UNESCO
An anomaly in South America, the continent´s only country where Dutch is spoken, and it’s also one of the continent’s smallest and least visited—roughly the size of the U.S. state of Georgia and a bit more than England and Wales put together — with a population of 630,000. Most Surinamese live along the Atlantic Ocean coast, especially in the capital Paramaribo, and the interior consists of vast Amazonian rainforest, sparsely populated and even roadless in many areas.
The region was explored by Europeans in the 16th century and became a Dutch colony in the 17th, developing plantation agriculture based on enslaved African labor. After slavery was abolished in 1863, indentured workers arrived from India, Indonesia, and China, shaping the country´s extraordinary cultural mix of today. Suriname gained independence from the Netherlands in 1975, and today it´s one of the most ethnically diverse societies in the Americas, with African, Indian, Javanese, Chinese, indigenous, and European heritage coexisting in a notably tolerant, multilingual culture.
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