Left Behind: Subjecthood, Nationality, and the Status of Jews after the Loss of English Surinam

Abstract

AbstractFollowing the loss of Surinam to the Netherlands in 1667, the English Crown attempted to evacuate those of its subjects living in the colony under Dutch rule. In doing so, its representatives laid claim to members of the Jewish population, who Surinam's English governors had previously declared to be “considered as English-born.” In the resulting dispute between the English and Dutch over who could be removed, Crown officials embraced articulations of subjecthood forged in the colony that differed from metropolitan norms. In asserting that Surinam's Jews remained subjects of the king, and by implying that they would continue to do so once evacuated, the English delegation departed from the Crown's frequent rejection of the wider efficacy of colonial naturalization. Surinam's Dutch governor, meanwhile, dismissed the assertion that members of the “Hebrew nation” could be subjects of an English king, arguing that subjecthood and nationality were identical and that only those of the English nation could be removed. The dispute between the English and the Dutch over the status of Surinam's Jews reminds us that English subjecthood was shaped by colonial settings and by the contested status of groups who found themselves transferred between imperial powers.