Groningen (Suriname)
| Groningen | ||
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Coordinates: 5 ° 47 ′ N , 55 ° 28 ′ W Groningen on the map of Suriname
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| Basic data | ||
| Country | Suriname | |
| District | Saramacca | |
| City foundation | 1790 | |
| Residents | 2818 (2012) | |
| Detailed data | ||
| Waters | Saramacca | |
| Time zone | UTC −3 | |
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Groningen ( Sranan Tongo : skropu "shell") is the main town in the Saramacca district in the Republic of Suriname .
Groningen is located on a limestone ridge on the left bank of the Saramacca and has 2818 inhabitants (Census 2012). The place is the administrative center of the region and the seat of the district commissioner. It has a police station, a post office, various social facilities such as schools, boarding schools and sports facilities including the Pireng ( Piranha ) swimming pool . In addition, there is a church of the Evangelical Broedergemeente and the Roman Catholic Church .
history
At the end of the 18th century, the government decided to issue land for the creation of plantations along the Saramacca. To protect the plantations from attacks by Marrons , a fort in the shape of a pentagon made of shell limestone was built in 1790 by Governor Jan Gerhard Wichers . He named the small fortress Fort Groningen after his birthplace in the Netherlands . As the main post, this facility was part of a military cordon , i.e. a line of defense.
In 1791 the Voorzorg leprosy station was built on the opposite side of the river . After the banks of the Saramacca became more and more densely populated, the colonial administration decided in 1823 to move the station to Batavia , an abandoned plantation on the then hardly inhabited Coppename .
There were also plans to found a town in the vicinity of the military post that was to be named Columbia . A transshipment point for products to be delivered from the future plantations on Saramacca was to be created here. Due to its isolated location, however, there was hardly any plantation around Groningen, as the agricultural products had to be shipped by sea to Paramaribo . August Kappler , who visited Groningen during his military service in 1838, described his impressions of Columbia as follows in his book “Six Years in Suriname etc.” (1836–1842) : “There are some roads and these are planted with orange trees like in Paramaribo One looks in vain for the main thing to know about houses. "
Since the military post also lost its importance, the area never really developed during this time.
Boeroes
Since 1818 the slave trade was officially prohibited as a punishment for subjects of the Dutch crown. After slavery was abolished in the English colonies in 1834 , it became clear that the Netherlands could no longer handle this inhuman system, even if it was ultimately practiced until 1863.
The labor migration of poor peasants from the Netherlands to Suriname was seen as an opportunity to save the colony from “doom” if emancipation did occur. Colonists would have to improve the economic structure of the country with the creation of small farms, and a new middle class of hard-working people would be created through the immigration of poor farmers. It would also solve the problems of unemployment in the Netherlands and those of the labor shortage in Suriname.
In mid-1845 four ships with a total of 384 colonists, mainly from the provinces of Gelderland and Groningen , under the leadership of Pastor Arend van den Brandhof, reached Groningen am Saramacca to start a new life at the former leprosy station Voorzorg . After the long sea voyage, the arrival and the sight of what they found there must have been a shock to the families. Because of the poor preparation in Suriname, only a few huts of the planned 50 emergency apartments were available. In addition, the land had not been reclaimed, the promised equipment, household items and small livestock were missing. In addition, the sewage system was not intact, which made the ground very muddy. To make matters worse, there was a lack of clean drinking water. Triggered by these poor external conditions in the tropics, a typhus epidemic broke out after a short time . By the end of 1845 189 of the 384 colonists had died, and the survivors had moved from Voorzorg to the opposite bank to Groningen, where the climate was healthier but the soil was less fertile. But the colonists didn't stay long here either, as Groningen was too far away from Paramaribo, the market for their agricultural products. Despite the protests of their leader Van den Brandhof, more and more colonists left Groningen from 1849 onwards. Most of them started out on small farms in the vicinity of Paramaribo, in Kwatta and Uitvlugt .
When the attempt to colonize farmers from the Northern Netherlands was officially abandoned in 1853, only the pastor Van den Brandhof and a small group of widows and orphans lived in Groningen . A year later, Van den Brandhof was honorably discharged and traveled back to the Netherlands. Like many others, his wife Anna Sophia Pannekoek had died in 1845. She is buried in the Groningen cemetery, and Pannekoekstrasse is named after her in Groningen. Of the 398 colonists who had arrived by 1853, a total of 223 had died by May 31, 1853. The 167 people who remained in Suriname in 1853 can be characterized as the first parents of the population group known in Suriname as Boeroes .
Period from 1863
In 1863 the district commissioner was installed in Groningen, and the district commissioner moved into the former house of Pastor Van den Brandhof. In the years that followed, the appropriate infrastructure was built and Groningen became the administrative center of the Saramacca district. Since, however, after the abolition of slavery, the already sparsely sown plantations on the Saramacca River also ceased operations, Groningen was the center of a poorly developed area. This did not change until 1901, when the Saramacca Canal was equipped with locks , which significantly improved freight traffic between the Saramacca district and Paramaribo.
Period from 1960
It was only after 1960 that Groningen really received new impulses. This was related to the construction of the so-called east-west connection. This connected Groningen to Paramaribo via a developed road, which also improved the region's economic situation.
Today Groningen is a small but lively place on the river, which is constantly expanding, whereby the center with its commissariat on the place of the old fortress still exudes the flair of the past.
literature
- CFA Bruijning and J. Voorhoeve (main editors): Encyclopedie van Suriname , Elsevier , Amsterdam u. Brussel 1977, ISBN 90-10-01842-3 , p. 259.
