Surinam.
Information.
SURINAM (officially known as the Republic of Suriname), is a country on the northeastern Atlantic coast of South America. Area - 163 821 sq.km. Population - 560 157 (2012) Capital - Paramaribo. It is bordered by French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west and Brazil to the south. Beginning in the 16th century, French, Spanish, and English explorers visited the area. A century later, plantation colonies were established by the Dutch and English along the many rivers in the fertile Guiana plains. The earliest documented colony in Guiana was an English settlement named Marshall's Creek along the Suriname River. Disputes arose between the Dutch and the English. In 1667, during negotiations leading to the Treaty of Breda, the Dutch decided to keep the nascent plantation colony of Suriname they had conquered from the British. The British got to keep New Amsterdam, the main city of the former colony of New Netherland. Already a cultural and economic hub in those days, they renamed it after the Duke of York: New York. In 1799, the British occupied Suriname. Although returned to the Dutch in 1802, the British reoccupied it in May 1804 and did not return it to Holland until 1816. With the help of the native South Americans living in the adjoining rain forests, these runaway slaves established a new and unique culture that was highly successful in its own right. They were known collectively in English as the Maroons. The Maroons gradually developed several independent tribes through a process of ethnogenesis, as they were made up of slaves from different African ethnicities. Slavery in Suriname was abolished by the Netherlands in 1863, but the slaves were not fully released until 1873, after a mandatory ten-year transition period during which time they were required to work on the plantations for minimal pay and without state-sanctioned discipline. As soon as they became truly free, the slaves largely abandoned the plantations where they had worked for several generations in favour of the city, Paramaribo. As a plantation colony, Suriname was still heavily dependent on manual labour, and to make up for the shortfall, the Dutch brought in contract labourers from the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia) and India (through an arrangement with the British). In addition, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, small numbers of labourers, mostly men, were brought in from China and the Middle East. On 23 November 1941, under an agreement with the Netherlands government-in-exile, the United States occupied Suriname to protect bauxite mines. In 1954, Suriname became one of the constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, along with the Netherlands Antilles and the Netherlands. In this construction, the Netherlands retained control of defense and foreign affairs. In 1973, the local government, led by the NPK (a largely Creole, meaning ethnically African or mixed African-European, party) started negotiations with the Dutch government leading towards full independence, which was granted on 25 November 1975. The severance package was very substantial, and a large part of Suriname's economy for the first decade following independence was fueled by foreign aid provided by the Dutch government. The first President of the country was Johan Ferrier, the former governor, with Henck Arron (the then leader of the Nationale Partij Suriname (Suriname's National Party) as Prime Minister. In the years leading up to independence nearly one-third of the population of Suriname emigrated to the Netherlands, amidst concern that the new country would fare worse under independence than it had as an overseas colony of the Netherlands. Indeed, Surinamese politics soon degenerated into ethnic polarisation and corruption with the NPS using Dutch aid money for partisan purposes. Its leaders were accused of fraud in the 1977 elections, in which Arron won a further term, and the discontent was such that a large chunk of the population fled to the Netherlands, joining the already significant Surinamese community there. Currency : Surinamese dollar (SRD).
