Borderless Empire: Dutch Guiana in the Atlantic World, 1750–1800

BORDERLESS EMPIRE

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ADVISORY BOARD

Vincent Brown, Duke University

Andrew Cayton, Miami University

Cornelia Hughes Dayton, University of Connecticut

Nicole Eustace, New York University

Amy S. Greenberg, Pennsylvania State University

Ramón A. Gutiérrez, University of Chicago

Peter Charles Hoffer, University of Georgia

Karen Ordahl Kupperman, New York University

Joshua Piker, College of William & Mary

Mark M. Smith, University of South Carolina

Rosemarie Zagarri, George Mason University

BORDERLESS EMPIRE

Dutch Guiana in the Atlantic World, 1750–1800

BRAM HOONHOUT

The University of Georgia Press

ATHENS

© 2020 by the University of Georgia Press

Athens, Georgia 30602

www.ugapress.org

All rights reserved

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hoonhout, Bram, author.

Title: Borderless empire : Dutch Guiana in the Atlantic world, 1750–1800 / Bram Hoonhout.

Other titles: West Indian web

Description: Athens : University of Georgia Press, [2020] | Series: Early American places | Revision of author’s thesis (doctoral)—European University Institute, 2017, titled The West Indian web : improvising colonial survival in Essequibo and Demerara, 1750–1800. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019010723 | ISBN 9780820356082 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780820356075 (ebk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Essequibo—History. | Demerara—History. | Netherlands—Colonies—America—History. | Netherlands—Colonies—History—17th century.

Classification: LCC F2351 .H66 2020 | DDC 988.1/2—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019010723

For my parents

CONTENTS

List of Maps, Tables, and Figures

List of Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Borderless Societies

1 The Borderland

2 Political Conflicts

3 Rebels and Runaways

4 The Centrality of Smuggling

5 The Web of Debt

6 Borderless Businessmen

Conclusion: The Shape of Empire

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Notes

Bibliography

Index

MAPS, TABLES, AND FIGURES

Maps

I.1 Essequibo and Demerara, their neighboring colonies and their major connections

I.2 Detail from a 1737 map of Surinam

I.3 Essequibo and Demerara around the turn of the century, with details of their plantation infrastructure and points of control

1.1 The Orinoco-Essequibo borderland

2.1 Detail from the mouth of the Demerara River, 1784

3.1 The three main desertion routes from Essequibo to Venezuela

3.2 Plantations and planters involved in the 1772 revolt in Demerara

3.3 Plantations involved in the 1789 bomba insurgency

3.4 Uprisings, desertion, and maroon attacks in 1795

5.1 Caerte van de rivier Demerary van Ouds Immenary, gelegen op Suyd Americaes Noordkust op de Noorder Breedte van 6 Gr. 40 Min, 1759

5.2 Carte de la Colonie de Demerary, 1784

5.3 Generale en speciale kaart der Colonien van de republicq der Ver. Nederl., geleegen in Guyana, langs de Zeekust der rivieren Poumaron, Essequebo, Demerary; van de grensen van Berbice tot de rivier Morocco aan de grens in de Spaansche Bezitting Oronoco, 1796

6.1 Estates of the individuals mentioned in the text

Tables

2.1 Number of plantations in Essequibo and Demerara, 1716–1800

3.1 Enslaved Africans in Essequibo and Demerara, 1735–1832

4.1 Vessels arriving in Essequibo and Demerara, 1700–1799 (annual average)

4.2 Exports from Essequibo and Demerara, March 1784–February 1785

5.1 Overview of mortgage funds active in Essequibo and Demerara

A1.1 Missions of the Reverend Father Capuchins of Catalonia of the Province of Guiana, 1788

A1.2 Goods ordered for 1,000 Amerindians, 1803

Figures

2.1 Origins of the Demerara supporters for the 1785 petition

4.1 Population of enslaved Africans in Essequibo and Demerara, actual numbers compared to counterfactual numbers based on registered slave imports, 1769–1795

5.1 Exports from Essequibo and Demerara, 1745–1801 (in lbs)

5.2 Registered exports from Essequibo and Demerara, 1798–1802 (in pounds sterling)

ABBREVIATIONS

ACA  Amsterdam City Archive, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

BGBB  British Guiana Boundary Books

—BC  —British Case

—BCC  —British Counter Case

—VCC  —Venezuelan Counter Case

BL  British Library, London, United Kingdom

BPL  Boston Public Library, Boston, United States

BT  Board of Trade

CO  Colonial Office

CUST  Boards of Customs, Excise, and Customs and Excise, and HM Revenue and Customs

IISH  International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

LRS  Liverpool Record Office, Liverpool, United Kingdom

MCC  Middelburgse Commercie Compagnie (Middleburgh Commercial Company)

