Countries of the World (The Americas) - Suriname
Tenth country from the Western Hemisphere in my geography series.
Section I - Basic Info on Suriname
Official Name: Republic of Suriname
Population: 653,605 (165th largest in the world, 26th largest in the Americas)
Area/Size: 63,251 square miles (a little smaller than Wisconsin)
Capital: Paramaribo (240,000 - sister city of Miami and Antwerp, Belgium)
Spoken Languages: Dutch (official), English, Sranang Tongo
Religions: Catholic (34%), Hindu (19%), Muslim (16%), Protestant (12%)
Life Expectancy: 73.0 years Internet Access Rate: 78.4%
Per Capita Income: $22,067 Unemployment: 7.3%
What do they Export?: Passenger and Cargo Ships, Recreational Boats, Wheat Flours
Export Partners: Switzerland (49%), UAE (28%), Guyana (5%), U.S. (4%)
Import Partners: U.S. (22%), China (12%), Netherlands (11%), Trinidad and Tobago (9%)
Government Type: Presidential republic (last election May 2025, peaceful transitions of power only the past few years)
Section II - Images of Suriname
5 Key Dates/Periods in Suriname's History
I'm going to keep these Caribbean island histories fairly simple since so much of the history is going to be very similar until post-World War II other than the colonial empire it was once part of. In this case, the fact that Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is still part of the British Commonwealth (rather than breaking away like the U.S. and others) minimizes the need for a lot of connections to British colonial history.
c. 3000 BC - 1667 AD - Indigenous settlement of Suriname dates back to 3,000 BC. The largest tribes were the Lokono, a nomadic coastal tribe that subsisted on hunting, foraging and fishing. The Carib also settled in the area and conquered the Lokono by using their superior sailing ships. While the larger Lokono and Carib tribes lived along the coast and savanna, smaller groups of indigenous people lived in the inland rainforest, such as the Akurio, Trió, Warao, and Wayana. Beginning in the 16th century, French, Spanish and English explorers visited the area. A century later, Dutch and English settlers attempted to establish plantation colonies along the many rivers in the fertile Guiana plains. The earliest documented colony in Guiana was an English settlement named Marshall's Creek along the Suriname River. After that, there was another short-lived English colony called Surinam that lasted from 1650 to 1667. Also, Jews began to settle there in the 17th century after their expulsion from Spain and Portugal.
1667 - 1860 - Disputes arose between the Dutch and the English for control of this territory. In 1667, during negotiations leading to the Treaty of Breda after the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch decided to keep the small plantation colony of Surinam they had gained from the English. In return the English kept New Amsterdam in North America and renamed it New York. In 1683, the Society of Suriname was chartered to manage and defend the newly-acquired colony. The planters of the colony relied heavily on African slaves to cultivate, harvest and process the commodity crops of coffee, cocoa, sugar cane and cotton plantations along the rivers. Approximately 300,000 enslaved Africans were taken to Suriname during the transatlantic slave trade, from the mid-1600s to the early 1800s. The treatment of slaves was notoriously brutal even by the standards of the time - historian C. R. Boxer wrote that "man's inhumanity to man just about reached its limits in Surinam" - and many slaves escaped plantations. With the help of the native South Americans living in the adjoining rain forests, runaway African slaves established a new and unique culture in the interior that was highly successful in its own right. They were known collectively in English as Maroons, and often raided plantations to recruit new members from the enslaved and capture women, as well as to acquire weapons, food, and supplies, escaping into the rainforest afterward. In the 18th century, the European colonial authorities granted the Maroons sovereign status and trade rights in their inland territories in an attempt to end hostilities.
1860 - 1940 - The Netherlands abolished slavery in Suriname in 1863, under a gradual process that required slaves to work on plantations for 10 transition years for minimal pay, which was considered as partial compensation for their masters. After that transition period expired in 1873, most freedmen largely abandoned the plantations where they had worked for several generations in favor of the capital city, Paramaribo. Some of them were able to purchase the plantations they worked on, especially in the district of Para and Coronie, and their descendants still live on those grounds today. As a plantation colony, Suriname had an economy dependent on labor-intensive commodity crops. To make up for a shortage of labor after the end of slavery, the Dutch recruited and transported contract or indentured laborers from the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia) and India. In addition, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, small numbers of laborers, mostly men, were recruited from China and the Middle East. Although Suriname's population remains relatively small, because of this complex colonization pattern it is one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse countries in the world.
1940 - 1975 - During World War II under an agreement with the Netherlands government-in-exile, the United States sent 2,000 soldiers to Suriname to protect the bauxite mines to support the Allies' war effort. In 1954, Suriname became one of the constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, along with the Netherlands Antilles and the Netherlands. In this construction, the Netherlands retained control of its defense and foreign affairs. In 1974, the local government started negotiations with the Dutch government leading towards full independence; in contrast to Indonesia's earlier war for independence from the Netherlands, the path toward Suriname's independence had been an initiative of the then left-wing Dutch government. In the years leading up to independence, nearly one-third of the population of Suriname emigrated to the Netherlands, amidst concern that the new country would fare worse under independence than it had as a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Independence was granted in Nov 1975, but a large part of Suriname's economy for the first decade following independence was fueled by foreign aid provided by the Dutch government.
