John Gabriel Stedman (1744 – 7 March 1797) was a Dutch-British army officer and writer best known for writing The Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam (1796). This narrative covers his experience in Suriname between 1773 and 1777, where he was a soldier in a Dutch regiment deployed to assist colonial troops fighting against groups of maroons. He first recorded his experiences in a personal diary that he later rewrote and expanded into the Narrative. The Narrative was a bestseller of the time and, with its firsthand depictions of slavery and other aspects of colonialism, became an important tool in the fledgling abolitionist movement. When compared with Stedman's personal diary, his published Narrative is a sanitized and romanticized version of Stedman's time in Surinam.
Early life
Stedman was born in 1744 in Dendermonde, then in the Austrian Netherlands, to Robert Stedman, a Scotsman and officer in the Dutch Republic's Scots Brigade, and his Franco-Dutch wife, Antoinetta Christina van Ceulen. He lived most of his childhood in the Dutch Republic with his parents, but also spent time with his uncle in Scotland. Stedman described his childhood as being "chock-full of misadventures and abrasive encounters of every description".
Military career
Stedman's military career began at the age of 16. He was commissioned into the Dutch States Army at the rank of ensign, being stationed at several Barrier fortresses. Stedman was eventually promoted to lieutenant. Though he later left the Dutch army, in 1771 Stedman rejoined it due to being in overwhelming debt after the death of his father. In 1772, responding to a call for volunteers, he joined an expeditionary corps of 800 men which was destined for the Dutch colony of Surinam. The colony was then engaged in a low-intensity conflict with groups of maroons, former slaves who had escaped slavery and established independent communities on the colonial frontier. Promoted to brevet captain, he left for Surinam onboard the Dutch States Navy frigate Zeelust on 24 December 1772. He treated Stedman cruelly, inventing tasks for him to complete and taking away his ammunition. Stedman believed that Fourgeoud neglected his duties as an officer, ignoring the well-being of his troops, and only retained his rank through monetary bribes. Stedman's difficulties were compounded by the fact that his corps, which was trained for the battlefields of Europe, was unprepared to fight against the unfamiliar guerrilla tactics of the maroons. In the campaign against the Maroons, Stedman fought alongside the newly-formed Free Negro Corps, which consisted of Black slaves purchased from their enslavers. Soldiers of the unit were promised their freedom, a house with a garden plot and pay in return for fighting against the maroons. The unit originally numbered 116 men, but 190 more were purchased and joined its ranks after the first group displayed courage and perseverance in combat. He only fought in one battle, which took place in 1774 and concluded with the capture of the maroon village of Gado Saby. A portrayal of the battle was included in the frontispiece of Stedman's Narrative, which depicted him standing over a dead maroon in the foreground and Gado Saby burning in the distance. Throughout these campaigns, Dutch troops were frequently ambushed by maroons and tropical diseases spread rapidly, resulting in an enormous loss of troops. These losses were so great that 830 fresh troops were sent from the Dutch Republic in 1775 to supplement the original 800 men.
Stedman's Narrative
The Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam is an autobiographical account of Stedman's experiences in Surinam from the year 1773 through 1777. While Stedman kept a diary of his time in Surinam, which is held by the University of Minnesota Libraries, the Narrative manuscript wasn't composed until ten years after his return to Europe. In the Narrative manuscript, Stedman vividly describes the landscapes of Suriname, paying great attention to flora, fauna, and the social habits of indigenous, free and enslaved Africans, and European colonists in Suriname. His observations of life in the colony encompass the different cultures present at the time: Dutch, Scottish, native, African, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. Stedman also takes time to describe the day-to-day life in the colony.
The first pages of the Narrative record Stedman's voyage to Surinam. He spends his days reading on the deck of the Boreas, attempting to avoid those sick from the turbulent sea. The Boreas was accompanied by another ship the Weftellingwerf and three new frigate built transports. Stedman first arrives in Surinam on 2 February 1773. Upon his arrival in Surinam, Stedman and the troops are met by residents of the fortress Amsterdam, along the Surinam River. Here, Stedman gives his first description of the landscape of Surinam. According to Stedman, the land abounded with delicious smells – lemon, orange, and shaddocks. The natives, dressed in loincloths, were somewhat shocking to Stedman at first, and he described them as "bargemen as naked as when they were born."
