‘Willoughbyland’
England’s colony in Suriname
Establishing Contact
Suriname is an independent country on the north east coast of South America, known during the short lived British colonial period as Surinam or ‘Willoughbyland’ It is a tropical country, with large areas of Amazonian rainforest. Its capital and largest city is called Paramaribo. It is the only sovereign nation outside of Europe where Dutch is the official and majority language in public life and education. From very early in the European colonisation of South and North America,control of the area was disputed by different European nations.
The whole of the North-Eastern coast of South America was known to Europeans as ‘The Wild Coast’ or ‘The Spanish Main’ from the late sixteenth century. Before European colonisation it was inhabited by many tribes of people, among whom were the Arawak, Carib and Wayana tribes who in the first instance fought against and then traded with the European explorers. They lived in the forest in small villages or family groups, fishing and hunting and growing cassava for bread and farming other plants.
“Then for little parakeetoes, great parrots, mucktaws and a thousand other birds and beasts of wonderful and surprising forms, shapes and colours. For skins of prodgeous snakes…all of various excellencies such as art cannot imitate. Then we trade for feathers, which they order into all shapes, make themselves little short habits of ‘em, and glorious wreaths for their heads, necks arms and legs, whose tinctures are unconceivable. I had a set of these presented to me, and I gave ‘em to the King’s Theatre, and it was the dress of the Indian Queen…”
The area that became known as ‘Suriname’ was fought over throughout the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries with Dutch French and English attempts at colonisation in the face of strong opposition from the indigenous tribes. Amongst the only permanent features of early attempts were a French fort, ‘Fort Zeelandia’ situated near a village called Paramaribo on the Suriname River
Establishing 'Willoughbyland'
In 1650 Surniame was claimed as an English colony by Lord Francis Willoughby. Lord Willoughby, who had fought with the Parliamentarian army under Cromwell, turned Royalist in 1647, and fleeing England like so many Royalists, sought shelter in Barbados. In 1652 Willoughby opted to leave and settle an alternative colony in Suriname, to be called Willoughbyland, taking some Barbadian planters with him to form the core of the new colony
Willoughby spent a fortune on establishing the colony creating a base in the only large town, and later capital, Paramaribo. Although named after him Willoughby himself spent a scant two months there, thereafter leaving the colony to other administrators.
The first settlers from England were offered relatively good terms for immigrating; anyone who could afford the fare of £5 (half price for children) would on arrival be given 50 acres of land, 20 acres for any child they brought with them and 20 acres per servant. Anyone who could not afford the fare would be indentured for four years instead of the more usual seven, and receive £10 and 30 acres of land after the four years. The colony rapidly grew in size, many people preferring to risk all in a new colony than stay in an increasingly restrictive society in England.
The land was rich in natural resources – the tropical forest was full of huge trees and other plants unknown to the Europeans, wild beasts and birds in the forests and all manner of fish crabs and shellfish in the river. The climate, however was taxing: hot and humid day and night, so that provisions went mouldy and shoes rotted.
The first settlers planted tobacco, quick and easy to grow and sell, and soon were regarded as permanent residents. Relations with local tribes were complex: the colonists were severely outnumbered by the indigenous people, but much better armed: one contemporary report by George Warren suggests that the first Indian slaves were bought from the local tribes who had taken them prisoner in inter tribal conflicts: how true this is there is no way of knowing.
‘such notorious Villains as Newgate never transported… at the council table would Contradict and Fight with one another and Swear so bloodily that ‘twas terrible to hear, and see them’
From 1657 to the end of British rule in 1667 the Deputy Governor of Suriname was William Byam, another Royalist exile (described as a ‘major malignant’ by the English Parliament) turned colonist. An assembly of twenty one of the leading plantation owners met every few months in one or other of the large plantation houses to discuss and decide administrative matters.
Establishing 'Willoughbyland'
At its height, the English colony consisted of around 30,000 acres, centred on the fort originally built by the French, now called Fort Willoughby. In 1663 there were some 50 sugar plantations on which most of the work was done by indigenous Indians and 3,000 African slaves, brought there by the Africa Company.
'At last (they) arrived at the mouth of the River of Surinam, a colony belonging to the King of England, and where they were to deliver some part of their slaves. There the merchants and gentlemen of the country going on board, to demand those lots of slaves they had already agreed on….'
There were around 1,000 white settlers, who had been joined by both European and Brazilian Jews attracted by the religious freedom granted to all settlers by the English.
