Sugar, Credit, and Fragile Power: The Dutch Colonies of Essequibo and Demerara, 1771–1777
Between 1771 and 1777, the Dutch colonies of Essequibo and Demerara stood at a pivotal crossroads, economically buoyed by an influx of Amsterdam capital, politically reorganised under the influence of the West India Company (WIC), and socially strained under the weight of plantation violence and contested legality. The expansion of Dutch credit marked this period, […]
Jacob Bogman: Maroon Hunter, Cartographer, and Colonial Patriarch
In the humid twilight of the Dutch colonial empire, where the boundaries between civilisation and wilderness blurred like watercolours in tropical rain, Jacob Bogman carved his name into history through violence, ambition, and relentless pursuit of status. His life, spanning the middle decades of the 18th century, illuminates the brutal mechanics of colonial expansion and […]
Newgate Gaol, November 1667
The Great Fire had claimed many things from London: entire parishes, ancient churches, and ten thousand homes. Still, it failed to purge the city’s capacity for human misery. In the charred skeleton of what had once been Newgate gaol, masons worked through the bitter December cold, their breath forming clouds as they raised new walls […]
Who was Eve Leary?
Who was Eve Leary? The name haunts modern Georgetown, attached to police headquarters and military barracks, yet its origins dissolve into the humid mists of colonial memory. In truth, Eve Leary was less a person than a palimpsest—the name given to a Demerara plantation that bore witness to the extraordinary life of Sara Thibou (1711-1780s), […]
When Night Became Optional
London in 1807 was enveloped in darkness every evening, just as it had been since its founding nearly two millennia earlier. By 1830, it glowed through the night—a constellation of steady flames, transforming the rhythm of human life more profoundly than perhaps any technology before or since. Consider what darkness meant before gas lighting. As […]