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  • Surinamese migration
    • Main contributor: Dr. David Heffernan
    Javanese migrants in Surinam, c. 1890

    Surinamese migration is the process whereby people have migrated to and from the country of Suriname on the northern coast of South America over the last four centuries. This has been keenly connected with Dutch colonization of the country from the 1660s onwards. The Dutch were responsible for bringing in slaves from Africa until the institution was abolished in 1863. Thereafter, African slaves were replaced by indentured servants from India and what is now Indonesia. In the process the demography of Surinam was transformed with Indians, Africans and Javanese people become the dominant ethnic groups. In more modern times Surinam changed into a country of outward migration. Approximately 100,000 Surinamese people arrived to the Netherlands between 1965 and 1975 to fill the labor deficit in the country in the post-war period. Surinam has remained a relatively poor country since independence was attained in 1975 and Surinamese people continue to migrate to countries like the Netherlands, the United States, France, Belgium and the Dutch colonies of the Caribbean. Approximately 2% of the population of the Netherlands is Surinamese.[1]

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    Surinamese migration chronology of events

    A Dutch map of Guiana/Surinam

    Modern Surinamese migration is closely connected to the country’s history as a Dutch colony. Beginning in the early seventeenth, the British, French and Dutch began exploring the northern coastline of South America between where Venezuela and Brazil lie today. This was a region dense in rainforest and tropical diseases and lying between the Spanish and Portuguese zones of influence established on the continent under the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. For these reasons the region remained unsettled by either the Spanish or Portuguese, a fact which the French, British and Dutch took advantage of to establish their own colonies here. The Dutch colony emerged out of the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–1667) and became known as Surinam, most likely a reference to a native group called the Surinen who lived here.[2]

    Under Dutch colonial rule the demography of Surinam was transformed in ways which still influence the country. A small number of Dutch colonial administrators and plantation owners arrived to begin exploiting the natural resources here, while it was also used as a prison colony by the Dutch. The greater migration though was in the forced transplantation of African slaves to Surinam.[3] Later, when slavery was belatedly banned in 1863, the Dutch moved to replace it by bringing in indentured servants from India and also from their colonies in the East Indies. Hence, the population of Surinam became a complex collection of natives, maroons descended from African slaves, people of Indian descent, Javanese people from what is now Indonesia, a small community of Dutch elites and creoles of mixed heritage.[4]

    Dutch colonial rule, c. 1923

    Surinam was a late participant in the wave of decolonization that commenced around the world in the aftermath of the Second World War. The Dutch did not grant the country full independence until 1975. Thereafter a military coup followed in 1980, followed by a civil war between 1986 and 1992. These developments, as well as the country’s position as one largely made up of tropical rainforest, have ensured that Surinam has remained a somewhat poor country dependent on a number of cash crops for its economic development, notably coffee, cacao, sugar and bananas. Unlike neighboring Guyana, which has started to become quite rich off of new oil money in recent years, Surinam has remained comparatively poor. This poverty has driven outward migration since independence.[5]

    Extent of Surinamese migration

    Surinamese migration is a tale of forced inward migration over several centuries and then voluntary outward migration in more recent times. Between the establishment of Dutch rule in the 1660s and the end of slavery in Surinam in 1863 there were tens of thousands of African slaves brought to the colony by the Dutch. Then, for about a half a century thereafter, the Dutch began importing indentured servants from India and the East Indies, particularly the island of Java. A smaller number of Dutch settlers also arrived, but like so many Caribbean colonies of the early modern era, the enslaved population outnumbered the colonial community by a substantial ratio.[6]

    Much of the modern migration was to the mother country in the period between the end of the Second World War in 1945 and the establishment of independence in 1975. The Netherlands, like many other European countries, experienced considerable labor shortages in the post-war era. Following the lead of the British, who had begun to bring colonial workers from their colonies like Jamaica in the Caribbean to England as early as the late 1940s, the Dutch began inviting workers from their colonies in the Caribbean and elsewhere to Europe. Many came from Surinam. The most intense period of migration from Surinam to the Netherlands was between 1965 and 1975, the final decade of Dutch colonial rule. In 1966 there were just 13,000 Surinamese workers in the Netherlands. This increased to over 50,000 in 1972 and there were an estimated 110,000 Surinamese living in Amsterdam and elsewhere by the time Surinamese independence was declared on the 25th of November 1975.[7]

    Demographic impact of Surinamese migration

    Frank Rijkaard

    Surinamese migration has had the greatest impact on the Netherlands. There are an estimated 350,000 people of Surinamese heritage in the Netherlands today, though some studies place the figure as high as 450,000. This lower figure constitutes roughly 2% of the entire population of the country. Therefore Surinamese migration to the Low Countries, especially during the last decade of colonial rule, has had a considerable impact on the demography of the modern-day Netherlands. The cultural and social impact of this community has also been notable. An unusually large number of prominent Dutch football players of the 1980s and 1990s are the children of Surinamese migrants who arrived to the Netherlands in the 1960s and 1970s, notably Ruud Gullit and Frank Rijkaard, two of the key players that guided the Netherlands to winning the 1988 UEFA European Championship.[8] Beyond the Netherlands, several thousand Surinamese migrants have moved in modern times to the United States, France, Belgium, Indonesia, Austria and some of the other Dutch colonies in the Caribbean like Aruba, creating small diaspora communities in each of these places.[9]

    See also

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    References

    1. ↑ Simona Vezzoli, ’The evolution of Surinamese emigration across and beyond independence’, Determinants of International Migration, Project Paper 28 (2014).
    2. ↑ Karwan Fatah-Black, ‘Paramaribo as Dutch and Atlantic Nodal Point, 1650–1795’, in Gert Oostinde and Jessica V. Roitman (eds.), Dutch Atlantic Connections, 1680–1800: Linking Empires, Bridging Borders (Leiden, 2014), pp. 52–71.
    3. ↑ C. W. van Galen, et al., ‘Slavery in Suriname. A Reconstruction of Life Courses, 1830–1863’, in Historical Life Course Studies, Vol. 13 (2023), pp. 191–211.
    4. ↑ Rosemarijn Hoefte, ‘Control and Resistance: Indentured Labor in Suriname’, in Nieuwe West-Indische Gids/New West Indian Guide, Vol. 61, No. 1/2 (1987), pp. 1–22.
    5. ↑ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-20028418
    6. ↑ Hoefte, ‘Control and Resistance’.
    7. ↑ Hans van Amersfoort, ‘How the Dutch government stimulated immigration from Suriname’, Determinants of International Migration, Project Paper 10 (2011).
    8. ↑ https://sport.optus.com.au/news/catch-ups/os7654/greatest-team-that-never-was-suriname-and-internation-football
    9. ↑ Vezzoli, ‘Evolution of Surinamese emigration’.


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