In various places in Paramaribo, you will find references to fallen soldiers of the Armed Forces in Suriname, or in Dutch “Troepenmacht in Suriname”, TRIS for short. More than forty names are commemorated at a historic location at Fort Zeelandia in Paramaribo. A collective grave of 14 men can be found at the Hodi Mihi Cras Tibi cemetery on the Sophie Redmondstraat in Paramaribo. And then there are several graves in other cemeteries in Suriname, but also a number in the Netherlands. A search for their graves and funerary monuments seems almost impossible, but this article aims to gain an insight.

On Thursday 19 May 2022, a team from the Built Heritage Suriname Foundation (SGES) paid a working visit to the Coronie district to inspect and document some historic graves on the Bellevue plantation. The reason for this is the message from Mrs. M. Vroom, that some old graves on the plantation would have been damaged as a result of rehabilitation work on the East-West connection. The SGES team consisted of Rachel Deekman, Jennifer Scheuerman and Stephen Fokké.

The historic graves at the front of the Salem Church at Clyde Plantation in Coronie were partially documented for the first time, in 2003, by Philip Dikland. Of the 18 graves, 8 had been mapped. Two large brick tombs have no headstone, so it is unknown who is buried there. In 2014, Dikland documented another seven graves together with Max van de Poel.

In 2025 it will be 345 years since Adriaen van Lier was buried in the St. Francis Church in Cochin. That location is not unusual, you would say at first glance. After all, he was opperkoopman and secundo of the VOC trading post in Cochin. It was fitting that he was taken to his final resting place with all respect and ceremony, but in his case the choice of St. Francis Church was not self-evident. During the presence of the VOC, the church was a Protestant church and Adriaen van Lier was a Catholic.

While the now Protestant Holland was involved in the Eighty Years' War (1568-1648) against Catholic Spanish rule and the battle intensified, Adriaen van Lier was born in Delft around 1620. Catholicism was not forbidden, but it was banned from public life and the profession of faith was pushed back to hidden churches. Positions in governments were officially not accessible to people of other faiths. 

In August 1752, head merchant Abraham de la Haye feels that his time is almost up. Only 43 years old, he becomes sicker and weaker by the day, realising the uncertainty of his life. Life had looked so promising. He had joined the VOC in Batavia in 1723 as a ‘soldier of the pen’ and had risen to the rank of head merchant. For the past two years, he had served as the provisional supreme commander of Cochin and the Malabar Coast. Just a year ago, his family had grown with the addition of a son. He had named him Robbert Christoffel — Robbert after his own father, and Christoffel after his father-in-law. Robbert was baptised in St. Francis Church in Cochin, close to his home. The same church where he will soon be buried. Before it comes to that, he still has some matters to settle, including changing his will. Together with his wife, Geertruijda Walling, he had already made a will, but back then there were no children; now there are three. He has held administrative positions all his life as an accountant, tax officer, chief administrator, and secretary. He was born in Colombo and, as a child, moved with his parents and his brother Huijbert to Batavia. With his own family, he went to Surat in northern India, and now the end is approaching in Cochin.

On 22 October 1655, the Zeeland Chamber of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) approved the decision that at least 4,000 men would be transported to the Dutch East Indies with the upcoming winter fleet because of the great lack of personnel.^[i] After only a week, they started hiring staff. On November 8, 1655, corporal Barend Hermanszn van Groningen was hired for the ship Ter Tholen with a salary of fourteen guilders per month. Already on the 23rd of November the decision was made to appoint him as a sergeant with a salary of eighteen guilders.^[ii].^[iii] On 30 December, the drums were beaten to allow the people of the ship Ter Tholen to board, after which they anchored off Vlissingen until favourable weather for departure. On 6 January 1656, skipper Daniel Looper left the roadstead and needed 6 months and 13 days to arrive in Batavia.

In the nineteenth century, numerous new states emerged as kingdoms fell. This is particularly true for the Italian peninsula. In the first half of the nineteenth century, this consisted of a conglomeration of smaller areas of power within the center the 'Ecclesiastical State', the pope's area of power in Rome. When this area was threatened, the pope called on volunteers to fight for its defense.

What a few thousand Dutch people had to do with this is related to the Catholic emancipation in the Netherlands in the second half of the nineteenth century. These papal warriors left few traces in the Netherlands, but in various cemeteries in the Netherlands the text "Papal Zouave" sometimes stands out. A search for the still existing funerary monuments leads to a (far from complete) first overview.

The two cemeteries founded by Dutch traders in Turkey are strongly linked to families like De Hochepied, Leidstar and Van Lennep. They not only represented the Netherlands but also did good business with their trading houses. They  intermarried and were buried in the Dutch cemeteries in Smyrna or Istanbul. It is not surprising that after a few centuries the families were more internationally oriented than they were Dutch.

After it was no longer possible to bury in the old cemetery, the Dutch community in Smyrna (present Izmir) opened its own section at the larger European cemetery in the east of the city. This part was named "Felemenk Bahçe" or Flemish garden. Not that the garden was Flemish, but the name stood for the Low Countries, as Belgica was used in Latin to indicate the Low Countries.