MHS  Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, United States

NAG  National Archives of Guyana, Georgetown, Guyana

NL-HaNA Dutch  National Archives, The Hague, Netherlands

NRS  National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

NYHS  New York Historical Society, New York, United States

RAB  Raad der Amerikaanse Bezittingen (Council of American Possessions)

RdK  Raad der Koloniën (Council of the Colonies)

RBML  Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University

S-G  Staten-Generaal (States-General)

TASTD  Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database

TNA  The British National Archives, Kew, United Kingdom

UA  Utrecht Archives, Utrecht, Netherlands

VOC  Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company)

VWIS  Verspreide West-Indische Stukken (Unsorted West Indian Papers)

WIC  Dutch West India Company

ZA  Zeeuws Archief (Zealand Archives), Middleburgh, Netherlands

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing a book inevitably involves incurring many debts. As this project has its origins in my dissertation, I would like to thank my advisers at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Jorge Flores and Regina Grafe. Jorge’s support and flexibility allowed me to shape my own project. At the same time, his encouragement to go beyond my comfort zone of economic history and incorporate more social history helped to make this a more balanced work. Regina made sure that I did not forget about the economic side. Her cheerfulness and willingness to discuss chapters over Skype or over pasta are much appreciated, and her incisive comments and broad knowledge of Atlantic history have been enormously helpful. I owe a Deutz-sized debt to my academic mentor, Cátia Antunes. While it cannot be recounted in full here, suffice it to say that her unfaltering faith as well as the many talks and rounds of feedback have been fundamental to my academic development over the past seven years. Her dedication to her PhD students (broadly conceived) is a model for any adviser.

At Leiden University, Team Catia, among others, always offered me a warm welcome. I have spent many hours thinking or drinking with Kate, Joris, Erik, Éli, Julie, Kaarle, Edgar, Hasan, Noelle, Miguel, Susana, João Paolo, Karwan, Jeannette, Sanne, Matthias, Aniek, and Marion, which helped develop our projects as well as our friendship. Similarly, many people at the EUI made life enjoyable, whether in academic settings, in town, or on the Schifanoia calcetto pitch; thanks to Roel, Matthijs, Martijn, Florian, Sanne, Diana, Marijn, Bouke, Niccolò, Bartosz, Jonas, Esther, Stephanie, and Miquel.

I have benefited from the generous advice and support of many others, whom I like to thank here. Gert Oostindie read the entire manuscript and gave very useful comments. Marion Pluskota, Michiel van Groesen, Karwan Fatah-Black, and Damian Pargas provided valuable input for the book proposal. Wim Klooster offered helpful advice during his stay at the NIAS, as well as when we met in the years afterward, just like Marjoleine Kars. Several participants at the FEEGI, CHAM, BGEAH, ISCECS, Itinerario, and ESSHC conferences provided valuable input. I am grateful as well to Paul Koulen, Johan van Langen, Roelof Hol, Ben ter Welle, and Syeade and Jerry Lagra all of whom contributed in one way or another to research in Guyana. In addition, David Alston has been very supportive in tracking Scots. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds for generously funding my research in Guyana, Barbados, and the United States. Finally, I want to thank the many archivists who have helped me in my quest for the few and scattered sources that deal with Guyanese history.

Parts of this book have been published previously, as Bram Hoonhout and Thomas Mareite, Freedom at the Fringes? Slave Flight and Empire-Building in the Early Modern Spanish Borderlands of Essequibo–Venezuela and Louisiana–Texas, in Slavery & Abolition (2018); and as Smuggling for Survival: Self-Organized, Cross-Imperial Colony Building in Essequibo and Demerara, 1746–1796, in Beyond Empires: Global, Self-Organizing, Cross-Imperial Networks, 1500–1800, ed. Cátia Antunes and Amélia Polónia (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 212–35. I would therefore like to thank Taylor & Francis and Brill for their permission to reuse parts of this material.

At the University of Georgia Press, I have been happy to work with Walter Biggins, Jordan Stepp, and Bethany Snead, who saw the potential for the book and always responded quickly to queries. In addition, I am grateful for the excellent copyediting of Sheila Berg. I am also thankful to the two great reviewers commissioned by the Press, who saw more clearly what the book was about than I could myself and whose suggestions were pivotal in reframing the book.

Finally, I would like to thank friends and family. I have been privileged with fantastic and supportive parents and a wonderful sister, as well as with friends who show there is more to life than academic work. Ultimately, though, my greatest thanks to my dearest Anouk.

