Subordinate but proud: Curacao's Free Blacks and Mulattos in the 18th century.

In his seminal work on Curacao, published in 1958, Harmannus Hoetink described the island's social structure and the interrelations of social groups in the period before 1870. Since this book, Curacao's social history during slavery has been little studied. Recent Caribbean history has devoted more attention to society in the plantation era by studying slaves as well as free men and women of African descent.

This article focuses on the free blacks and mulattoes in Curacao in the eighteenth century. Two general questions are addressed here: what was the position of the free non-whites in Curacaon society, and how were they viewed by the white elite?

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Curacao, a Dutch colony since 1634, was largely dependent on comme ree. Most transactions took place along the nearby "coast of Caracas," the central littoral of present-day Venezuela, which supplied a vast array of products. Trade relations were also maintained with New Granada, Panama, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and both parts of Hispaniola.

Curacao's rise as a trading center in the late seventeenth century was inextricably bound up with its slave market. Over the years, tens of thousands of slaves were carried to Curacao from western Africa and Angola. Dutch slavers were called on to meet the labor demands of planters in the Spanish colonies, as Spain itself only played a minor role in the slave trade, and the foreign merchants who had been granted the asientos could not always fulfil the stipulated quota.

Part of the Africans were not sold to the Spanish territories, but remained on the island, working either for the West India Company (WIC) or individual planters and merchants.

White settlers and Company personnel were soon outnumbered by the Africans. In the eighteenth century, slaves continued to arrive in Curacao, though their numbers decreased after the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-13).

 The white community was made up of Protestants and Jews, both of whom contributed to the island's prosperity, with the Jews being the more affluent group due to their successful trading activities. Most Protestants were from Holland, West Friesland, or Zeeland, but Germans and Scandinavians came to the island as well, as servants of the WIC.

Shipmasters, sailors, and merchants from other countries also settled on Curacao, availing themselves of the island's status as a free port, which implied that any white man who married on the island, or promised to obey local laws while registering as a guard, was considered a full citizen.

Marriage did not necessarily have to be with a white woman, as it was not uncommon for males in Curacao to marry black and mulatto women. A white elite ruled the island under the direction of a governor, who was appointed by the directors of the WIC. He had to swear allegiance to the Dutch States-General and the Prince of Orange. Together with a varying number of councillors he made up the Council, which combined judicial, legislative, and executive powers.

Curacao's planters could not employ all their slaves in and around the house or in the fields, and sent some of them to town to earn wages as artisans. According to one source in the early nineteenth century, these slave artisans could even keep the proceeds of their products, provided that they handed over 6 to 14 reales each week to their masters. Other slaves fulfilled Company tasks, like drumming.

These were slaves owned by Company personnel, and their salaries were paid by their masters. In addition, slaves were to be found in many occupations, as is evident from a list compiled in 1775, showing all slaves of private persons who had fled the island - probably to Tierra Firme - in the previous decades.

It would, of course, be wrong to consider the runaways as representative for the entire slave population, but it is possible to make some observations. First, the number of field slaves in proportion to artisans clearly shows that Curacao was not a typical Caribbean plantation economy.

The list also draws attention to the interesting phenomenon of slave musicians: nine runaways had been violinists, five were drummers, and there was one French horn player. Among the women household slaves prevailed. Eight women were listed as domestic slaves in general, while most others apparently specialized in one or two tasks.

Also, a conspicuous number of slaves enlisted as sailors in Curacao's merchant navy. Although they were bound to hand over their pay to their masters upon returning to Curagao from a voyage, the slave-sailor still enjoyed some freedom, which in practice was increased through the assistance of the free coloreds. Slaves frequently borrowed documents from free slaves that bore witness to a person's enfranchisement, and ship captains signed them on.

Governor Jacob van Bosvelt put an end to this custom by reintroducing a regulation which permitted free blacks and mulattoes only to be recruited when they possessed a document signed by the bailiff. Slaves could only enlist by submitting a written authority from their masters.

