Slavery in Curaçao - Black slave owners?

Introduction:

Did slaves also participated in the system?
Slaves who kept themselves slaves and made love to a slave existence: the slave existence on Curaçao looked different from the calibrated stories about the relationship between white and black suggest.

A different look from Slavery. 

There was more slavery in Africa than on the Caribbean plantations and in the south of the United States. Yet invariably only whites are addressed to the misery of slavery. It is convenient to forget that blacks and colourds sometimes kept slaves themselves. Not only in Africa, also on Curaçao, where many former slaves became owners themselves. In some cases it even seems as if free men voluntarily chose slavery.

There has never been a thorough investigation into the living conditions of the slaves in Curaçao, against that of the ' ordinary man '. A first dive in the National Archives of the Netherlands Antilles immediately produces an image that is perpendicular to the stereotype of the wicked white master versus the poor black slaves. In fact, the slaves participated in the system.

Take the slave John Paul Rib as an example. He was 33 years old when he bought himself free in 1842 with the money he had earned as a joiner. His former owner, Andries de Lannoy, had a training course, a non-unusual course of events at that time on Curaçao. Thereby Rib could build up as a free man a good existence. Twenty years after his release, Rib was even a plantation owner: for 3800 guilders he bought the small plantation Papaya, Including the inventory of two slaves, forty cattle and one hundred and fifty sheep.

His first slave was bought by Rib in 1846, followed by several other slaves, whom he traded. Remarkably, he did not buy his slavery-living relatives free. On July 1, 1863, the day when all the slaves got their freedom, the former slave himself owned nine slaves and slaves. Quite a few, because at that time two-thirds of the Curaçao slave owners owned at most five slaves. Only ten of the 721 owners on the island were in possession of one hundred.

Trade instead of plantations. 

Was slavery in Curaçao different from, for example, in Suriname or the United States? In some ways though. Suriname and the United States were plantation-economies, where the slaves were desperately needed to deliver good harvests. The value of the slave was determined by its production capacity. Curaçao, on the other hand, lived on trade. There, the slave himself represented a certain value, with which you could act. As an investor now sells shares on the stock market if he is in need of money, so the slave owner sold a slave when the harvest fell down or when it went bad with the trade.

Another difference is that on the remote Surinam plantations about one hundred to fifty slaves worked. On Curaçao, on the other hand, a plantation was a ' mixed company ' with a handful of slaves. Such a plantation produced products such as millet, beans, melons and cucumbers for their own use and the domestic market. In addition, goats, sheep and cattle were kept for both meat and milk, and some plantations had salt pans.

Only a few hundred and sixty plantations were larger, but they also lived and worked no more than a few dozen slaves. In comparison, around 1815, more than 75 percent of the population lived in slavery in Suriname; On Curaçao it was at that time less than 50 percent, namely 6800 on a population of 14,000.

On Curaçao plantations lived and worked not only slaves. Around 1800, more than two thousand ' Free Men ' (blacks and coloured) lived on the public meadows or between the slaves on the plantation. When a hands-on owner came short, he just hired them a day.

Not a classic Slavery.

Especially in the plant and harvest time it was undoubtedly hard work. The slaves and the free made long days on the land and then on their own living ground. A plantation slave was usually given a piece of land at his disposal that he worked in his spare time. The proceeds from it and, for example, fishing, he could sell. The money was allowed to hold, but quite a few owners forced the slaves to buy stuff from them, at high prices. Plantation slaves had thereby less often than city slaves enough money to buy themselves freely.

But the classic image of the slave with behind him a bomba (a slave who was appointed as overseer) with whip in the hand, hardly occurs in the archives of Curaçao. Certainly not when it comes to city slaves, who were almost half of all slaves in the mid-nineteenth century.

City slaves lived and worked in the city as Craftsman, House clerk or Sjouwer (can't find a English word for it sorry) . They often earned their own income, which they paid a fixed amount per week to their owner. Or they received a (small) salary from him. So city slaves could rent a house, or save to buy themselves or their children freely. Manumission (release) was therefore more common than in Suriname.

Freed Slaves

In addition, slaves were often released for faithful service or affection. This was a direct consequence of the closer bond between slaves and their masters; A band that was very different from Suriname, where the slaves on the plantations formed an isolated community.

The objection that slave owners released their slaves especially when they were old or ill, seems in general not to be correct with the figures. The nineteenth century slave registers have included countless old, non-manumissioned slaves, as well as the Manumissions of a large number of children and slaves in the power of their lives.

