John Gabriel Stedman (1744 – 7 March 1797) was a Dutch-British army officer and writer best known for writing The Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam (1796). This narrative covers his experience in Suriname between 1773 and 1777, where he was a soldier in a Dutch regiment deployed to assist colonial troops fighting against groups of maroons.Price, xxi He first recorded his experiences in a personal diary that he later rewrote and expanded into the Narrative. The Narrative was a bestseller of the time and, with its firsthand depictions of slavery and other aspects of colonialism, became an important tool in the fledgling abolitionist movement. When compared with Stedman's personal diary, his published Narrative is a sanitized and romanticized version of Stedman's time in Surinam.
Early life Stedman was born in 1744 in Dendermonde, then in the Austrian Netherlands, to Robert Stedman, a Scotsman and officer in the Dutch Republic's Scots Brigade, and his Franco-Dutch wife, Antoinetta Christina van Ceulen. He lived most of his childhood in the Dutch Republic with his parents, but also spent time with his uncle in Scotland. Stedman described his childhood as being "chock-full of misadventures and abrasive encounters of every description".Price, xiv
Military career
Stedman's military career began at the age of 16. He was commissioned into the Dutch States Army at the rank of ensign, being stationed at several Barrier fortresses. Stedman was eventually promoted to lieutenant.Price, xix Though he later left the Dutch army, in 1771 Stedman rejoined it due to being in overwhelming debt after the death of his father. In 1772, responding to a call for volunteers, he joined an expeditionary corps of 800 men which was destined for the Dutch colony of Surinam. The colony was then engaged in a low-intensity conflict with groups of maroons, former slaves who had escaped slavery and established independent communities on the colonial frontier. Promoted to brevet captain, he left for Surinam onboard the Dutch States Navy frigate Zeelust on 24 December 1772.
Upon arriving in the colony, Stedman was placed under the direct command of Colonel Louis-Henri Fourgeoud, the commander of the newly-arrived corps. The relationship between the two men was acrimonious: Fourgeoud often dined on gourmet meats, wine and other delicacies while his troops subsisted on meager and often spoiled rations.Price, lv He treated Stedman cruelly, inventing tasks for him to complete and taking away his ammunition. Stedman believed that Fourgeoud neglected his duties as an officer, ignoring the well-being of his troops, and only retained his rank through monetary bribes. Regarding Fourgeoud's poor leadership, Stedman was uncompromising: "I solemnly declare to have still omitted many other calamities that we suffered".Price, 123 Stedman's difficulties were compounded by the fact that his corps, which was trained for the battlefields of Europe, was unprepared to fight against the unfamiliar guerrilla tactics of the maroons.
On 10 August 1775, shortly after falling ill, Stedman wrote Fourgeoud a letter requesting both a furlough to regain health and six months' military pay that was owed to him. Fourgeoud refused his request twice, although he granted similar requests to other officers. Stedman later wrote that "This so incensed me that I not only wished him in Hell, but myself also, to have the satisfaction of seeing him burn".Price, 155 In the campaign against the Maroons, Stedman fought alongside the newly-formed Free Negro Corps, which consisted of Black slaves purchased from their enslavers. Soldiers of the unit were promised their freedom, a house with a garden plot and pay in return for fighting against the maroons.Price, xx The unit originally numbered 116 men, but 190 more were purchased and joined its ranks after the first group displayed courage and perseverance in combat.
Stedman served in seven campaigns in the forests of Surinam, each averaging three months.Price, xxii He only fought in one battle, which took place in 1774 and concluded with the capture of the maroon village of Gado Saby. A portrayal of the battle was included in the frontispiece of Stedman's Narrative, which depicted him standing over a dead maroon in the foreground and Gado Saby burning in the distance.Price, xxiv Throughout these campaigns, Dutch troops were frequently ambushed by maroons and tropical diseases spread rapidly, resulting in an enormous loss of troops. These losses were so great that 830 fresh troops were sent from the Dutch Republic in 1775 to supplement the original 800 men. The campaigns were riddled with sickness, anger, fatigue and death. Stedman observed the horrors of battle and the cat-and-mouse antics of both sides that resulted in merely pushing the fighting across Surinam instead of quelling it.
Surinam
Surinam was first colonized by the governor of Barbados in the 1650s, then captured by the Dutch soon after, who quickly began to establish sugar plantations. In 1683 Surinam came under control of the Dutch West India Company. The colony developed an agricultural economy highly dependent on African slavery.
