Rice and Memory in the Age of Enslavement: Atlantic Passages to Suriname

This article examines the geographical corridors for the establishment of rice in seventeenth-century Dutch Guiana. One corridor of introduction is associated with the expulsion of Dutch planters from Brazil in 1644, whose slaves reestablished longstanding subsistence preferences with their exodus to the colony. Another corridor links its introduction to the African Gold Coast, where rice developed as a commodity during the 1600s. The oral histories of maroons offer an additional perspective on rice beginnings in South America, attributing its diffusion to the deliberate efforts of enslaved women.