Boeroes
LIFE IN THE SHADOWS
Slavery and slave culture in Surinam
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
The search for immigrants.
Skewed statistics.
This chapter focuses on the white masters, most of the others on the subservient blacks. It is necessary to understand the former, in order to understand the latter. The white overlords in slave societies were able to lay down the rules much more strictly than any other elite in history. The slaves might oppose the rules, but they were seldom able to change them fundamentally.
From the beginning, Surinam has displayed the characteristics of a plantation colony. One of the main distinguishing traits of such a society was the skewed ratio of black and white, man and woman, slave and free. A severe shortage of white settlers, especially women, was inevitable in these conditions and the authorities were acutely aware of this. In an exploitation colony, there usually was no genuine niche for white yeoman farmers and there were only limited opportunities for artisans and traders, in fact, for all workers not directly involved in plantation agriculture. For impoverished people, living in difficult circumstances but not starving, such a colony provided few prospects. Furthermore, the people in the Low Countries had a negative image of the tropical world in general: they saw it as a white man’s graveyard infested with dangerous subhuman beings. A person had to be extremely desperate, or extremely eager to make a fortune to venture there. Consequently, the push factors for emigration were not very strong in the Netherlands. As Charles Boxer has noted: “although the wages were usually very low and working hours very long, unemployment in the Northern Netherlands was never sufficiently severe to induce industrial and agricultural workers to emigrate on an adequate scale to the overseas possessions of the Dutch East and West India Companies.” However, small as the white minority in Surinam may have been (and it was always too small in the eyes of the men in power), its superior position, although sometimes a bit shaky, was never seriously threatened during the slavery era.
Unfortunately, the collection of statistics in colonial Surinam was very erratic. For most of the earlier years, the number of whites must be projected and finer distinctions cannot be made. For the years 1700 to 1745, however, we have the annual count of Whites and Red and Black Slaves, contained in the archives of the Society of Surinam. The soldiers were omitted from these counts, although they made up nearly half of the white population for most of this period. During the rest of the 18th century, the number of whites remained fairly stationary, although a large part of the plantation owners left. The statistics of the 19th century provide even more problems, because the population was often merely divided into slaves and free people and most of the figures pertained to Paramaribo only. In 1811, the English held the first census in Surinam history, which delivered a much more accurate picture. As a result, the population curve can only be drawn with the greatest hesitation. The most important conclusion nevertheless remains the same: the number of whites in the colony was always so low that they were painfully aware of the vulnerability of their position -and acted accordingly.
The only period during which it was not difficult to attract sufficient settlers to Surinam were the years of the Willoughby-colonization. In Barbados, where sugar production expanded quickly at the time, many white farmers were pushed from their small holdings by more powerful neighbours and indentured servants found no place to settle after the expiration of their contracts. These people were keen to join such a venture. Since they were experienced colonists and had already survived the first dangerous years in a tropical climate, they prospered. In 1665, Surinam counted 4000 inhabitants, of whom 1500 were capable of bearing arms (meaning they were free white men). A terrible epidemic cut their number in half and the departure of most of the English colonists after the Zeelandian occupation left Surinam practically depleted of white settlers. Therefore, the authorities spared no measure to lure new hopefuls.
