Stedman, John G. (1744–1779)

The military officer and author John G. Stedman participated during the 1770s in the Suriname colonial counterinsurgency campaigns against runaway slaves (Maroons). The son of a Scottish father who was an officer of the Scottish brigade within the Dutch army, at age twenty-nine Stedman joined an expedition to suppress a rebellion of Maroons in eastern Suriname (formerly Dutch Guiana). Five hundred Maroons, headed by the legendary guerrilla leader Boni, had resisted the attacks of the planters and their army of mercenaries and slave soldiers. After the arrival of 1,200 European enforcements in 1773 the colonial army took the initiative. After a lengthy guerrilla war of more than four years, the Boni-Maroons fled in 1777 to French Guiana. Afterwards, a kind of agreement was reached, paving the way for a series of peace agreement with the various Maroon clans.

Stedman kept a diary and painted more than 100 watercolor sketches during the antiguerrilla campaign. The diary was transformed into his memoirs, published to success—after a heavy redrafting by his editor—in 1796 with sixteen engravings by William Blake. In 1988 the American anthropologists Richard and Sally Price republished the original version of Stedman's manuscript. Stedman's memoirs are highly critical of the Surinamese administration: Although he was not an abolitionist, he criticized the slavery system considerably and pleaded for reforms.

See alsoMaroons (Cimarrones); Suriname and the Dutch in the Caribbean.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Stedman, John Gabriel. Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam. Edited by Richared Price and Sally Price. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.

Hoogbergen, Wim. The Boni-Maroon Wars in Suriname. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991.

                                    Dirk Kruijt