1975 - present - The first president of the country was Johan Ferrier, the former governor, but the new government sank into ethnic conflict and political corruption soon after independence, with politicians using Dutch aid money for partisan purposes. In Feb 1980 a military coup led by Dési Bouterse overthrew the government and established a dictatorship, leading to a decade of civil war and counter-coup attempts. Due to the civil war, more than 10,000 Surinamese, mostly Maroons, fled to French Guiana in the late 1980s. National elections were held in 1987, but the National Assembly adopted a new constitution that allowed Bouterse to remain in charge of the army. In 2010 Bouterse returned to power when he was elected as the president of Suriname, but over the next 10 years (while president) he was tried multiple times for human rights violations and murders committed during the 1980s civil war, and finally convicted. In the late 2000s, the discovery, exploration and exploitation of oil and gold has contributed substantially to Suriname's economic independence. In particular, China's cooperation with Suriname has included a number of large-scale infrastructure projects, including port rehabilitation and road construction, and led to close ties between the two countries.
Other Non-Political Issues
Section III - Issues of Suriname
General Information on Suriname:
“Economy of Suriname", The World Bank, Jan 2026, https://data360.worldbank.org/en/economy/SUR
“Suriname", One World Nations Online, Jan 2025, https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/suriname.htm
“Suriname", Wikipedia, Aug 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suriname or https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suriname
"Suriname Facts for Kids (Facts, Food, Animals and Geography)", Kids World Travel Guide, Jul 2026, https://www.kids-world-travel-guide.com/suriname-facts.html
"Suriname Explained in 9 Minutes: History, Culture, People, and Mind Blowing Destinations" (video), Opentiera, Nov 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUriG4eWHkY
"Suriname: The Hidden Treasure of South America" (official tourism site), Suriname Ministry of Transport, Communications and Tourism, 2026, https://suriname.travel/
History/Current Events Links on Suriname:
“Desi Bouterse, dictator convicted of murder who ruled Suriname, dies at 79" (with an extensive overview of his rule in Suriname), Voice of America and the Associated Press, Dec 2024, https://www.voanews.com/a/desi-bouterse-dictator-convicted-of-murder-who-ruled-suriname-dies-at-79/7913985.html
"How Suriname and Guyana plan to share oil and gas wealth with citizens (Suriname will distribute revenues from new oil and gas discoveries among its more than 600,000 citizens)", Al-Jazeera, Nov 2024, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/30/how-suriname-and-guyana-plan-to-share-oil-and-gas-wealth-with-citizens
"Suriname elects first female president amid economic uncertainty", Al-Jazeera, Jul 2025, https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/7/7/suriname-elects-first-female-president-amid-economic-uncertainty
"Suriname pledges to shield 90% of forests, far beyond global conservation goal", Associated Press (AP) News, Sep 2025, https://apnews.com/article/suriname-forest-protection-carbon-sink-climate-cop30-7303ab7c784e86e3918168b8e7f60e81
“Suriname’s Window of Opportunity: Turning Resource Wealth into Inclusive Growth" (blog article), Inter-American Development Bank Group, Jun 2026, https://www.iadb.org/en/blog/economic-analysis/surinames-window-opportunity-turning-resource-wealth-inclusive-growth
"Why Big Oil is opening new frontiers" (video w/transcript), Financial Times (U.K.), May 2026, https://www.ft.com/video/2fbaa2f4-55e8-40e5-af25-d6a743d5a78c
Other Interesting Links Related To Suriname:
"A Killer Within Easy Reach (Pesticides are a leading means of suicide. The tiny nation of Suriname is working to restrict access to one of the most common and dangerous ones)", New York Times, Jun 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/10/health/paraquat-pesticides-suicide-suriname.html
"Six Degrees of Suriname", ARAMCO World, Jul/Aug 2015, https://www.aramcoworld.com/articles/2015/six-degrees-of-suriname
"Surinamese Cuisine: A Fusion of Caribbean, African, and Asian Flavors", Remitly, Mar 2026, https://www.remitly.com/blog/en-ca/food/surinamese-cuisine/
"Suriname Travel Now Heats Up as Paramaribo Heritage and Food Culture Draw Global Travellers", Travel and Tour World, Aug 2026, https://www.travelandtourworld.com/news/article/ujilvjj86tmo/
“Suriname World Heritage Sites", United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 2026, https://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/sr
"Where Jaguars Are ‘Killed to Order’ for the Illegal Trade: Enterprising Chinese immigrants in Suriname have set up networks to hunt jaguars, process their bodies, and smuggle the products to China", National Geographic, Sep 2018, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wildlife-watch-news-jaguar-poaching-trafficking-suriname
Section IV - Resources About Suriname
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