Commewijne · sugar, cacao, coffee, citrus
Voorburg: 195 people, borderel PL213
Voorburg on the Suriname River, directly beside Fort Nieuw Amsterdam, was laid out around 1750 as garden ground for the fort and then became a sugar estate; at the emancipation of 1863, 195 people were registered there, filed under borderel PL213.
Check this This page is compiled from published sources and has not yet been verified on the ground. If you know a name, a date or an ownership detail better than we do, tell us and we will correct it with the source named.
The Society of Suriname laid the ground out around 1750 as garden plots for the residents of Fort Nieuw-Amsterdam. Governor Jurriaan François de Friderici bought it and turned it into a sugar plantation, 1,500 akkers by 1795. In Sranan the place was called Santigron, not to be confused with the village of that name on the Saramacca River. Ownership ran through the Friderici and Faesch families and the house of Fraissinet en Van Baak to E.F.L. Mollinger in Paramaribo.
On 1 July 1863, 195 people were registered at Voorburg, of whom 188 were compensated for. The borderel was filed by Ernst Frederik Louis Mollinger, plantation administrator in Paramaribo, and carries the number PL213. That number locates the estate in the Nationaal Archief, and Voorburg is one of the few plantations on this site whose borderel number we have been able to trace. The emancipation list names 43 surnames, from Aalse and Bekman through to Zorgvol.
After emancipation the labour at Voorburg came not from Hindustani or Javanese workers but from indentured labourers recruited in Barbados. That West Indian recruitment ran ahead of the British Indian immigration of 1873 and is a far less known branch of the story. The estate went over to cacao, coffee and bananas, tapped rubber in the early twentieth century and was one of the country’s largest citrus producers in the 1950s.
Voorburg was abandoned around 1960. Harold Riedewald bought it in 1978; after his death it passed to the state, which divided it into housing plots. So there is no ruin park and no visiting arrangement: it is built-up land beside Fort Nieuw Amsterdam. A historic photograph of the director’s house does survive in the Tropenmuseum collection.
Frequently asked questions
What is Voorburg’s borderel number?
PL213. That borderel was filed in 1863 by Ernst Frederik Louis Mollinger, plantation administrator in Paramaribo, and lists 195 registered people of whom 188 were compensated for. The number locates the estate in the emancipation papers at the Nationaal Archief.
Did Hindustani or Javanese indentured labourers come to Voorburg?
We found no source saying so. What is documented is that after 1863 the work was taken over by indentured labourers from Barbados, part of the West Indian recruitment stream that preceded the British Indian immigration of 1873.
Can you visit Voorburg?
Not as a plantation. Voorburg was abandoned around 1960, passed via Harold Riedewald to the state after 1978 and has been divided into housing plots. It does sit right beside Fort Nieuw Amsterdam, which is an open-air museum you can visit, about 20 km from Paramaribo.