Essay
We Slaves of Suriname
Wij slaven van Suriname
Anton de Kom · 1934
Synopsis
In four parts, from the homeland “Sranang” to the time of slavery and then to that of a “freedom” in quotation marks, the author retraces the history of his country from the point of view of the descendants of slaves. He describes the plantations where captives were branded like cattle, escape punished by death, the long war of the Maroons, then the abolition of 1863, which compensated the masters and bound the freed to ten years of labour. He shows how the colonial power oppressed the groups of the population and how they rose up, before telling of his own return to the country.
Context
Begun in 1926 and revised with the writer Jef Last, the book appeared in 1934 with Contact, despite pressure from the intelligence service, in a form cut of a few passages. In the magazine Forum, E. du Perron welcomed it as a view of the country's history “from the side of the Blacks”. Out of print after the war, it circulated in the sixties in mimeographed copies made by Surinamese students before being reissued in 1971; it was translated into German as early as 1935, then into English in 1987 and again in 2022. Since 2020 its author has figured in the canon of Dutch history taught in schools.
Who it is for
For those who want to read the history of slavery and Dutch colonisation told by a descendant of slaves.
Prizes and reception
Rediscovered by the students of the sixties and reprinted more than fifteen times, it has become a classic of anti-colonialism.
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