Introduction: Borderless Societies

When in 1796 the British invasion fleet approached the Demerara River, its commanders were in for an unpleasant surprise. The expedition, arriving from Barbados with some thirteen hundred men, aimed to take possession of the Dutch colonies of Essequibo and Demerara, situated on the Guiana coast of South America. Theoretically, the British came to offer protection to the colonies in the name of the Dutch Stadtholder. In practice, they were keen on taking these lucrative colonies for themselves. The Dutch colonies of Essequibo and especially Demerara already had a high percentage of British planters, and their fertile soils carried the promise of great riches. Their coffee, sugar, and cotton could fuel the unfolding Industrial Revolution in Britain with the raw material for its machines and the stimulants for its workforce.

Yet the shallow mouth of the Demerara presented an unforeseen obstacle to the invaders. Even though the heavy warships deliberately kept their distance, the lighter landing vessels failed to reach the shore. The English surgeon George Pinckard was traveling with the fleet and described the unfortunate situation. Instead of going ashore with the earliest tide in the morning, by five o’clock the entire advanced fleet had run aground, frustrating any plans of a quick invasion. The troops, neither able to attack nor able to retreat, became sitting ducks and were forced to await the next tide. The British thus had to change course. Their large ships were ordered to block the river mouth and to anchor within firing range of Demerara’s fort, to prepare for a possible Dutch counterattack.¹

However, the Dutch officials preferred to avoid confrontation. In fact, they were happy to surrender, as long as personal property remained intact. The scenario of a foreign takeover was familiar to the colonists: in the 1780s they had been occupied twice, first by British and then by French forces. After some initial confiscations of ships, the colonists had actually profited from those foreign occupations. Being part of the British or French empire had provided access to more commercial opportunities than they could ever hope for under the Dutch. Consequently, exporting to London or buying enslaved Africans from British slavers had greatly stimulated the expansion of the plantation economy in the 1780s, and the colonists expected similar opportunities now that the British were at their doorstep again.

Another reason for this positive attitude toward a British takeover was the large number of British settlers already present in Essequibo and Demerara. Throughout the eighteenth century, Essequibo and Demerara had welcomed many foreign planters. With the offer of generous ten-year tax breaks, many colonists had been enticed to move from islands like Barbados and Antigua, to abandon these increasingly depleted lands for fertile virgin soil. By the time of the takeover, British and North American colonists probably made up at least half of the planter population.²

Consequently, the British took control of the colonies peacefully the day after the initial standoff.³ Thereafter, except for a short intermezzo in 1802–3, the colonies would remain in British hands, and in 1814 the Netherlands officially ceded them to Britain. In 1831 the two colonies, together with neighboring Berbice, would be merged to form British Guiana. As a newly acquired part of the empire, many British planters, slave traders, and investors jumped on the opportunity to get rich quickly. The slave trade soared and investment boomed. While throughout the Atlantic world the system of slavery was increasingly challenged by abolitionists, it accelerated and intensified in newly acquired regions like Guiana. In fact, in the decade after the takeover, Demerara was the fastest expanding region in the world of slavery.⁴ A dream for absentee planters, a nightmare for the enslaved and abolitionists, British Guiana became the site of one of the greatest slave uprisings—the Demerara rebellion of 1823—and a source of fabled riches.⁵

However, the eighteenth century, under Dutch rule, was a profoundly different period. In the first quarter of the century there were just a handful of plantations in Essequibo, while Demerara was not even opened for colonization until 1746. Rather than being stimulated by the metropolis, the two colonies were largely neglected by the governing body—the Dutch West India Company (WIC)—which led to a situation of constant near-collapse. Irregular supplies from the Dutch Republic meant that food and building materials were almost always in short supply. In addition, the planters were perennially frustrated by the lack of enslaved Africans for sale, most of whom died young because of the terrible conditions in which they lived and worked.⁶ Furthermore, the colonial administrators lamented the vulnerability of the colonies, which was the result of a lack of military support. Without sufficient troops and adequate fortifications, the colonists were helpless against external invaders as well as internal insurgencies in the form of slave uprisings.

Nevertheless, the plantation economy grew quickly. In 1735 only thirty plantations existed in Essequibo, and in 1745 Demerara was just a river running through virtually impenetrable rainforest. Yet afterward especially the Demerara colony expanded rapidly. Within fifty years the two colonies had grown to include 2,000 whites and over 42,000 enslaved Africans, toiling on some four hundred plantations.⁷ By this point, the Demerara colony had eclipsed Berbice, as well as Essequibo, its former overlord colony, and was rapidly catching up with Suriname, the jewel in the crown of the Dutch plantation empire.⁸

This book seeks to understand how Essequibo and Demerara could survive and expand in this period. It does so by underlining the importance of local improvisation and connections across cultural and imperial borders. In other words, it posits that Essequibo and Demerara were borderless colonies.

