Data Narrative
The Data Behind the Collection
A critical look at the Rijksmuseum's Suriname dataset — what we received, what we changed, and what the source itself reveals about whose history was recorded.
I. The source
A colonial dataset, catalogued in Amsterdam
Everything that follows starts from a single CSV file: the Rijksmuseum's export of objects in its collection associated with Suriname. That file is not a neutral mirror of Surinamese history — it is a museum catalogue, written in Dutch, by an Amsterdam institution, describing objects that were made, bought, sold or captured during and after Dutch colonial rule.
The statistics on this page treat that source as evidence in two ways. The Raw dataset section shows the catalogue as we received it, before any curation. The Curated dataset section shows what we changed by enriching it with geocoded locations, Wikidata identifiers and Wikimedia Commons images. The deltas in between are themselves a record of where the original metadata fell short.
II. Raw dataset
What the Rijksmuseum gave us
Counts computed directly from the CSV export — no enrichment, no corrections.
3,668
Total objects
298
Named creators
907
Anonymous objects
267
Distinct geo keywords
Original distribution by decade
Original objects by type
Most-used original geo keywords
- Suriname (Zuid-Amerika)2453
- Paramaribo (stad)887
- Moengo350
- Albina154
- Plantage Ma Retraite141
- Plantage Accaribo123
- Amsterdam86
- Gouvernementsplein60
- Nederland57
- Waterkant56
- Plantage Clevia51
- Maäbo Heuvel45
III. Curation deltas
From catalogue to showable record
How many objects survive each step of the curation pipeline.
Each bar narrows the dataset by one constraint. The drop from 'has a geographic keyword' to 'has a location specifically inside Suriname' shows how often the original metadata only points to 'Suriname (Zuid-Amerika)' or to a Dutch place. The final bar — 'Showable on the map' — is the strict slice we use on the landing page: a public-domain image, a usable IIIF URL, a year, and a specific point inside Suriname.
4,022
Manual location edits
0
Keyword defaults
12
Linked to Wikidata
1,199
Showable on the map
IV. Curated dataset
What we made of it
The same collection after geocoding, Wikidata linking and license normalisation.
3,668
Total objects
2,912
With images
20
Creators
20
Locations
Objects by decade
Objects by type
Most-represented creators
Most-mentioned locations
V. What is missing
What the data still does not say
Even after curation, the catalogue carries the silences of the institution that produced it:
- 907 objects have no named maker — Indigenous, enslaved and African-Surinamese creators were rarely credited.
- 462 objects still cannot be placed at a specific point inside Suriname; they are tagged only with the country as a whole or with the harbour cities the objects passed through.
- 1,271 objects either have no image we are allowed to publish, or no image at all — copyright and access decisions are made far from Paramaribo.
- Descriptive language in the catalogue reflects 17th–20th century European perspectives; subject terms like 'oorspronkelijke bewoners' or 'overzeese geschiedenis' frame the objects from a colonial vantage point.