This article analyses how Suriname was turned into a bauxite-producing centre with a key role in feeding a global aluminium value chain, and the impact the discovery of bauxite deposits, and the subsequent investments, had on the Maroon population that lived there. The article focuses on the arrival of foreign companies in one particular place in the 1910s and 1920s: the former plantation of Rorac, on the shores of the Suriname River, and investigates how the history has been remembered by its former Maroon inhabitants. The article is based on archival material from aluminium companies, from the colonial administration, and from secondary sources recounting the oral history of the Brooskamper Maroon community. By studying the history of Rorac, the article deepens our understanding of the ways in which the emergence of the first global economy impacted local populations on the sites where this development was taking place.