Two rivers were central to the colonies: the Orinoco and the Amazon. At the time of Stedman's deployment, the Portuguese lived along the river Amazon and the Spanish along the river Orinoco. Dutch colonists were spread along the seaside and the French lived in a small settlement known as Cayenne.Price, 20
Stedman's Narrative The Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam is an autobiographical account of Stedman's experiences in Surinam from the year 1773 through 1777. While Stedman kept a diary of his time in Surinam, which is held by the University of Minnesota Libraries, the Narrative manuscript wasn't composed until ten years after his return to Europe. In the Narrative manuscript, Stedman vividly describes the landscapes of Suriname, paying great attention to flora, fauna, and the social habits of indigenous, free and enslaved Africans, and European colonists in Suriname. His observations of life in the colony encompass the different cultures present at the time: Dutch, Scottish, native, African, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. Stedman also takes time to describe the day-to-day life in the colony.
The first pages of the Narrative record Stedman's voyage to Surinam. He spends his days reading on the deck of the Boreas, attempting to avoid those sick from the turbulent sea.Price, 21 The Boreas was accompanied by another ship the Weftellingwerf and three new frigate built transports. Stedman first arrives in Surinam on 2 February 1773. Upon his arrival in Surinam, Stedman and the troops are met by residents of the fortress Amsterdam, along the Surinam River. Here, Stedman gives his first description of the landscape of Surinam.Price, 22 According to Stedman, the land abounded with delicious smells – lemon, orange, and shaddocks. The natives, dressed in loincloths, were somewhat shocking to Stedman at first, and he described them as "bargemen as naked as when they were born."Price, 17
Parts of the Narrative continue to focus on descriptions of Surinam's natural environments. Stedman writes that parts of Surinam are mountainous, dry, and barren, but much of the land is ripe and fertile, enjoying a year-long growing season, with rains and a warm climate. He notes that in some parts the land is low and marshy, and crops are grown with a "flooding" method of irrigation similar to that used in ancient Egypt. Stedman also describes Surinam as having large uncultivated areas; there are immense forests, mountains (some with valuable minerals), deep marsh, swamps, and even large savanna areas. Some areas of the coast are inaccessible, with navigational obstructions such as rocks, riverbanks, quicksand, and bogs.Price, 23
In his Narrative, Stedman writes about the contrast between the beauty of the colony and his first taste of the violence and cruelty endemic there. One of his first observations involves the torture of a nearly naked enslaved woman, chained to an iron weight. His narrative describes the woman receiving 200 lashes and carrying the weight for a month as a result of her inability to fulfill a task to which she was assigned.
Over the course of his Narrative, Stedman relays several stories regarding the state of the slaves and the horrors to which they are subjected. In one story detailed in his Narrative, involving a group sailing by boat, an enslaved mother was ordered by her mistress to hand over her crying baby. The mistress then threw the baby into the river, drowning it. The mother jumped into the river after her baby, whose body was recovered by fellow slaves. The mother later received 200 lashes for her defiant behavior. In another story, a small boy shoots himself in the head to escape flogging. In yet another, a man is completely broken on the rack and left for days to suffer until he died.Price; 106, 231
Publication history
Stedman's Narrative was published by Joseph Johnson, a radical figure who received criticism for the types of books he sold. In the 1790s, more than 50 percent of them were political, including Stedman's Narrative. The books he published supported the rights of slaves, Jews, women, prisoners and other oppressed peoples around the world. Johnson was an active member of the Society for Constitutional Information, an organization attempting to reform Parliament. He was condemned for the support and publication of writers who voiced liberal opinions, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine.
Stedman's Narrative became a major literary success. It was translated into French, German, Dutch, Italian, and Swedish, and was eventually published in more than twenty-five different editions, including several abolitionist tracts focused on Joanna. Stedman was highly acclaimed for his insights on the slave trade and his Narrative was embraced by the abolitionist cause.Davis, 1 Paradoxically, it also became the handbook for counter-insurgency tactics in the tropics.Lang, 185
It took almost two centuries for a critical edition to be published. The unabridged critical edition, edited by Richard and Sally Price, was published in 1988. An abridged edition published in 1992 by Price and Price remains in print, as well as two editions published in 1962 and 1966 by the renowned antiquarian Stanbury Thompson. Of Thompson's 1962 and 1966 editions, Price and Price write, "Thompson's work confused as much as it elucidated. Examination of the original notebooks and papers that Thompson had used (which are now in the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota) revealed that, not only had he inserted his own commentary into that of Stedman...but he had changed dates and spellings, misread and incorrectly transcribed a large number of words". A facsimile edition of the 1988 unabridged critical edition of Stedman's original 1790 manuscript, edited by Richard and Sally Price, was published in 2010 by iUniverse and in 2016 by Open Road. This latter edition remains available.
Blake's illustrations