Not all black and mulattoe slaves spent their whole lives in bondage. Some were freed by their masters and set about to make a living on their own. Manumission was prompted by a number of motives. It could be a token of affection from the planters for their loyal slaves or for their own flesh and blood, but it might also be an easy way to get rid of a slave who had become a burden, either because he was ill or crippled, or because the planter's earnings were decreasing.

In the latter case, freedmen would often find themselves unprepared for their new status and responsibilities. Unlike their counterparts in the British West Indies, Curacaon planters were not required to pay a manumission fee to support freed slaves. There also existed a vast difference between the practice of manumission in Curacao and in Suriname.

In the latter colony, slave owners could only free a slave after receiving permission from the colonial authorities, which was only granted if it was guaranteed that the freedman would be able to maintain himself.

Furthermore, manumitter and manumitted were obliged to support each other in the future. As a consequence of these measures, which became effective in 1733, the number of free non-whites in the colony remained low for a long time to come.

Only during the period 1750-52 the planters had to pay 100 pesos to the Company for the manumission of every male slave under sixty years of age, and every female slave under fifty years. This stipulation, however, was not intended to render assistance to the freedmen, but rather as a fine for the masters.

At the time, whites were feeling uncomfortable about the rapid growth of the group of free blacks and mulattoes.7 To obtain their freedom, slaves on Curacao were not completely dependent on the decision of their masters, but also had the right of self-purchase.

Those who worked on the land had to pay 300 pesos (or approximately 750 Dutch guilders) or the equivalent in kind, and the bondsmen who worked in the town of Willemstad sometimes made similar arrangements.

Three hundred pesos were no trifle. The average slave price in Curacao between 1740 and 1795 was 233 Dutch guilders or 93 pesos. Manumission was relatively frequent among the slaves who lived on the WIC plantations.

Most freedmen settled in Willemstad sooner or later. The only reliable census of the eighteenth century, the one taken in 1789, indicates that 70 percent of the free blacks and mulattoes lived in town.g A substantial number of male freedmen worked as artisans and sailors. Around 1740, twothirds of the Curacaon mariners were made up of non-whites, who like their white colleagues were enlisted by merchants and ship captains.

Along the Spanish coasts blacks and mulattoes were usually the ones to be sent ashore in canoes, where they ran the risk of being seized by coastguards looking for Dutch smugglers. After returning to Curacao the sailors were paid off and each went his own way.

When it subsequently appeared that incidents had occurred on board, it was invariably difficult to locate the sailors again. Isaac Faesch, the island's governor between 1740 and 1758, considered it impossible to impose a regular tax on the free blacks and mulattoes, as they were "sometimes absent from the island a year and a day, hanging around here and there at unknown places.

A possible explanation is that because for many sailors trade was the only source of revenue, a slack season forced them to make a living elsewhere in the region. In addition, free blacks and mulattoes from the French, British, and Spanish Antilles temporarily found shelter on Curacao. Initially, they were ordered to leave the island, but since 1754 all free blacks and mulattoes from the English, French and Spanish colonies had to enlist for militia service, and were thus recognized for practical purposes.

Sailors did not exactly make a fortune. In the middle of the eighteenth century many seamen families had to live off a pittance of ten pesos a month. This meant that slave sailors needed at least the income of two and a half years to purchase their freedom, if their owners agreed on a manumission sum of 300 pesos.

Often, however, sailors supplemented their incomes by engaging in small trading operations, as part of Curacao's contraband trade with the Spanish colonies. For this, they incurred debts with merchants and shipowners. In times when Spanish coastguard vessels increased their vigilance, this trade was a gamble, because all products that were brought along from the Spanish ports might be lost if the ship was seized.

There were exceptions to the straitened circumstances that most free blacks and mulattoes were living in. A famous example was Antonio Beltran, since 1747 the captain of the free black guard, who bought a house with a large porch in Otrobanda, the new western quarter of Willemstad. Beltran had made his money as a captain and supercargo on the sloops and schooners of the coastal trade.

