Willoughbyland

Origins

In 1650 Francis, Lord Willoughby of Parham, the royalist governor of Barbados, sent Anthony Rowse with settlers to the Suriname river in Guiana. In 1652 Willoughby visited the colony, and in 1662 he received a royal grant from Charles II. The capital was Torarica, a small town on the river.

Rule and society

Willoughbyland grew quickly to several thousand people, with some fifty sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans. Sephardic Jewish settlers, some from Dutch Brazil, were granted privileges and founded settlements along the river that later became Jodensavanne. The writer Aphra Behn claimed to have lived there and set her novel Oroonoko in the colony. A governor ruled with an assembly of planters.

Decline and legacy

In 1667, during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, a Zeeland fleet under Abraham Crijnssen captured the colony. The Treaty of Breda that year confirmed Dutch possession of Suriname in exchange for England keeping New Netherland, renamed New York. Many English planters left by 1680.