Country: Suriname

Group: Kreyoli (Creoles)

Date Finalized: 11/13/20

Team: Rayna Castillo (lead), Abi Pentecost, Alicia Hernandez

Content Warning: none

Approximate Time Period: 1600-1863

In Suriname, there is credible and sufficient evidence of forced labor of the Creoles (also, Kreyoli) with a data quality score of a 3. Because of their similar history, as well as the Maroon’s adoption of the Creole language, there appears to be some overlap in the Maroon and Creole ethnic identities (Davis, 2009). The Creoles, like the Maroons, descended primarily from imported African slaves, whom the Dutch transported to Suriname to work on plantations (Berg & Bruyn, 2008). The subset of the slave population that went on to create and spread a Creole language formed what is now the Creole ethnic group (Davis, 2009). According to Davis (2009), the official classification of ethnic Creoles started in the 1770s in reference to the Native-born slaves, who comprised a small percentage of the nearly 60,000 living on the plantations; meanwhile, the Maroon are those who escaped from slavery and established communities in the jungles (Borges, 2014). In 1856, the Dutch officially outlawed slavery, but this ruling did not come into full effect in Suriname until 1863 (Borges, 2014; Minority Rights, 2008). However,  a 10 year “government supervision period” was instituted, which required the Creoles to continue working on plantations before they were free to integrate into society (Borges, 2014). Today, a racial hierarchy persists, but the Creole hold a higher standing due to their lighter complexion (Hoefte, 2014). The Creole’s enslavement up until the abolition of slavery in the late nineteenth century classifies as an appropriate coding of forced labor.

Sources

  1. Berg, M. V., & Bruyn, A. (2008). The Early Surinamese Creoles in the Suriname Creole Archive (SUCA). Linguistics in the Netherlands Linguistics in the Netherlands 2008, 25, 25-36. doi:10.1075/avt.25.06ber
  2. Borges, R. (2014). The life of language: Dynamics of language contact in Suriname. LOT.
  3. Davis, N. Z. (2009). Creole languages and their uses: The example of colonial Suriname. Historical Research, 82(216), 268-284. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2281.2009.00494.x
  4. Hoefte, R. (2014). Suriname in the Long Twentieth Century Domination, Contestation, Globalization. Palgrave Macmillan US : Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan. http://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781137360137
  5. Minority Rights. (2008, June 03). Maroons. Retrieved November 5, 2020, from https://minorityrights.org/minorities/maroons/#:~:text=The%20Maroons%20are%20descendants%20of,on%20their%20West%20African%20origins.&text=Maroons%20speak%20their%20own%20distinctive%20languages.