Aluku Aluku Aluku is a Bushinengue ethnic group living mainly on the riverbank in Maripasoula in southwest French Guiana. The group is sometimes called Boni, referring to a notorious leader, Bokilifu Boni (described as a former mulatto slave). The Aluku is a legendary ethnic group in French Guiana whose people are descended in part from African slaves who escaped in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries from the Dutch plantations in what is now known as Suriname. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, they settled alongside the riverbanks of Lawa Maroni, which now forms the border between French Guiana
British Guiana in the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814. The UK continued separate administration of the individual colonies until 1822, when the administration of Essequibo and Demerara was combined. In 1831, the administration Essequibo-Demerara and Berbice was combined, and the united colony became known as British Guiana. The economy of British Guiana was completely based on sugarcane production until the 1880s, when falling cane sugar prices stimulated a shift toward rice farming, mining and forestry. However, sugarcane remained a significant part of the economy (in 1959 sugar still accounted for nearly 50% of exports). Under the Dutch, settlement and economic activity was concentrated