Archie Shields and Daughters on Entry Drive to Alliance Plantation, Circa 1917-18
Photo taken by Surinamese Photographer Augusta Curiel
Some photos
are so evocative and beautiful that they immediately draw you in—you feel an
instant connection to the moment, the place, and the people the photographer
captured. This photo of my husband’s great-great uncle Archie Shields and his
daughters is one of those photos.
My
husband’s great-great-grandfather Thomas Shields was an engineer for a
manufacturer of sugar processing equipment, and in the early 1870s was sent
from Scotland to the Demarara region of what is now Guyana to supervise the installation
of equipment at a large sugar cane plantation. He stayed on in South America,
at first managing and maintaining the equipment, and then moving on to managing
entire plantations. Thomas eventually bought a plantation of his own in
Suriname that was known as Alliance Plantation, and several of his children,
including his eldest son Archibald, followed him to Suriname to work at
Alliance.
Archibald,
known as Archie, was born March 18, 1864, in Clackerton Scotland, to Thomas and
Margaret Shields. Like his father, he first trained as an engineer before
moving to Suriname to work on the plantation. He eventually took over as
manager of Alliance during his late twenties.
Archie married rather late in life.
His wife, Louise Annie Kinnear, was the daughter of a European planter and a
Javanese woman. Archie and Louise appear to have wed sometime after Archie’s
father died in 1905; Archie was about forty. Their first child, Margaret
Sutherland Shields, was born October 13, 1909 in Paramaribo, Suriname.
The couple spent most of their time
in Suriname, returning every couple of years to Scotland to visit family for
several months. On a visit in January 1912, their second child, Euphemia Louise
Shields, was born in Lambeth, London. Their third and final child, Bethia
Delphine Shields, was born in Parmaribo in 1913.
The three little girls spent most
of their childhood at Alliance Plantation, living in the huge plantation house
there. Sometime around 1918, Paramaribo’s most famous and talented
photographer, a Surinamese woman named Augusta Curiel, came to the plantation
to take photographs. She was accompanied by her sister Anna, who served as her
assistant. One of the photos Augusta took was this stunning shot of Archie and
his three daughters on the long, tree-shaded drive that led to the Alliance
Plantation House.
This shot truly captures the privileged lifestyle of the European plantation owners and managers. Archie stands proudly in his white suit and white pith helmet, resting his hands on daughter Euphemia’s shoulders. Little Bethia, who looks to be about three years old, stands close to her sister, chubby legs encased in white stockings.
Young Margaret, probably about nine
years old in the photo, is perched on an amazing tricycle with three delicate
wheels and solid black pedals, probably shipped from England to Suriname. All
three girls are in pristine white dresses. The climate was hot and humid;
imagine the work required to keep all these people in white clothing each day.
The Shields family of course would take on none of this labor. So who would?
We get a clue from an easily
overlooked detail on the left side of the photo. Two other children are barely
visible, seated on the ground between two trees, slightly behind the tricycle.
They are dark skinned, the children of some of Alliance’s indentured laborers.
These workers were imported from Java and India to work in the cane fields, to run
the sugar processing equipment, and to clean, cook and do the laundry in the
huge plantation house that can be seen at the end of the tree-lined drive. The
lives of those two children were vastly different than those of the three
Shields girls, and Curiel’s composition illuminates that difference.
European planters like Archie and
his father attempted to recreate the society and trappings of the wealthy and
elite in their home countries in the new world of South America. Alliance’s
tree-shaded drive echoes those that lead to the stately homes of the United
Kingdom, differentiated only by the more exotic tree species used, and the
style of the home at the end of the drive. Archie’s clothing and his daughters’
playthings and dresses all mimic the fashions of the wealthy in Europe, with
the necessary substitution of lighter weight fabrics in cooling white. And,
like the wealthy back in Scotland and Europe, Archie seems to ignore and
dismiss the lives of the common people who made his lifestyle possible—Alliance’s
hundreds of servants and laborers are invisible in this image, except for the
two youngsters hidden in the shade at the edge of the drive.
Alliance has since fallen into
ruin. The view of the drive today is nearly unrecognizable, as seen in this
tourist photo.
Sources:
The original of this photograph is owned by the Stichting
Surinaams Museum in Paramaribo. The photo can be found on their Flickr stream
and on various internet sites. Here is the museum’s info on the photo:
“Alliance seen from the Commewijne River. With a gentleman
with three little girls on the entrance, one of them on a three-wheeled
bicycle. To the left, between the trees, a few small children. Date: Location:
Commewijne, Suriname Manufacturer: attributed to Augusta Curiel Inv. Nr .:
74-13 Photo archive Stichting Surinaams Museum.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusta_Curiel
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