Willem Suermondt buys a bond tied to two Surinamese plantations, 1780

A manuscript recording Willem Suermondt's auction purchase of a 40,75% share in a plantation bond valued at 1000 guilders. This bond concerned the Surinamese plantations Leverpoel and De Nieuwe Grond, originally issued in 1767. 

Willem Suermondt (1740-1828) was a prominent merchant who later became burgomaster of Rotterdam. Suermondt's acquisition at a price of 407,10 guilders, plus auction costs, illuminates the bustling 18th-century trade in colonial plantation investments, a system where Dutch investors actively bought and sold bonds, often detached from the brutal realities on the ground. 

Plantation Leverpoel (also known as Liverpool or Leeverpoel) was located at Cottica River, producing coffee and cotton. Plantation De Nieuwe Grond, established around 1745 in the Commewijne district (now Indira Gandhiweg), housed 112 to 125 enslaved people who cultivated coffee and cotton. While profitable until 1826, the plantation declined and was abandoned after the abolition of slavery in Suriname in 1863.

This document serves as a stark narrative, revealing how the Dutch financial market was deeply entwined with the forced labour of enslaved people in its colonies.

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