Aphra Behn in Surinam
Aphra Behn was sent to Suriname in 1663-4 to try and make contact with one William Scott, son of one of Cromwell’s spymasters, Thomas Scott, who had been executed as a regicide. William was much less politically committed than his father had been, and he is known to have been a double agent working for the Dutch as well as the English. Aphra’s job was to try and lure him back to England permanently.
She probably arrived around June 1663 after the two month voyage with her mother, sister and brother. She claimed in her book ‘Oronooko’ that she was accompanying her father to the country, where he was to be Governor of a large number of islands, but that he died on the voyage out. This is unlikely – there is no record of any such appointment, never mind that her father would be unlikely to be in the line for a governorship
Oroonoko
‘tis there eternal spring; always the very months of April May and June bearing at once all degrees of leaves and fruit, from blooming buds to ripe autumn… The very wood of these trees hsa an intrinsic value above common timber, for they are, when cut, off different colours, glorious to behold , and bear a price considerable…’
Aphra Behn wrote a fictionalised account of her visit to Suriname in her book ‘Oroonoko’; the story of a noble African prince captured and sold into slavery who is eventually brutally killed by the plantation owners. This is one of the first pieces of writing to describe the brutality of the treatment of the enslaved population by the European colonists. She gives accurate descriptions of the plantations, forests and European inhabitants, including Deputy Governor William Byam, whom she disliked (the feeling was mutual)
‘ the most fawning fair tongued fellow in the world… not fit to be mentioned with the worst of slaves’
and a Cornish plantation supervisor John Trefy, whom she liked.
‘a man of great wit and fine learning’
She seems to have done the round of visiting the great plantation houses, staying for some time at the plantation of St John’s Hill, the home of Sir Robert Harley – a co-conspirator with Willoughby. Here and at other plantations she undoubtedly witnessed the savage treatment of enslaved peoples which feature so strongly in the book.
Her main job was probably to charm Scott into coming back to England. . She already had a spying codename ‘Astrea’ or ‘Agent 160’. ‘Astrea’ was the name of a shepherdess character in a well known romance, in love with Celadon (which became a codename for William Scott) It became obvious to Deputy Governor Byam that something more than flirtation was going on between Behn and Scott: in a letter to friends in Barbados he talks about their ‘sympathetical passion’
Whatever went on in the following months, Aphra Behn and her family left Suriname in February 1664. Byam wrote to Sir Robert Harley
‘ I found a full ship… bound for London, on whom I sent off the fair shepherdess…with what reluctance and regret you may well conjecture’
and a little later he reports:
‘ I need not enlarge but to advise you of the sympathetical passion of the Grand Shepherd Celadon who is fled after Astrea being resolved to espouse all distress or felicities of fortune with her…’
Whatever Scott said he was going to do, he did not go back to England but to the Netherlands, where he and Agent 160 would meet again.
The International Picture
From the very start of Charles II’s reign relations between England and the Netherlands were antagonistic. Suriname was a perfect landfall at the end of the long Atlantic crossing, and both the British and the Dutch wanted to control it. It was probably to do with this strife that Aphra Behn was sent to Surinam to liaise and negotiate with William Scott; the English Government did not want him gaining influence in Suriname, which might weaken their hold on the colony. It may be that Scott, as a double agent, was influential in the Dutch decision to attack Surinam in 1667
At the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Dutch War in February 1667, the Dutch besieged Fort Willoughby . Under sustained assault, Byam surrendered the fort to the attackers. The English inhabitants either fled or defected to the Dutch, who regained control of the colony.
Suriname remained in Dutch possession until 1974, when it finally gained full independence. Throughout the eighteenth century it was a byword for the brutal treatment of its enslaved population and the frequency of successful slave revolts.
At the end of the Anglo- Dutch war in 1667 under the Treaty of Breda, Suriname was exchanged for a town in North America called New Amsterdam,
Aphra Behn did not approve of this
“Had his Late Majesty, of sacred memory, but seen and known what a vast and charming world he had been master of in that continent he would never have parted so easily with it to the Dutch. Tis a continent whose vast extent was never yet known, and may contain more earth than all the universe beside..”
She might have been reconciled to the exchange had she known that New Amsterdam would soon change its name to New York.
Clio’s Company (registered charity no. 1101853) is grateful for generous financial support for this project from The Portal Trust
