“Hhow much do you know about Suriname?” New York Times recently asked its readers, challenging them to identify the country on a world map. The country is often, it seems, mistakenly placed on the wrong continent. Travel writer Simon Romero tells how a South American correspondent called his editor at a reputable London newsroom to announce his arrival in Paramaribo, the country’s capital. “What the hell are you doing in Africa?” shouted the editor.
Myth and mischief have served to sow confusion over Suriname’s identity as well as its location. Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1912) imagined the Guianas – incl Suriname, Guyana and the French overseas department of Guiana (French Guiana) – as a primordial throwback where dinosaurs roamed, while the deservedly forgotten adventurer Nicol Smith came up with a travelogue in 1941, which promised an “authentic account of the hair of voodooism”. wild adventure, three-toed men and tropical horrors”.
Sensationalism aside, there is some reasonable uncertainty about where Suriname fits in the Caribbean context. Its official language is Dutch, but it is a member of the majority English-speaking Caribbean community (CARICOM). It is not bordered by the Caribbean Sea – but neither is Guyana, which is definitely Caribbean. It is located at the northern tip of South America, but has little in common linguistically and culturally with Latin America. And it looks more like the former colonial power, the Netherlands — where about 350,000 people of Surinamese descent now live — than the United States.
So is Suriname a Caribbean country? I think a reasonable answer lies in the work of the late Trinidadian economist Lloyd Best, who formulated the concept of “plantation economics” to analyze the history of the Caribbean region. He explained how colonial powers created slave-based plantation economies, then replaced slaves with “free” or forced labor, and then withdrew—leaving independent but underdeveloped countries dependent on export goods.
In this sense, everything that makes Suriname unique is the result of this plantation past. Its famously diverse communities of African, Indonesian, Indian and Chinese descent reflect a history of slavery and labor imported from the Dutch Empire. Its wild interior is home to the Maroons (descendants of those who built new communities after escaping the plantations), while the fine Dutch architecture in Paramaribo’s historic district is the legacy of the departed planter class.
The plantation-dominated past that Suriname shares with the wider Caribbean is brought vividly to life in a “new” book, just published in the UK by Polity. Books in English in Suriname are rare, and this – In the slaves of Suriname – it’s a gem.
FFirst published in Dutch in 1934, it was written by a Surinamese named Anton de Kom, who was born 125 years ago on February 22, 1898. De Kom is not widely known outside Suriname and the Netherlands, where he was forgotten until recently. . But his work and his short and tragic life deserve much more recognition.
De Kom was born in a poor neighborhood of Paramaribo, his father having been enslaved at birth and his mother the daughter of a freed slave. He was definitely a smart guy as he got a degree in accounting and joined a Dutch company that exported balata (a rubber-like material) to Europe. But his memories of school were of a “white history” curriculum that systematically created a sense of inferiority in non-white children.
His upbringing in the center of the Netherlands and the treatment of laborers on balata plantations ignited a sense of injustice and de Kom became a radical anti-colonialist. After a brief stay in Haiti, he sailed to the Netherlands where he eventually found work in The Hague with a coffee importer. He also contacted anti-colonial activists from other Dutch territories such as Indonesia, and was close to communists and other radical groups.
These meetings confirmed two main aspects of his political outlook: the deep opposition to Dutch imperialism and the understanding that people of all ethnicities around the world were victims of this imperialism.
In January 1933, de Kom returned with his wife and four children to Suriname, hoping to start a new life. But he was already under the surveillance of the colonial authorities as a known agitator. Banned from holding meetings, he acted as an informal consultant in his father’s house, listening to the grievances of poor people from all walks of life and promoting community action.
When the police broke up a rally in February, a crowd marched on the Governor’s palace and de Kom was arrested. Five days later, police opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators, killing two and injuring many others. Fearing the influence of the popular “Papa de Com” among the poor, the authorities deported him to the Netherlands, where a worse fate awaited him.
Hit’s book – a kind of testament as much as an orthodox history – was published the following year and remains as alive now as it was then. The first book on Suriname to be written by a Surinamese, it is part memoir and part political critique – depicting the country as a victim of brutal exploitation and systemic inequality.
The Dutch colonizers are condemned for their greed and cruelty, and their descendants – the plantation owners and ruling elite – for their incompetence and callous indifference to the lives of the poor: slaves, forced immigrants and “free” workers.
De Kom’s heroes are the indigenous peoples who resisted the early European settlers, the chestnuts who escaped the plantations and lived freely in the vast forests of Suriname and the contemporary anti-colonial movement.
But above all, In the slaves of Suriname (where “We” is burdened with the weight of his parents’ memory) is a lyrical celebration of Sranan, the indigenous name of Suriname – a land of boundless wood and water, which de Kom imbues with a mystical sense of permanence and hope. In its attack on slavery and capitalism, the book can be compared to the work of CLR James or Eric Williams, but it is less theoretical and intellectual – more poetic and heartfelt.
The book had little success then – mainly due to censorship – and de Kom was unemployed and depressed in his exile. The German invasion of May 1940 seemed to revive him and he joined the Dutch resistance, secretly writing and distributing anti-Nazi material.
He was arrested in August 1944, interned in a Dutch concentration camp and finally sent to Stalag XB, Sandbostel – a camp for political prisoners – where he died of tuberculosis in 1945, shortly before the end of the war.
There may be few other Surinamese who fell victim to the Holocaust. In 1960 his remains were identified in a mass grave and repatriated to the Dutch War Cemetery in Loenen.
His work was also rescued from obscurity after radical students rediscovered the book in the 1960s and 1970s, when battles over decolonization flared. Statues, street names and memorials were placed in Amsterdam and in his childhood neighborhood of Frimangron in Paramaribo.
And perhaps most importantly, de Kom’s life and work have recently been chosen as part of the Dutch national history curriculum, correcting any notion that Dutch imperialism was somehow better than others. A tribute to a brave warrior, but also an irony that de Kom, subjected to a very different colonial upbringing in Paramaribo, would surely have appreciated.
