John Gabriel Stedman

John Gabriel Stedman (1744 – 7 March 1797) was a Dutch States Army officer and writer best known for writing ''The Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam'' (1796). This narrative covers describes his experience in Suriname between 1773 and 1777, where he was a soldier in a Dutch regiment deployed to assist colonial troops fighting against groups of Maroons. He first recorded his experiences in a personal diary that he later rewrote and expanded into the ''Narrative''. The ''Narrative'' was a bestseller of the time and, with its firsthand depictions of slavery and other aspects of colonialism, became an important tool in the fledgling abolitionist movement. When compared with Stedman's personal diary, his published ''Narrative'' is a sanitized and romanticized version of Stedman's time in Surinam. Provided by Wikipedia