Parts of the Narrative continue to focus on descriptions of Surinam's natural environments. Stedman writes that parts of Surinam are mountainous, dry, and barren, but much of the land is ripe and fertile, enjoying a year-long growing season, with rains and a warm climate. He notes that in some parts the land is low and marshy, and crops are grown with a "flooding" method of irrigation similar to that used in ancient Egypt. Stedman also describes Surinam as having large uncultivated areas; there are immense forests, mountains (some with valuable minerals), deep marsh, swamps, and even large savanna areas. Some areas of the coast are inaccessible, with navigational obstructions such as rocks, riverbanks, quicksand, and bogs.
In his Narrative, Stedman writes about the contrast between the beauty of the colony and his first taste of the violence and cruelty endemic there. One of his first observations involves the torture of a nearly naked enslaved woman, chained to an iron weight. His narrative describes the woman receiving 200 lashes and carrying the weight for a month as a result of her inability to fulfill a task to which she was assigned.
Publication history
thumb|Illustration of a Dutch plantation owner and slave from [[William Blake's illustrations of the work of Stedman's work first published in 1792-1794]]
Stedman's Narrative was published by Joseph Johnson, a radical figure who received criticism for the types of books he sold. In the 1790s, more than 50 percent of them were political, including Stedman's Narrative. The books he published supported the rights of slaves, Jews, women, prisoners and other oppressed peoples around the world. Johnson was an active member of the Society for Constitutional Information, an organization attempting to reform Parliament. He was condemned for the support and publication of writers who voiced liberal opinions, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine.
Stedman's Narrative became a major literary success. It was translated into French, German, Dutch, Italian, and Swedish, and was eventually published in more than twenty-five different editions, including several abolitionist tracts focused on Joanna. Stedman was highly acclaimed for his insights on the slave trade and his Narrative was embraced by the abolitionist cause. Paradoxically, it also became the handbook for counter-insurgency tactics in the tropics.
It took almost two centuries for a critical edition to be published. The unabridged critical edition, edited by Richard and Sally Price, was published in 1988. An abridged edition published in 1992 by Price and Price remains in print, as well as two editions published in 1962 and 1966 by the renowned antiquarian Stanbury Thompson. Of Thompson's 1962 and 1966 editions, Price and Price write, "Thompson's work confused as much as it elucidated. Examination of the original notebooks and papers that Thompson had used (which are now in the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota) revealed that, not only had he inserted his own commentary into that of Stedman...but he had changed dates and spellings, misread and incorrectly transcribed a large number of words". A facsimile edition of the 1988 unabridged critical edition of Stedman's original 1790 manuscript, edited by Richard and Sally Price, was published in 2010 by iUniverse and in 2016 by Open Road. This latter edition remains available.
thumb|left|"A Negro Hung Alive by the Ribs to a Gallows," by [[William Blake, originally published in Stedman's Narrative]]
Blake's illustrations
Stedman's Narrative associated him with some of Europe's foremost radicals. His publisher, Johnson, was imprisoned in 1797 for printing the political writings of Gilbert Wakefield. Johnson commissioned William Blake and Francesco Bartolozzi to create engravings for the Narrative. Blake engraved sixteen images for the book and delivered them in December 1792 and 1793, as well as a single plate in 1794. The images depict some of the horrific atrocities against slaves that Stedman witnessed, including hanging, lashing and other forms of torture. The Blake plates are more forceful than other illustrations in the book and have the "fluidity of line" and "hallucinatory quality of his original work". Torn between the roles of "incurable romantic" He intended to use these notes and journals to produce a book.
On 15 June 1778, just a year after returning to the Netherlands from Surinam, Stedman began piecing together these notes and journals into what would ultimately become his Narrative. In 1787, Stedman began showing pieces of his journal to friends in an attempt to secure financial backing for the publication of the manuscript. He also attempted to gain potential subscribers in major cities throughout Europe. In these entries, Stedman tells of occasions throughout his life when he interceded on the behalf of others to alleviate suffering. He explained that he wrote "purely following the dictates of nature, & equally hating a made up man and a made up story." Mary Louise Pratt refers to these changes as a "romantic transformation of a particular form of colonial sexual exploitation".
