Agriculture et système agricole au Suriname dé la fin du XVIIe à la fin du XVIIIe siècle

Abstract

In the XVIIIth century, Surinam had become a major subject of interest for Enlighted scholars as well as brokers, owing to agricultural successes and wealth. Its fame led to the writing of important and fairly reliable studies which can now be used as starting points for new analyses. During the same century the political situation had been rulled by conflictual relationships between the Colony and its Mother-country, which generated deep social unrest and troubles (slave revolts, plantocracy opposition to local government, confessionnal tensions between christians and jews...). From the end of the XVIIth century down to the 1750s, economic circumstances were clearly governed by sugar production, with a regular growth of peak exports in the period. In point of fact, Surinam plantation economy underwent deep transfers giving way to strong land merging trends. Such capitalization underlined the settlers' dependancy and debtor position upon metropolitan financial centers (Amsterdam and Rotterdam), and finally caused the development of an absented Landlordism in Dutch Surinam. As a matter of fact, this Dutch practice of colonial credit played a major role upon the sugar production trend : when compared to the financial structure of the plantations and prices evolution, a relatively low loan interest rate of 6% considerably increased the planters' debt. Hence, from 1750 on, a relative slow down of export peaks and even stagnation of production can be shown closely related to serious demonstrations within the Colony (slave revolts), due to such an increase of colonial loans and their ultimate negative effect. Finally, the Surinam example of sugar plantage is a remarkable indicator to measure these transfers of the proto-industrial era in what would become the «Thirld World».

A Tale of Two Coffee Colonies: Environment and Slavery in Suriname and Saint-Domingue, ca. 1750–1790

“…It was this huge influx of capital that allowed the building of several new coffee plantations along the Commewijn river, its tributaries, and canals. The coffee economy leapt forward: between 1750 and 1775, its export value was three times higher than sugar (Souty 1982: 212; Vries and van der Woude 1995: 473). In the 1770s, around thirty-eight thousand slaves were working on Surinamese coffee plantations compared to seventeen thousand on its sugar counterparts (Stipriaan 1993: 311).…”