Map of the campaigns of Louis-Henry Fourgeoud
Anoniem / Anonymous
Titel Leupe: Algemeene kaart van de Colonie op Provincie Suriname, met de rivieren en districten van dien, mitsgaaders de coursen en marschen der gedaane expeditien, tot opsporing der gerebelleerde Slaven door de troepes van den Staat, onder de orders van den Colonel Fourgeoud.
The Marrons were former enslaved people who had fled the plantations and formed new communities in the Surinamese interior. As their numbers swelled in the course of the 18th century, not least because they tended to raid plantations and then incorporate the slaves there into their own ranks, they became an increasing threat to the plantation system. In the 1760s, the colonial government hoped to improve the situation by making peace treaties with the Auka, Saramacca and Matawai. This hope was subsequently proven idle by the Boni Wars in the 1770s. The pursuit of the Marrons as well as the contacts with those groups the colonial government made peace with, did have the effect that increasingly large parts of the thusfar unexplored Surinamese interior were charted.
This map, for which the work of Alexander de Lavaux provided the basis, shows the campaigns of the expeditionary force from the Republic under the command of the Swiss colonel Louis-Henry Fourgeoud which scoured the forests of Surinam from 1773 to 1778. In this period, 1,100 soldiers in the service of the States-General were dispatched to Surinam to assist in the conflict with the Boni Marrons. Although the title of the map suggests otherwise, the troops already present in Surinam also participated in these campaigns.
Of overriding importance in the expulsion of the Boni from Surinam was the discovery and destruction of their large villages north of the Coermotibo River and Wane Creek, marked on the map by the letters (K), (L), (N) and (O). The role played in this by the local soldiers was considerable. The action of 20 August 1775 against the villages marked by the letter (L) was a combined action of the States troops, soldiers in the service of the Society of Surinam and men from the Free Corps, each with a column a hundred man strong. The discovery and destruction of the villages on the map marked by the letters (K) and (N) in 1774 and 1776 was accomplished by the Free Corps alone and unassisted.
North is below.
Scale-bar of eight miles = [approximately 1 : 322,000].
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