TheCassard expedition was a sea voyage byFrench Navy captainJacques Cassard in 1712, during theWar of the Spanish Succession. Targeting English,Dutch, and Portuguese possessions, he raided and ransomed the colonies ofCape Verde,Sint Eustatius, andCuraçao—factories, depots, andseasoning camps used in theAtlantic slave trade. He also raided and ransomedMontserrat,Antigua,Surinam,Berbice, andEssequibo—wealthysugar-producing colonies in the Caribbean whose economies were based on the exploitation ofslave labor.[1]
In many of the places he landed, officials paid a ransom to avoid pillage; this was not always successful, as Cassard sometimes ignored the terms of the agreements he made. At the end of its expedition, Cassard's squadron returned to France with prizes in the form of cash, goods, and enslaved Africans worth between nine and ten millionFrench livres. Cassard's exploits won him theOrder of Saint Louis.[1] Effects on thefortifications,enslaved populations, and profitability of the targeted colonies continued well into the rest of the 18th century.
On December 2, 1711, Cassard received command of a squadron of three ships of the line and five frigates from the king. Departing in early March 1712 from the port ofToulon with a fleet of eight ships, 3,000 seamen, and 1,200 soldiers, he embarked on an expedition during which he raided English,Dutch, and Portuguese colonies atCape Verde and in theCaribbean. Over the course of twenty-seven months, Cassard alsoraided enemy fleets for ransom.
Among his most notable seizures was the Portuguese capital on theisland of Santiago at Cape Verde:
He completely destroyed Santiago, the Portuguese base for their commerce with the West African coast. He took so much plunder, according toMémoires du temps, that, in order not to overload his squadron, he had to leave behind a part, valued at more than a million livres.[2][Note 1]
After crossing theAtlantic, the squadron stopped atMartinique for resupply, and to unload the plunder taken at Cape Verde. Thefreebooters ofSaint-Domingue, who hadn't forgotten Cassard's actions during theRaid on Cartagena, came to meet him and requested to join the expedition. Now at the head of a small fleet, he sacked the English islands ofMontserrat andAntigua before heading toDutch Guiana.
Cassard started his Dutch colonial raids inSurinam, which he besieged, captured, and ransomed.
On October 10, 1712, he landed a portion of his force near the plantationMeerzorg across theSuriname River fromParamaribo, the Surinamese capital. From here, he bombarded the city and neighboringFort Zeelandia in support of anamphibious assault.[Note 2] On the 27th, he departed the colony after securing a promise from the governor for delivery of a ransom consisting of enslaved people, goods, and cash valued at 2.4mFrench livres, or 747,350Dutch guilders, equivalent to a full year's production in the colony, or €8.1m in 2018.[3][4][Note 3]
The following month, Cassard turned toBerbice, briefly occupying the colony. The descendants ofAbraham van Peere, the Dutch colony's founder, did not want to pay a ransom to the French to free the colony, which as a result ceded to French control.[5]
After having also sackedEssequibo, yet another colony in Dutch Guiana, Cassard returned again to Martinique to deposit his latest prizes. He did not stay long, setting sail for the island ofSint Eustatius, also colonized by the Dutch. He ransomed this colony in the same way as he had the Dutch landward settlements.[Note 4]
Finally, Cassard returned to Surinam to collect his ransom in Paramaribo and then headed towardCuraçao.[6][7] In 1678, the well-defended island had successfully avoided invasion by a larger fleet led byJean II d'Estrées that foundered on theLas Aves archipelago. According to a French source, Cassard overcame his officers' objections with a demonstration of his preferred method of attack, and also because Curaçao was richer and more significant than the other colonies already raided—this despite the fact that the official ransom demanded and received in Curaçao was only 600,000 livres, though this may have been supplemented by plunder. Cassard himself was injured in this phase of the expedition.[Note 5]
The Cassard expedition to Cape Verde and the Caribbean was successful, and after another stopover at Martinique, Cassard returned to France with prizes in the form of cash, goods, and enslaved Africans whose net value was estimated at nine to ten millionlivres.
Thanks to his exploits,Jacques Cassard was named Knight of theOrder of Saint Louis on his return to France. From 1713, he focused his efforts on lawsuits relating to the plunder.Eleven ships of theFrench Navy have been named for him.
InCape Verde,Ribiera Grande was slowly replaced as capital of the Portuguese colony byPraia, due to the latter settlement's strategic position farther east and on a plateau, giving it better natural protection against pirate attacks. This move, initially ordered by KingPhilip II of Portugal on August 14, 1712, was implemented gradually, and not complete until 1770.[8]
In the Americas, the 1713Peace of Utrecht, which shrank navies as it ended theWar of the Spanish Succession, put a temporary end to the privations ofFrench corsairs and large-scale naval raids fortified byfreebooters like the Cassard expedition, capable of sacking even the largest colonies. As a result, there was a resurgence in theGolden Age of Piracy as "fully illegal"independent pirate captains took on unemployed sailors and focused oncommerce raiding andsmuggling.[9]
An Amsterdam-based consortium consisting of the brothers Nicolaas and Hendrik van Hoorn, Arnold Dix, Pieter Schuurmans, and Cornelis van Peere paid the ransom of ƒ180,000 in cash and ƒ120,000 in sugar and enslaved people on October 24, 1714, thereby returningBerbice to Dutch control, and acquiring the colony for themselves.[5] In 1720, the colony's five new owners[10] founded theSociety of Berbice, akin to theSociety of Suriname which governed the neighbouring colony, to raise morecapital for the colony. The Society was a public company listed on theAmsterdam Stock Exchange.[11] Whileeconomic activity in Berbice now increased as compared to the Van Peere years, the Society of Berbice paid smallerDividends than similar corporations,[12] andcontinued underinvestment led tosupply shortages which, when exacerbated by theSeven Years' War, led tohunger among the enslaved population, a contributing factor to the 1763Berbice slave uprising.[13]
There was an uptick inmarronage inSurinam during the period of Cassard's expedition. Some plantations let their enslaved population enter the forests to avoid capture, an opportunity some took not to return. Other Africans escaped almost immediately after disembarking in the colony, joining bands of Maroons in the interior. Escapees from plantation Vreedenburg and escapees from recently-landedSlave ships joined theSaamaka Maroons who eventually settled on theUpper Suriname River and made peace with the colonial government in 1762. They preserve the memory of their ancestors' escape in their oral history.[14]
In 1715,Fort Sommelsdijk was strengthened to protect plantations in the region. The fort was located up theCommewijne River (itself the Suriname River's northernmost tributary) at the mouth of theCottica. As there was still need to further fortifyParamaribo, which had never successfully repelled an invasion, it was decided to build another fort closer toMeerzorg above the confluence of the Suriname and the Commewijne.Fort Nieuw-Amsterdam was finished in 1747, and Fort Sommelsdijk was downgraded to an outpost.[15]
The effort entailed in provisioning and financing the ransom demanded by Cassard was a heavy burden on the SephardicJewish community ofSurinam, which owned a third of the colony's plantations in the early eighteenth century. As such, it was a contributing factor to the century-long decline of plantations with Jewish owners, who slowly relocated the seat of their operations fromJodensavanne to Paramaribo, where they integrated more closely with the rest of the colony's European population. In the early 19th century, the remains of Jodensavanne were destroyed in a Maroon raid.[16]