Groningen (Suriname)

Groningen on the map of Suriname

Groningen ( Sranan Tongo: skropu "Shell " ) is the main town in the district Saramacca in the Republic of Suriname.

Groningen is situated on a Kalkrücken, on the left bank of the Saramacca and has about 3,000 residents. The town is the administrative center of the region and the seat of the District Commissioner. It has a police station, a post office, various social institutions, such as schools, boarding school and sports facilities including the swimming pool Pireng ( Piranha ). Also, here is ever a church of the Evangelical Brodergemeente and the Roman Catholic Church.

History

End of the 18th century was marked by the Government decided surfaces for application of plantations along the Saramacca issue. To protect the plantations from raids by Marrons 1790 a fort was built in the shape of a pentagon of limestone by Governor Jan Gerhard Wichers. He called the small fortress after his birthplace in the Netherlands, Groningen Fort. This facility was part of a main item in military cordon or line of defense.

1791, the leper Voorzorg was applied on the opposite side of the river. After the shores of Saramacca bediedelt were more dense, the colonial administration decided in 1823 to Batavia Station, an abandoned plantation in the then sparsely populated Coppename embarrassed.

There also were plans into the vicinity of the military post to found a city that was to get the name of Columbia. Here is a transit point for products to be created, which should be provided by future plantations on Saramacca. However, due to the isolated location it came around Groningen hardly for application of plantations, as the farming products had to be shipped by sea to Paramaribo. August Kappler, who visited Groningen in 1838 during his military service, described in his book, " Six years in Suriname, etc. " ( 1836-1842 ) his impressions of Columbia as follows: "It's created a number of roads and these are as in Paramaribo with orange trees planted after the main thing to know, houses, one searches in vain. "

Since the military post lost more and more important, the area never quite came to develop at this time.

Boeroes

Since 1818 the slave trade was officially prohibited under penalty of subjects of the Dutch crown. After 1834 slavery was abolished in the British colonies was clear that by the Netherlands this inhuman system was no longer to handle long, even if it was ultimately exercised until 1863.

In the labor migration of poor farmers from the Netherlands to Suriname they saw an opportunity to the colony prior to when the emancipation should come again to save " Downfall". Colonists were with the creation of small farming enterprises improve the economic structure of the country and by the immigration of poor farmers a new middle class should be created by hard working people. Thus should also, problems of unemployment in the Netherlands and the lack of labor in Suriname to be solved.

Mid- 1845 a arrivierten four ships with 384 colonists mainly from the provinces of Gelderland and Groningen, under the leadership of Pastor Arend van den Brandhof in Groningen on Saramacca to begin on the former leper Voorzorg a new life. After the long voyage, then the arrival and the sight must of what they found there have been a shock for the families. Because of poor preparation in Suriname were from the planned 50 emergency housing only a few cabins available. Moreover, the country had not been brought under cultivation, the promised equipment, the household and the sheep were missing. In addition, the sewer system was not intact, so the ground was boggy strong. To make matters worse there was a lack of clean drinking water. Triggered by these bad external conditions in the tropics broke after a short time a typhus epidemic. By the end of 1845 189 of the 384 colonists were already deceased and the survivors moved from Voorzorg to the opposite shore to Groningen, where the climate, but the soil was less fertile healthier. But again, the colonists did not stay long, because Groningen too far from Paramaribo, the sales market, was away for their farming products. Despite the protest of their leader Van den Brandhof left in 1849, more and more colonists Groningen. Most started in the vicinity of Paramaribo, in Kwatta and Uitvlugt with small farms.

As 1853, the attempt of colonization was officially abandoned by farmers from the northern Netherlands, lived in Groningen only the Pastor Van den Brandhof and a small group of widows and orphans. A year later, Van was released the Brandhof honorably and traveled back to the Netherlands. His wife Anna Sophia Pannekoek was like many others in 1845 died. It lies in the cemetery of Groningen and buried by her is in Groningen, the Pannekoekstraße named. Of the 398 colonists arrived in 1853 to a total of 223 people had died and 31 May 1853. The 1853 remaining in Suriname 167 people can be characterized as the ancestors of the population that are known in Suriname as Boeroes.

Period from 1863

1863 the District Commissioner in Groningen has been installed and the District Commissioner took his collection in the former house of the pastor Van den Brandhof. In the following years, the infrastructure was built and Groningen was the administrative center of the district Saramacca. However, since after the abolition of slavery and the already thin seeded plantations on Saramaccafluss einstellten their operation, Groningen was the center of an underdeveloped area. Only in 1901 did change thereto, as the Saramacca channel was equipped with navigation locks, whereby the freight traffic between the Saramacca district and Paramaribo has been significantly improved.

Period from 1960

It was only after 1960, Groningen was really new impetus. This was due to the construction of the so-called east -west connection. This Groningen was connected via a maintained path with Paramaribo, which is also the economic situation in the region improved.

Today Groningen is a small but lively town on the river, which continues to expand steadily, with the center and its Commissioner on the site of the old fort still exudes the atmosphere of the past.