There were five remarkable aspects in Essequibo’s and Demerara’s development: a borderland with Venezuela, which allowed enslaved people as well as soldiers to escape thereto; a heavy reliance on Amerindian allies as bounty hunters and as shock troops during revolts; a strong dependence on private initiative and local improvisation; smuggling as the basis for all domains of colonial trade (the import of provisions, the export of cash crops, and the slave trade); and a high number of non-Dutch planters. These characteristics—as the chapters that follow demonstrate—were interrelated, as they were the result of the open nature of the colonies. Individually these elements might be visible in other empires, but together they resulted in a unique mix that made Essequibo and Demerara into borderless societies.

This borderlessness was especially noteworthy because it was manifested in the second half of the eighteenth century. The process of improvised empire building is normally associated with the seventeenth century, as during the eighteenth century European states became more involved and tried to enforce their mercantilist systems. France and Britain tinkered with their exclusive systems by making smuggling centers into free ports and by being strict toward the rest.⁹ Portugal had a period of mercantilist revival, initiated by the Marquis of Pombal, and Spain also tried to get a firmer grip on its vast empire through the Bourbon Reforms.¹⁰ Even the Dutch Republic tried to bind its colonies more strictly to itself by constructing a system of plantation mortgages that tied planters to investors in the metropolis.¹¹ Although these initiatives might be ineffective or even counterproductive (in the case of the Thirteen Colonies), the interesting aspect of Essequibo and Demerara is that the metropolitan authorities did not even try. With the state at a distance, the colonies retained their borderless nature, both in a geographic and in an institutional sense.

The geographic context is visible in map I.1, which shows that the colonies were located at the fringe of the Dutch empire. To the west, they faced the Spanish empire. The borderland separating Essequibo and Venezuela stretched far and wide and was mostly covered in dense rainforest, but rivers like the Cuyuni offered a way of connecting the two European colonies. The Cuyuni was used to facilitate trade but also allowed enslaved Africans to escape from the Dutch to the Spanish side, where they hoped to be declared free.¹² In addition, the borderland was home to a great and diverse number of Amerindian groups several of which became allies of the Dutch. Looking east from Demerara, we find the other Dutch Guiana colonies, Berbice and Suriname. Berbice was similar to Essequibo and Demerara in geographic openness, although it did not expand as quickly, possibly because it attracted fewer foreign settlers. Being run by a private society, it had its own dynamic and still awaits a thorough modern study for the Dutch period.¹³ Suriname, on the other hand, is well studied and serves as a mirror for Essequibo and Demerara throughout this book.

MAP I.1. Essequibo and Demerara, their neighboring colonies and their major connections by the end of the eighteenth century.

The four Dutch colonies of Essequibo, Demerara, Berbice, and Suriname all shared a pattern of development that was dictated by water. In an area covered by forests, the plantations were laid out along the coast or riverbanks, after enslaved people had cleared the grounds. Each plantation then became an island in itself. Building on the Dutch knowledge of reclaiming land through polders, a plantation needed a system of waterworks to make the cultivation of the fertile Guianese soil possible. An estate had a system of front, side, and back dams to keep out water, from the river or sea as well as from the rainforest. Within this enclosed area, canals and trenches for irrigation, drainage, and transport further divided the plantation into smaller plots.¹⁴ Initially, most estates were established upriver, sheltering them from the tide and plundering by roaming privateers. However, after the mid-eighteenth century a movement toward the coast took place, as it was discovered that the soil was more fertile there, and plantations higher up were abandoned.¹⁵

However, here a difference in openness between Suriname and Essequibo and Demerara emerged. In Suriname, as map I.2 shows, several forts were built on strategic locations and plantations were established upriver from them rather than on the coast. This offered protection from outside attacks but also resulted in more oversight by colonial authorities. While Suriname had its fair share of illicit trade, a higher degree of control meant smuggling did not gain the fundamental importance it did in Essequibo and Demerara.¹⁶ In the latter two, the fortifications were fewer in number and often badly placed, as map I.3 shows. Furthermore, new plantations were increasingly established out of sight of them, on the coast, so the colonies became more open and even more difficult for officials to oversee.

MAP I.2. Detail from a 1737 map of Suriname (south-up orientation). Sailing up the Suriname river, one would encounter Fort Nieuw–Amsterdam first, before reaching Fort Zeelandia and the city of Paramaribo. While Suriname’s plantation sector expanded afterward, it did not take the coastal form of Essequibo and Demerara. Source: Algemeene kaart van de Colonie of Provintie van Suriname, Alexander de Lavaux, 1737, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, NG-478.

MAP I.3. Essequibo and Demerara around the turn of the century, with details of their plantation infrastructure and points of control.