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| Database of freed slaves and slave owners in Surinam |
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| The Hague, 1 July 2003 |
On 1 July 1863, exactly 140 years ago, an estimated 45,000 slaves became free men and women. On that day the Netherlands abolished slavery. The majority of those slaves, 34,000 of them, lived in Surinam. But until now little has been known about who they actually were. The new Emancipation database (in Dutch only) changes all that. Here you can find many personal details of the freed slaves. The database currently contains information about those living in Paramaribo, the capital of Surinam (4320 names). During the course of this year, details of those from the colony's other districts (30,121 names) will also become available through the Nationaal Archief website. Until then you can find information about slaves outside Paramaribo at www.surinamistiek.nl/Slavernijverleden.
The researchers
The Emancipation database is the latest addition to the huge quantity of historical information about Surinam held by the Nationaal Archief. The data it contains has been collated by researchers Okke ten Hove and Heinrich Helstone. They have succeeded in making accessible Dutch and Surinamese archives which tell us about the 34,000 slaves in the colony. For example, who they worked for, what work they actually did and what their religion was. The new research also reveals who the slave owners were and how many slaves they owned.
Compensation scheme
The Netherlands decided to abolish slavery as early as 1848. Yet it took until 1863 to implement the measure because Parliament was unable to agree on the compensation to be paid to slave owners for the workers they would lose through abolition. It was eventually decided that 300 guilders would be paid for each slave. To ensure that the state did not pay too much, the slave owner was required to complete a list of questions known as a "bordereau". The government wanted to know exactly how many slaves the owner had, where they worked, what they did, their age and religion. After use, these bordereaux were preserved in the archive of the Netherlands Court of Audit, which is now held by the Nationaal Archief. The Court of Audit was charged with carefully monitoring the compensation paid, a total of 10 million guilders. Historian Okke ten Hove has added all the data from this archive, about both slaves and owners, to the database.
Emancipation Register
A second source used by the historian is the Emancipation Register. In the spring of 1863 a state commission toured the plantations of Surinam to check that the slaves recorded by the owners in their bordereaux actually existed. But the commission did something else, too: it gave every slave a family name. All the personal details of every family member on every plantation were recorded by the commission in the Emancipation Register. This information included their given name, sex and age. The contents of this Register, which is being preserved in Paramaribo, have been recorded by researcher Heinrich Helstone.
Search and find
The Emancipation database currently contains information about those slaves living in Paramaribo (4320 names). During the course of this year, details of those in the other districts of Surinam (30,121 names) will also become available through the Nationaal Archief website. Visitors can search the database by the categories "Slaves", "Owners" and "Slaves and owners". If you find no "hits" on the name you enter, this is probably because the slave or family concerned was not living in Paramaribo in 1863 but in one of the other districts. On the website www.surinamistiek.nl/Slavernijverleden you will find all the family names from plantations outside the capital. It may also be that the name you are looking for is that of a slave who was freed before 1863. A considerable number of these freed slaves, known as manumittees, can be found in the database Manumissions 1832-1863 (in Dutch only).
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