Stedman and slavery
thumb|Illustrator [[William Blake's "Flagellation of a Female Samboe Slave", 1796. Stedman's attitudes toward slavery were complicated, although he witnessed many atrocities committed against slaves firsthand]]
Stedman's attitude toward slaves and slavery has been the subject of scholarly debate. In spite of the abolitionist utility of the text, Stedman himself was far from an abolitionist. A defense of slavery runs throughout the text, emphasizing problems that would arise from sudden emancipation. In fact, Stedman believed that slavery was necessary in some form to continue allowing European nations to indulge their excessive desires for commodities such as tobacco and sugar. A seemingly pro-slavery attitude is espoused throughout much of his text.
Stedman's relationship with the slave Joanna further complicates his views toward slavery. Given Joanna's status as a enslaved woman and her young age at the time their relationship began, their relationship may be considered a form of "colonial sexual exploitation". Stedman described their relationship as one "of romantic love rather than filial servitude," although Joanna's feelings on the relationship are unknown - as is often the case with women of color who are said to have had consensual relationships with powerful white men, such as La Malinche and Sacagawea.
The Narrative is also an ethnocentric text. But Stedman's attitudes toward individual slaves did not coincide with his attitude toward the institution of slavery. His sympathy for the suffering slaves, expressed throughout the book, is consistently obfuscated by his opinion about slavery as an institution, which according to Werner Sollors was "complicated, its representation strongly affected by the revisions." For example, as a young man growing up in Holland, Stedman had concurrent affairs with his landlord's wife and her maid until the landlady became jealous and evicted both Stedman and the maid simultaneously.
The personal journal that Stedman kept (and the sexual encounters mentioned therein) varies quite a bit from his published Narrative. The image-conscious Stedman, with a wife and children back in Europe, wanted to cultivate the impression of a gentleman rather than the serial adulterer he portrays in his diaries. Stedman's Narrative removes the depersonalized sex with women of color and replaces it with more detail regarding his relationship with Joanna. Price and Price summarize these changes as "While his diaries depicted a society in which depersonalized sex between European men and slave women was pervasive and routine, his 1790 manuscript transformed Suriname into the exotic setting for a deeply romantic and appropriately tragic love affair."
Throughout the Narrative, Stedman praises Joanna's character. He often describes instances of what he viewed as her loyalty and devotion to him through his absences and illnesses:
In the nineteenth century, abolitionists circulated Stedman and Joanna's story, most notably in Lydia Maria Child's collection The Oasis in 1834. The first abridged edition of Stedman's Narrative to concentrate on Joanna's narrative was published in 1824, titled Joanna, or The Female Slave, a West Indian Tale. The anonymous compiler of the 1824 version writes in the preface that emancipation is "neither practicable or advisable" but advocates for "the abolition of cruelty". In 1838, Isaac Knapp, a Boston abolitionist and printer, published Narrative of Joanna; An Emancipated Slave, of Surinam. Knapp founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1832 along with William Lloyd Garrison. Knapp and Garrison also co-founded the abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator in 1831. Like Lydia Maria Child's version of Stedman and Joanna's narrative included in the abolitionist collection The Oasis in 1834, Narrative of Joanna was circulated in a distinctly American abolitionist discourse.
Stedman and Joanna had a son, named Johnny. Johnny was eventually freed from slavery, but not Joanna. However, when Stedman returned to the Dutch Republic in June 1777, Joanna and their son stayed behind in Surinam. Stedman explained this by saying that Joanna refused to return with him:
Shortly after his return to the Dutch Republic, Stedman married a Dutch woman, Adriana Wierts van Coehorn, and started a family with her. According to Stanbury Thompson's edition of Stedman's journals, Joanna died in 1782, after which their son migrated to Europe to live with Stedman and was educated at Blundell's School. Johnny later served as a midshipman in the Royal Navy and died at sea near Jamaica.
Stedman's family in Devon
Stedman's wife, Adriana, was the wealthy granddaughter of a well-known Dutch engineer. Together they settled in Tiverton, Devonshire, and had five children: Sophia Charlotte, Maria Joanna, George William, Adrian, and John Cambridge. Following the death of Joanna, Johnny joined their household. Adriana made no attempt to hide her feelings of resentment toward Johnny and Stedman often protected his son from her wrath. Stedman favored his first son and later wrote a journal almost entirely devoted to accounts of Johnny's adolescence. After Johnny's death, Stedman published a poem he wrote for his son, eulogizing their relationship.