Berbice - History

History

Berbice was settled in 1627 by the businessman Abraham van Peere from Flushing, Netherlands, under the suzerainty of the Dutch West India Company. Until 1714, the colony remained the personal possession of Van Peere and his descendants. Little is known about the early years of the colony, other than that it succeeded in repelling an English attack in 1665 in the Second Anglo-Dutch War.

Apparently some disputes arose between the Second Dutch West India Company, which was founded to succeed the First Dutch West India Company that went bankrupt in 1674, and the Van Peere family. This was resolved when on 14 September 1678 a charter was signed which established Berbice as a hereditary fief of the Dutch West India Company, in the possession of the Van Peere family.

In November 1712, Berbice was briefly occupied by the French under Jacques Cassard, as part of the War of the Spanish Succession. The Van Peere family did not want to pay a ransom to the French to free the colony, and in order to not let the colony cede to the French, the brothers Nicolaas and Hendrik van Hoorn, Arnold Dix, Pieter Schuurmans, and Cornelis van Peere, paid the ransom on 24 October 1714, thereby acquiring the colony.

In 1720, the five owners of the colony founded a Society of Berbice, akin to the Society of Suriname which governed the neighbouring colony, to raise more capital for the colony. In the years following, Berbice's economic situation improved, consisting of 12 plantations owned by the society, 93 private plantation along the Berbice River, and 20 plantations along the Canje River.

In 1733, village which had sprung up around Fort Nassau was named New Amsterdam (Dutch: Nieuw Amsterdam). The fort and the village were abandoned in 1785 in favour of Fort Sint Andries, situated more downstream, at the confluence of the Canje River. The new village was again named New Amsterdam, and is still known by that name in contemporary Guyana.

The relatively sound economic situation of the colony was dealt a severe blow when a slave uprising broke out under the leadership of Cuffy in February 1763. The uprising went on until well into 1764, with Cuffy naming himself governor of Berbice. Only with the use of brute force was governor Wolfert Simon van Hoogenheim able to finally suppress the uprising, and restore the colony to Dutch rule.