Anton de Kom

Anton de Kom was born on 22 February 1898 in Paramaribo, then the capital of the Dutch colony of Suriname. He was the son of a man born into slavery, and grew up in a society still shaped by the legacy of the plantation economy, in which the memory of slavery and the Maroon communities who had resisted it remained close to everyday life.

In 1921 he travelled to the Netherlands for the first time. He married a Dutch woman, Petronella Borsboom, and became a writer and poet, increasingly convinced that the Dutch knew very little about the history of Suriname and of slavery. He returned to Suriname with his family, where he gave lectures that drew large crowds and were banned by the authorities.

The Surinamese police feared that De Kom would stir up resistance, and in 1933, after unrest, he was arrested and expelled from the colony. He returned to the Netherlands, where he wrote We Slaves of Suriname (Wij slaven van Suriname), published in 1934.

The book was an indictment of racism, exploitation and colonial oppression. It is described as the first history of Suriname written by a Surinamese author, and the first major history of Dutch colonial rule told from the perspective of the people who had endured it. De Kom focused on the violence of slavery, the resilience of the Maroon communities and the countless acts of resistance that had been overlooked.

During the German occupation of the Netherlands, De Kom joined the Dutch Resistance. He was arrested and sent to a concentration camp, and died at the Sandbostel camp in Germany on 24 April 1945, shortly before liberation. A bronze statue of him was unveiled in Amsterdam in 2006, he is included in the Canon of Dutch history, and the University of Suriname bears his name.