The Colonial State in the Caribbean: Structural Analysis and Changing Elite Networks in Suriname, 1650–1920 (review)

One of the consequences of decolonization upon the bibliography of Caribbean Studies was a notable decline in the attention given by Caribbean authors to the subject of colonialism. As new countries were created in this region from the ruins of colonialism the research concerns in the social sciences gradually but steadily turned towards “nation-building” and the host of problems the new nations faced during the beginning years of the second postwar of the twentieth century. This is particularly true in the case of Suriname. While there is a fairly large body of literature written by Dutch and other historians about the long period that extends from the initial years of Dutch colonization in the seventeenth century to the postcolonial period in Suriname’s history, it has taken many years for its own intellectuals to form a historiographical body of their own. That is why Marten Schalkwijk’s book, The Colonial State in the Caribbean: Structural Analysis and Changing Elite Networks in Suriname, 1650–1920, is a welcome addition to the bibliography on historical colonialism in the Caribbean in general, and to Suriname’s in particular.

The book is the end result of the research made by Marten Schalkwijk for his doctoral dissertation, which now sees the light in this edition from the Dutch publishing house Amrit/Ninsee, based on The Hague, Netherlands. Schalkwijk who is Professor of Social Sciences at the Anton de Kom Universiteit van Suriname in Paramaribo, is a leading historian of Suriname who is actively working with students at his institution to revisit many chapters of the history of Suriname.

The book takes the reader from the beginning of Dutch colonization during the mid-seventeenth century to the critical years of the 1920s. That decade culminated a period of crisis that had begun during the early years of twentieth century, which triggered changes in the Colonial state structure of the Dutch Guiana, particularly in its coercive component. The author is principally concerned with two research areas. One is related the development of a theoretical framework for understanding the colonial State in Caribbean history, particularly its Surinamese chapter. This task leads the author into a critical incursion of the literature in the social sciences dealing with the different types of colonial enterprises in this region. The other is bringing to light the particularities of Suriname as a distinctive case study of colonialism in the Caribbean. The book has ten chapters where the author compares and contrasts colonial State formations, particularly the British and the French, and explores the evolution of the economy and society in Suriname, its particular ethnic configuration, the religious ingredient in the colonial society, and the networks formed by elites in Suriname during the period of scrutiny.

From the beginning, the author makes clear his intent of providing new insights about the colonial history of Suriname, discussing the theoretical and historiographical contribution made by others, but providing his own vision of historical events as a native intellectual that has lived the transition from Dutch colonial rule to the establishment of an independent State in 1975. Thus, beyond the careful historical research and sociological analysis that is a mark of the book, there is also a continuous reflection by the author of the impact of Dutch colonial rule upon State formation in post-colonial Suriname that is at times explicit and sometimes embedded in the narrative itself.

The author attempts a comparative historical analysis of the different manifestations of colonial rule in the Caribbean in order understand colonialism beyond a single case study. He therefore draws from the British experience with Crown Colony government and the centralized policies of French colonial rule in the Caribbean. However, his central attention is placed in the Dutch Guiana itself, where the relationship between the State, the economy and the society took an exceptionally particular form. The Dutch, he argues, was not...