them to maintain a high level of consumption a few decades longer. However, during the latter part of the 18th century, Surinam lived far above its station. The conditions for plantation agriculture were not exactly ideal. Land was plentiful, but land suitable for plantations was not and it had to be prepared by a costly procedure. Slaves were hard to come by and the fact that Surinam was located outside the main trade routes made them very expensive. As a result, the production costs compared unfavorably with those in other parts of the Caribbean, especially the French colony Saint-Domingue and (in later times) the Spanish colony Cuba. Fortunately, the Dutch market could absorb all of Surinam’s production (in fact much more).
In the 19th century, the number of plantations fell drastically and the remaining ones barely survived by a process of shifting to sugar, modernization of the production and much subsidy (mostly by hapless stockholders, who wasted the chance to invest their money more productively in the Netherlands). What it boils down to, is that Surinam has been a genuinely prosperous colony only during a few decades: it merely managed to give that impression a while longer because of high prices in the developing world market and the misuse of credit that was never paid back. Economically speaking, the situation of most Surinam plantations for most of the time was precarious and only in favorable circumstances the slaves were not victimized by this.
A predominance of large plantations.
During most of the slavery era, sugar plantations formed the majority of Surinam estates. They were condemned to a certain minimum size to make it possible to exploit an expensive sugar mill profitably. In the early period, when most of these mills were simple, animal-driven constructions, Surinam plantations could be small: a force of 10 to 20 slaves was not unusual. However, when water mills (and in later days steam mills) came in vogue, the production capacity increased and additional slaves were needed. Plantations with more than a hundred bondsmen became the norm in the 18th century. Even the coffee grounds, though much more flexible in the number of hands they employed, were comparatively large. In other plantation colonies, they were often relegated to marginal lands, but in Surinam, they took up some of the most fertile grounds, especially in the Commewijne district. Their overall size was somewhat smaller than that of sugar plantations, but they had more land under permanent cultivation. In the United States, planters owning more than 100 slaves tended to split up their holdings into several independent units, because it made supervision easier and the cotton plantations that predominated there hardly profited from the economies of scale. In Surinam, on the other hand, the few plantations specializing in cotton belonged to the largest in the colony.
While the coffee grounds lost terrain in the latter part of the slavery era, the remaining sugar estates grew in size steadily through a process of concentration: many 19th century estates boasted 200 to 400 slaves. Although this did not facilitate close supervision (which had never been a prime concern for many Surinam planters anyway), it made technological innovation -on a modest scale- possible. For the slaves, this process of concentration held little promise and they often protested the fusion of slave forces vehemently. With regard to the United States, it has often been maintained that the treatment of slaves was much better on small units than on larger ones. In Surinam, size seems to have made little difference. The slaves on large plantations were in some ways better off: they had less supervision and fewer problems to recruit the personnel for a large-scale rebellion.
Pfauenstrauch (Caesalpinia pulcherrima)
Maroon medicine men in Suriname have long known some of the medicinal uses for Caesalpinia pulcherrima, which is known as ayoowiri. Four grams from the root is also said to induce abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy.
Abortion was probably quite common in Surinam, but it took place in secrecy and it can hardly be called a form of resistance. Maybe some women aborted because they resented bringing another slave into the world, but most did it for purely private reasons and sometimes even at the instigation of their masters, who did not want to be burdened with rearing young slaves, or to be embarrassed by mulatto offspring. Infanticide was also a hidden phenomenon. It was nearly impossible to prove whether a baby died from natural causes, or because it had been deliberately neglected or killed. It is undeniable, however, that some mothers were suspected by their master, or by other slaves, of having practiced infanticide. Most of the time, the slaves did not take kindly to this. When a mother killed her baby out of desperation, both the master and the Court often proved to be remarkably forgiving –much more so than her peers.
Amazon mystery: A medicine man understood the secrets of this plant long before we did. How?
By Dr. S. Allen Counter, Globe Correspondent | July 24, 2006
``This plant, ayoowiri, cures many things," said the medicine man DaBuWan in the Amazon rain forest as he held up a beautiful plant with red and yellow flowers.
``The juice from the leaves cures fever, the juice from the flower cures sores, and the seeds cure bad cough, breathing difficulty, and chest pain."
DaBuWan, his face and upper body painted with the sacred white clay they call ``pemba dotee," and wearing a loincloth, carefully examined the roots of the plant like any other scientist. ``This part can be very dangerous," he warned, pointing to the brown roots, which he said could cause death if eaten.
``It is a powerful woman's medicine," the descendant of West African slaves added with a very serious look on his face. ``A woman can use it to end a pregnancy."
``Abortion?" I asked.
``Yes," he said with hand gestures around the abdomen, ``abortions."
DaBuWan was then arguably one of the greatest medicine men in the Amazon rain forest, if not the world, and I spent seven years in the 1970s and 1980s storing and cataloguing some of the plants he identified. I was in awe of his knowledge.
