General map of plantations around the Berbice River

Title Leupe: Kaart van de Colonie de Berbice gelegen in Bats. Guinea in America, tusschen de Colonien van Demerarie en van Suriname, gedeeltelijk op nieuw gemeeten door de Landmeeters Wiedeman van de Berbice en Roelofs van Suriname enz.

By the late eighteenth century, a gradual economic shift occurred to the areas in the lower reaches of the Berbice river and on the adjacent coast.

In the interim years of British rule after 1796, the plantation acreage downriver and on the coast had extended spectacularly, as can be clearly seen on the map.

The vertical annotation left on the map tells the land surveyor drifted up and down the Berbice river and to survey plantations, forests, savannahs and 'Indian dwellings'.

His conclusion and advice on new usage of the river banks are mentioned in this annotation.

Colours indicate crops: yellow land means cotton is cultivated, brown ones indicate coffee, pink ones sugar, green ones wood and blue lots are gardens.

The backside of the map (VEL1577B) gives an extensive index of the plantations which mentions designations, extents, owners and crops.

After the British occupation of Surinam in 1799, the border between the colonies of Surinam and Berbice was finally fixed on the Corentyne in January 1800, as is shown on the small map on the top left.

The two planned canals indicate the government intends to cultivate new lands at the coast rather than the hinterland.

North is lower right.

Several similar copies of this map, VEL1577A1-4 and VEL1577B1-4, are kept in the Dutch National Archive but have not been separately included in this database.

Scale-bar of 4000 Rhineland rods = 57 ‘strepen’.