 Some of the better-off free coloreds, mostly mulattoes but also blacks, became slaveholders. Jean Rodier (acting governor in 1758-61 and 1762-64, and governor from 1764 to 1782) informed the directors of the West India Company:

There are perhaps people who want Your Honours to believe that among them [the free non-whites], there are some who have many slaves. It is true that a few female mulattoes or mustiesen, being the concubines of some fools, own a lot of slaves. but that is only temporarily, and the saying "Easily won, easily lost" applies to these people quite well. On the other hand, you will find one hundred who own one or two slaves at the most, and the rest owns none, having to work harder than slaves and being in want, especially in bad times, when there is no shipping traffic, as they owe their existence solely to that." 

Former slaves and their descendants, blacks and mulattoes alike, constituted - as elsewhere in the New World - a distinct social category, and were therefore listed under a separate heading in tax lists. Whites were usually the only ones liable for the household tax, but since 1719 free blacks and mulattoes were also assessed.

The tax lists give an impression of the island's population. Whites, including Company personnel, were divided into three classes: ten families were assessed for seven pesos, seventy-four for four pesos, and 227 for two pesos. All free non-whites were assessed for two pesos. It is clear from the lists that nuclear families (mother, father, children) were rare among the free non-whites, as is shown by the large number of single women who paid taxes: nine out of eleven free mulatto households and twenty-three out of thirty-seven free black households.

At irregular intervals, better-off free coloreds like Beltran were liable for two taxes: a poll tax for free blacks and mulattoes and a poll tax on slaves, which came to four reales (half a peso) per adult slave owned. Before 1747 both whites and free non-whites were assessed for the tax on slaves and, after a period of exemption, the directors of the WIC again proposed to collect it among the free non-whites in the 1760s.

 Jean Rodier disapproved of this idea and emphasized, as we have seen, that many families in the free non-white sector were poverty-stricken.

The other poll tax, already referred to above by Governor Faesch, was a property tax that the WIC (around 1740) wanted to levy on free non-whites exclusively. The WIC's Amsterdam Chamber took the view that "the free blacks and mulattoes living on the island are enjoying this Company's protection, and should contribute something to public welfare.

Faesch was opposed to the levy because of the difficulty of collecting the tax, as well as security reasons. He warned the Company not to alienate the free nonwhite sector, which in wartime would be vital to the island's defense. Nevertheless, 400 blacks and 140 mulattoes were assessed, but Faesch had the last word and decided not to collect and continue the exemption, as the free non-whites were on guard duty and contributed in this way to the public welfare.

 In 1769 a new policy was inaugurated. The growing number of free coloreds - by 1789 they outnumbered the whites - and the resulting increase in costs, led to resumption of the collection of the property tax. Moreover, at the end of the eighteenth century, new additional taxes - an excise on drink and a two percent tax on the sale of real estate - were levied on free blacks, mulattoes, and whites alike.

In that same year, a large majority of the population was still enslaved. In the following decades the slave population was overtaken by the free non-whites, whose numbers increased to 4,549 in 1817 and 6,531 in 1833, or 32.2% and 43.5% of the total population respectively.

On account of their African ancestry, free coloreds on Curacao - like everywhere in the Caribbean - did not enjoy the same rights as whites. If a free black or mulatto wounded or insulted a white person of irreproachable conduct, no judicial inquiry was opened, but the white man was simply taken at his word, and the alleged colored aggressor was exiled or received corporal punishment.

If a white man wounded a free black or mulatto, the victim was not allowed to call a black or mulatto witness because their testimony lacked any legal recognition. White witnesses, however, were welcome. If the white man was found guilty he had to pay a fine.

Preferably, no publicity was given to this, whereas whippings of blacks and coloreds took place in public. An obvious example of judicial inequality was a 1748 regulation banning people from sailing towards arriving ships before the shipmasters had reported themselves to the governor. Whites violating this rule had to pay twenty-five pesos, while soldiers were allowed to fire on black and mulatto offenders.

