Suriname

The Guianas were home to Arawak and Carib peoples when Europeans arrived. After brief English settlement, the territory passed to the Dutch in 1667 (traded, in effect, for New Amsterdam — later New York). The Dutch built a brutal sugar-, coffee-, and cotton-plantation economy worked by enslaved Africans, whose death rate was so high that constant new arrivals were needed. Many escaped into the forest and formed independent Maroon societies — the Ndyuka, Saramaka, and others — who fought the colony to a standstill and won treaties recognising their autonomy in the 1760s.

Slavery was abolished in 1863, though with a further ten years of forced "apprenticeship". To replace plantation labour the Dutch brought indentured workers from British India (from 1873) and from Java in the Netherlands East Indies (from 1890), which is why Suriname today has large Hindustani and Javanese populations.

Suriname became independent from the Netherlands in 1975; around a third of the population emigrated to the Netherlands around independence and after. A 1980 military coup brought Dési Bouterse to power; the 1982 "December murders" of 15 opponents and a 1986–92 interior war against Maroon rebels marked the era. Democracy returned in the 1990s, but Bouterse won the presidency in 2010 and 2015 even as he was convicted, in 2019, over the December murders. He lost power in 2020 and died in 2024 while a fugitive. Offshore oil discoveries now promise a major economic shift.

Suriname is one of the world's most ethnically and religiously plural societies, and it works at coexistence: Hindu temples, mosques, synagogues, and churches stand close together in Paramaribo, and the public holiday calendar covers Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Javanese, and Chinese festivals plus Keti Koti, the commemoration of emancipation.

The main groups are Hindustani (of Indian descent), Maroons, Creoles (of mixed African-European descent), Javanese, Indigenous peoples, and Chinese, each retaining language, faith, and food. Sranan Tongo, the creole lingua franca, is the common ground, and switi Sranan — "sweet Suriname" — expresses a shared attachment to the place.

Maroon communities in the interior maintain distinct governance, spiritual practice, art (especially woodcarving and textile design), and drumming and dance traditions with deep West and Central African roots.

Around 620,000 people live in Suriname, roughly half of them in greater Paramaribo along the Suriname River; the rest are scattered along the coastal strip and thinly through the forest interior. More Surinamese-descended people live in the Netherlands than in Suriname itself, and family ties and money flow constantly between the two.

The economy has rested on gold (both large mines and informal pork-knocker digging), bauxite (now wound down), oil, agriculture (rice, bananas), and forestry, with public-sector jobs important in Paramaribo. Currency devaluations and inflation have squeezed households; the coming offshore oil is widely hoped to change the picture.

Life is unhurried and tropical, centred on family, faith community, and food, with the forest and its rivers never far away.

Surinamese food is a genuine fusion. From the Javanese come nasi goreng, bami, saoto soup, and the petjil peanut-vegetable dish, sold at warungs. From the Hindustani come roti — a flatbread served with curried chicken, potato, long beans, and egg — as well as dhal, and bara fritters. Creole cooking brings pom (a baked dish of grated pomtajer root and chicken), moksi alesi (rice with beans and salt meat), peanut soup, and cassava bread.

Chinese restaurants and takeaways are everywhere, and street stalls sell telo (fried cassava with salt fish), bakabana (fried plantain with peanut sauce), and grilled skewers. Fresh tropical fruit and juices are abundant.

Borgoe and Black Cat rum, Parbo beer, and dawet (a sweet Javanese coconut-milk drink) are the local staples, alongside strong coffee and ginger beer.

Paramaribo's historic centre is the main urban sight: a compact grid of white wooden Dutch colonial buildings, the huge timber-built Saint Peter and Paul Cathedral, Fort Zeelandia on the river, and the neighbouring mosque and synagogue, all UNESCO-listed. The Palmentuin palm garden and the riverside waterfront complete it.

The overwhelming attraction is the rainforest, which covers more than 90 per cent of the country and is among the most intact on Earth. The Central Suriname Nature Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, protects a vast block of pristine forest around the Coppename headwaters and the granite dome of the Voltzberg. Closer to the capital, Brownsberg Nature Park overlooks the Brokopondo reservoir, and jungle lodges on the Upper Suriname River are run with Saramaka Maroon communities.

On the coast, the Galibi reserve near the French Guiana border is a major nesting site for leatherback and green turtles, and the wetlands and old plantations of the Commewijne district, reached by bicycle and boat, make an easy trip from Paramaribo.