03.01.2016
Like a Riot: The Politics of Forgetfulness, Relearning the South, and the Island of Dr. Moreau
Like a Riot: The Politics of Forgetfulness, Relearning the South, and the Island of Dr. Moreau
By Françoise Vergès
The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.
—Audre Lorde1
The mechanism of forgetfulness has ramifications far beyond the importance it has played in psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud notes that forgetfulness is not “left to psychic arbitrariness, but that it follows lawful and rational paths.” Forgetting, he writes, moreover, has “proved to be founded on a motive of displeasure.” Considering the infamous “return of the repressed,” Freud provides evidence of the capacity of the repressed to express itself.2 If we apply this theory to the fabrication of forgetfulness in imperialism and capitalism, colonial and capitalist crimes certainly represent a source of unpleasant memories that explain the fabrication of forgetfulness by empire the world over. But forgetfulness is not just a psychological mechanism; it is the result of economic and political choices. In its logic, there is no need to do away with inequalities and precariousness. They are, in fact, structural to neoliberal logic. What is important in this system is to negotiate and renegotiate the threshold of “bearable” precariousness, to avoid revolts and insurrections by shifting the blame onto individuals (if their lives are precarious, it’s because they are lazy), by systematic displacement and dispossession.
On a global scale, following the mapping and remapping of what matters—and what does not—means following the routes of racial capitalism, the transformation of land into spaces for the working of capital. Consider those glass towers all over the globe that constitute safe deposit boxes for the wealthy, the privatization of the commons. See how it leads to a competition between territories: better to be on the map of what matters, one reasons, than to be forgotten, even if that means the destruction of environment, of community, of life. Frantz Fanon’s analysis of the condition of The Wretched of the Earth3 can be understood as the “forgetfulness of damnation,”4 the process whereby a state of amnesia has led to murder, destruction, and the epistemic will to power—with a European good conscience. For Fanon, any opposition to Western modernity and its racism must address this amnesia and the invisibility of the damned; he wanted to bring into view what had remained invisible for centuries. Following Fanon, decolonial thinkers have spoken of the “forgetfulness of coloniality”5 in both Western philosophy and contemporary social theory. A counterstrategy has been to excavate forgotten maps, imagining new ones or valorizing those that have been marginalized.
By Françoise Vergès
The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.
—Audre Lorde1
The mechanism of forgetfulness has ramifications far beyond the importance it has played in psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud notes that forgetfulness is not “left to psychic arbitrariness, but that it follows lawful and rational paths.” Forgetting, he writes, moreover, has “proved to be founded on a motive of displeasure.” Considering the infamous “return of the repressed,” Freud provides evidence of the capacity of the repressed to express itself.2 If we apply this theory to the fabrication of forgetfulness in imperialism and capitalism, colonial and capitalist crimes certainly represent a source of unpleasant memories that explain the fabrication of forgetfulness by empire the world over. But forgetfulness is not just a psychological mechanism; it is the result of economic and political choices. In its logic, there is no need to do away with inequalities and precariousness. They are, in fact, structural to neoliberal logic. What is important in this system is to negotiate and renegotiate the threshold of “bearable” precariousness, to avoid revolts and insurrections by shifting the blame onto individuals (if their lives are precarious, it’s because they are lazy), by systematic displacement and dispossession.
On a global scale, following the mapping and remapping of what matters—and what does not—means following the routes of racial capitalism, the transformation of land into spaces for the working of capital. Consider those glass towers all over the globe that constitute safe deposit boxes for the wealthy, the privatization of the commons. See how it leads to a competition between territories: better to be on the map of what matters, one reasons, than to be forgotten, even if that means the destruction of environment, of community, of life. Frantz Fanon’s analysis of the condition of The Wretched of the Earth3 can be understood as the “forgetfulness of damnation,”4 the process whereby a state of amnesia has led to murder, destruction, and the epistemic will to power—with a European good conscience. For Fanon, any opposition to Western modernity and its racism must address this amnesia and the invisibility of the damned; he wanted to bring into view what had remained invisible for centuries. Following Fanon, decolonial thinkers have spoken of the “forgetfulness of coloniality”5 in both Western philosophy and contemporary social theory. A counterstrategy has been to excavate forgotten maps, imagining new ones or valorizing those that have been marginalized.
24.09.2015
inside suriname (Dokumentarfilm u.a. zu Gold- und Aluminiumabbau)
In this community directed documentary, land concessions in Suriname's interior threaten Indigenous and Maroon people as their land and water are taken and destroyed for economic development--including toxic cyanide and mercury from gold mining. This development benefits outsiders and threatens the people who have lived there for centuries. Note, while our previous films are similar in content, this documentary also includes Maroon stories as well as additional information on the gold mining process.
14.08.2015
07.08.2015
05.07.2015
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