Suriname

I can roughly locate Suriname on a map (north eastern South America?), but don't know much about it. For example, I had no idea that the official language is Dutch (although Sranantongo, an English creole is a lingua franca, and at least 20 other languages are commonly spoken)! The capitol city is Paramaribo, and the population is about 573,000.

Suriname was inhabited by Arawak and Carib tribes until the British took over in the 1600s and started planting sugar. Then the Dutch took over. All this commerce was made possible by slavery. Numbers of slaves escaped from the plantations, and hung out with the tribes in the rainforest, even creating tribes of their own, these people are still called "Maroons.". Slavery was abolished in 1863, and as a result, workers were imported from Indonesia, China, and India. The culture is more Caribbean than South American, Suriname is a multicultural country, and no one ethnic group dominates.

Currently, tourism and agriculture are a big part of the economy, as is bauxite mining.

FUN FACT: Sephardic Jews have had a settlement in Suriname since the 1600s, when they were driven out of Europe. Suriname was one of the places they could go, and they ran a number of slave plantations. Currently, one of the only places in the world where you can find a synagogue next to a mosque is in Suriname.