Editing Suriname (section)

===Colonial period===
{{main|Surinam (English colony)|Surinam (Dutch colony)}}

Beginning in the 16th century, [[Kingdom of France|French]], [[Habsburg Spain|Spanish]] and [[Kingdom of England|English]] explorers visited the area. A century later, [[Dutch Republic|Dutch]] and [[Kingdom of England|English]] settlers established [[plantation]] colonies along the many rivers in the fertile Guiana plains. The earliest documented colony in [[The Guianas|Guiana]] was an English settlement named Marshall's Creek along the Suriname River.<ref name="Marshall" /> After that, there was another short-lived English colony called [[Surinam (English colony)|Surinam]] that lasted from 1650 to 1667.

Disputes arose between the Dutch and the English for control of this territory. In 1667, during negotiations leading to the [[Treaty of Breda (1667)|Treaty of Breda]] after the [[Second Anglo-Dutch War]], the Dutch decided to keep the nascent plantation colony of Surinam they had gained from the English. In return the English kept [[New Amsterdam]], the main city of the former colony of [[New Netherland]] in North America on the mid-Atlantic coast. The British renamed it [[New York City|New York]], after the [[Duke of York]] who would later become King [[James II of England]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.qchron.com/editions/queenswide/new-amsterdam-becomes-new-york/article_dd6e910f-a882-5b2e-9771-a2caa1574e07.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170201120328/https://www.qchron.com/editions/queenswide/new-amsterdam-becomes-new-york/article_dd6e910f-a882-5b2e-9771-a2caa1574e07.html|title=1664 New Amsterdam becomes New York Dutch rulers surrender to England|first=Etta|last=Badoe|publisher=[[Queens Chronicle]]|date=11 November 2015|archive-date=1 February 2017|access-date=13 March 2021|url-status=dead}}</ref>

In 1683, the [[Society of Suriname]] was founded by the city of [[Amsterdam]], the [[Cornelis van Aerssen van Sommelsdijck|Van Aerssen van Sommelsdijck]] family, and the [[Dutch West India Company]]. The society was chartered to manage and defend the colony. The planters of the colony relied heavily on [[Slavery in Africa|African slaves]] to cultivate, harvest and process the commodity crops of coffee, cocoa, sugar cane and cotton plantations along the rivers. Planters' treatment of the slaves was notoriously brutal even by the standards of the time<ref>{{cite book|last=Streissguth|first=Tom|title=Suriname in Pictures|url=https://archive.org/details/surinameinpictur0000stre|url-access=registration|publisher=Twenty-First Century Books|year=2009|pages=[https://archive.org/details/surinameinpictur0000stre/page/23 23]–|isbn=978-1-57505-964-8}}</ref>—historian [[C. R. Boxer]] wrote that "man's inhumanity to man just about reached its limits in Surinam"<ref>{{cite book|last=Boxer|first=C.R.|author-link=C. R. Boxer|title=The Dutch Seaborne Empire|publisher=Penguin|date=1990|pages=271–272|isbn=978-0140136180}}</ref>—and many slaves escaped the plantations. In November 1795, the Society was nationalized by the [[Batavian Republic]] and from then on the Batavian Republic and its legal successors (the Kingdom of Holland and the Kingdom of the Netherlands) governed the territory as a national colony – barring two periods of British occupation, between 1799 and 1802, and between 1804 and 1816.


[[File:Vente d'esclaves au Suriname en 1831.jpg|thumb|left|[[Slavery in Suriname|Slave]] auction in Paramaribo, in 1831]]

With the help of the [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|native South Americans]] living in the adjoining rain forests, runaway slaves established a new and unique culture in the interior that was highly successful in its own right. They were known collectively in English as [[Maroon (people)|Maroons]], in French as ''Nèg'Marrons'' (literally meaning "brown negroes", that is "pale-skinned negroes"), and in Dutch as ''Marrons''. The Maroons gradually developed several independent tribes through a process of [[ethnogenesis]], as they were made up of slaves from different African ethnicities. These tribes include the [[Saramaka]], [[Paramaccan people|Paramaka]], [[Ndyuka people|Ndyuka]] or Aukan, [[Kwinti]], [[Aluku]] or Boni, and [[Matawai people|Matawai]].

The Maroons often raided plantations to recruit new members from the slaves and capture women, as well as to acquire weapons, food, and supplies. They sometimes killed planters and their families in the raids. Colonists built defenses, which were significant enough that they were shown on 18th-century maps.<ref>[http://www.wdl.org/en/item/524/ Simon M. Mentelle, "Extract of the Dutch Map Representing the Colony of Surinam"], c.1777, Digital World Library via Library of Congress. Retrieved 26 May 2013</ref>

The colonists also mounted armed campaigns against the Maroons, who generally escaped through the rainforest, which they knew much better than the colonists did. To end hostilities, in the 18th century, the European colonial authorities signed several peace treaties with different tribes. They granted the Maroons sovereign status and trade rights in their inland territories, giving them autonomy.