Due to the frequent Manumissions there was a considerably larger number of frees in Curaçao than in Suriname: In 1863, a little less than a quarter of the Surinamese population was free; On Curaçao that was more than half of the population already free, with a huge percentage being free for many generations.

Social mobility amongst slaves. 

Also by inheritance slaves could socially and financially ascend. Thus, it often falls in wills to read that the slaves after the death of their master would receive ' their utter freedom and dismissal of all slave services '. Furthermore, slave owners sometimes left their slave clothes, a piece of furniture, gold jewellery, a money amount, or a house.

In addition, slaves could come to wealth through a love affair. The slave Clementina and her nine children were for example gemanumitteerd by Clementina's lover and owner, the Jewish merchant Manuel Penso. Penso was a widower and had determined that his lawful children would get one half of his inheritance, and Clementina the other half.

That was not wrong because his real estate brought about 38,000 guilders after his death, half of which was for Clementina. They bought the plantations Ma Retraite, Klein St.-Kruis, Hermitstil, Rozendal and Kas Grandi. In one fell swoop, this former slave became in possession of huge land.

Once free, ex-slaves could start for themselves. For example, Josef Kogen, who also called himself Cohen. After his Manu mission in 1833, he bought and sold slaves. He bought the slave Delaer, plus her five children, to sell them back in 1839. He also bought the slaves Davaela and Fabias, which he purchased, within six months. The 33-year-old ex-slave bought further dilapidated homes, which he repaired and then sold with a profit. In the end he owned several houses in Otrobanda, Pieter Mow and Punda.

Misconception about Slavery in Curaçao.

 It is therefore a misunderstanding that all Whites on Curaçao were rich and All Blacks and coloured poor. It was estimated that in the nineteenth century more than one hundred former slaves had one or more dwellings, a piece of land or even a plantation.

How many blacks or coloured possessed slaves are not exactly known, because sometimes a ' white ' name conceals behind a Free Black or Colored. Probably it went in 1863 to about 15 to 20 percent of the slave owners. Certainly that of the 721 slave owners in that year 25 were formerly self-slave.

The National Archive on Curaçao not only contains examples of blacks or colored people having slaves, but also of slaves owned by free family members. The former slave Catita, for example, inherited her blood-own granddaughter Catalina. Catita asked Manu letters for her, but with the explicit stipulation that Catalina and any children were freed only after her death from slave service. It may be assumed that in cases like this the slave state is often no more than (the lack of) a piece of paper.

Curious stories of slaves

Curious is the story of Dondiego Martijn, who got his freedom by exchanging himself against the negress Maria Rosa and her son Simon. This 'kanbetekenis' that Maria Rosa and Simon were slaves of the slave Martijn. Perhaps also the interacting were rather in slave service because of the livelihood (food, clothing, shelter). A free black or colored could mortgaging itself and become slave again.

Such a voluntary choice is somewhat understandable after reading the report of Governor General Albert Frogt from 1817. He writes, among other things, that the ' city slaves, such as the house attendants, sjouwers and others, generally have a better life than poor whites and free Blacks people, who themselves have to care for their maintenance.

But how much money a slave also deserved, how good the contact with his or her master sometimes was, he remained an unfree. A slave was completely dependent on its owner and was considered as incapacitated.

The consequence of this Act disability was that, for example, the widow of Nicolaas Tentooren had to give permission to her slave wife Maria Louisa for the slave Mary's Manu mission, Maria Louisa had ever been given a gift to Mary, so one slave had the other. But Maria wanted to redeem herself from Maria Louisa, and that was only possible as the widow Tentooren owner of Maria Louisa-gave her blessing to this transaction between the two slaves.

Whipping and other punishments. 

All of this does not suggest that there were no abuses on Curaçao. For although it was forbidden according to a law from 1812 to ' punish slaves in one unreasonable way ', it happened of course anyway. This was the 12-year-old slave Juan Carlo, who was heavily assaulted by his master Samuel Henriquez of Plantation Klein Piscadera in 1818. After administering countless whip and stick strokes smeared Henriquez Carlo's wounds personally in with a mixture of lemon juice and pepper.

It was the punishment for the death of a lamb, which had been attacked by birds of prey.  A week later the boy succumbed his injuries and the horror of this was great on Curaçao. As a warning to other slave owners, Henriquez was sentenced to exile for life from the Curaçao colony ' under penalty of heavier penalties '. But despite these and other abuses, after in-depth study of countless archival documents, the conclusion is justified that ' the yoke of slavery ' on Curaçao did not weigh as heavily as we are often was supposed.