The Paramaribo Ward Register Database: A Fine-grained View of an Urban Slave Society (1828-1847)

Thunnis Van Oort

doi:10.52024/x5vgg810

Author(s)

Thunnis Van Oort Huygens Institute for History and Culture of the Netherlands

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.52024/x5vgg810

Abstract

This data paper details the transformation of the ward registers (‘wijkregisters’) of Paramaribo (1828–1847) from transcription files into a structured research database. It provides historical context of this source of population registration, outlines the processing and structuring of the data, and concludes with descriptive statistics from a single year (1846) to illustrate the dataset’s potential and limitations for studying the social and urban history of a Dutch-colonial city in the late slavery era. The resulting dataset is publicly accessible as a download and via a user-friendly interface on the website of the National Archive of Suriname.

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Author Biography

Thunnis Van Oort, Huygens Institute for History and Culture of the Netherlands

Thunnis Van Oort is a historian interested in digital methods and techniques, citizen scholarship, cultural heritage, colonial history, and media history. He has researched and/or taught at Radboud University,
University of Amsterdam, Oxford Brookes University, Antwerp University, University College Roosevelt, and Utrecht University and currently works at the Huygens Institute on the development of the
Suriname Time Machine, a Linked Open Data hub of nineteenthcentury Suriname.