In a society based on African slavery, the idea that people of black descent constituted a kind of servant class was natural to many whites. How this view affected even the free non-whites is shown by an ordinance of 1742 that assigned them to supply clay and stones for the construction of fortifications.

Whites would never be charged with such tasks. The free non-whites were disadvantaged in other ways as well. In 1749 obstacles were put in the way of the traders among them, as they were considered to be formidable competitors of the less well-to-do Protestants.

 From then on, free blacks and mulattoes were forbidden to keep a shop in town, although they could continue to have commercial dealings in their homes and to take their merchandise downtown during the daytime. It is not clear when this measure was revoked.

Competition by non-whites became a problem for whites in the second half of the eighteenth century. Whereas up to 1787 manumission was a rarity in the plantation colony of Suriname, the commercial character of Curacao did not call for limitations on the numbers of slaves that were set free.

To the dismay of the island's authorities, frequent manumission created a relatively large group of free non-whites. Members of the Council of Curacao often complained about the difficulties they experienced in governing the island. They purported that only one out of twenty inhabitants was white, and expressed their concern about the self-assured group of free coloreds.

Due to their pride, one white man argued, none of the free coloreds wanted to be in service to somebody else, which they considered to be incompatible with their social position. They would rather suffer in poverty. According to this white individual, the free non-whites' impudence manifested itself when they gathered in groups to stroll the streets armed with sticks while singing loudly, or when they caused accidents by riding horseback along the city streets at great speed.

Apart from the free non-whites, the Company faced a slave population it did not trust, and even less so after the rebellion of 1750, in which Company slaves of the Hato plantation rose in revolt against an unpopular overseer and killed an unknown number of people, probably five to ten. The revolt was put down - mainly by the free black and mulatto militias - and thirtyfour rebels were executed and thirteen exiled.

Although none of the victims was white, this insurrection filled the whites with dread, as was shown by the measures that were taken. Gatherings of slaves were promptly prohibited, while drum beating and violin playing, traditionally viewed as seditious activities, were outlawed on penalty of either a fifty pesos fine or whipping, branding, and banishment to the saltpans of Bonaire.

In this way, an end was put to the common practice among slaves to add luster to their weddings and funerals with music. No more than six slaves a time were allowed to attend funerals, and afterwards they had to return "home" straightaway.

Moreover, they were not permitted to go out after nine o'clock in the evening. These measures were again introduced in the wake of the events that took place the day after Christmas 1760.

The governor was informed that a group of slaves was about to rise in rebellion, whereupon he dispatched a patrol of militiamen. In the Jewish quarter of Willemstad, they encountered more than one hundred blacks making music with drums and other instruments. The mere sound they produced had led to the rumor of a rebellion.

White fears again surfaced later in the 1760s, when the island's fiscal, who had to see to the observance of the laws, created quite a stir within the small white community.

He was accused of systematically refusing to deal in a serious way with white complaints about black or mulatto crimes, while a mulatto complaint about a white offence was enough to have the white man imprisoned. His policy was clearly not in line with tradition.

The whites raised a hue and cry over that. Most of them probably took the same view as a British planter who alleged in 1790 that:

"in all the islands ... I have known, both English and French, they have considered free Negroes and Mulattoes as a nuisance ... and the only advantage the Colonies can receive from them is by employing them in the defense of the Island, in case of invasion". 

While Governor Faesch and his successor Rodier agreed upon this advantage, faith in a brave free colored performance in case of a foreign invasion was not shared by all white citizens of Curacao. One of them expressed his fears of a repetition of a strategy that had proved successful in the Seven Years' War.

During the siege of Havana, the English had announced that free blacks and mulattoes who took up arms against them would be enslaved again together with their wives and children. Upon hearing this, the free non-whites reportedly left the city in force. Rodier, however, was more afraid of Spain than of England.

In 1780 he argued that in the event of a Spanish attack, Curac,ao was not able to conscript more than six to seven hundred whites, while they could not rely on slaves or free coloreds, since they were "blind Roman Catholics" and feit much affection for both Spanish clerics and the Spanish nation.

At times, the authorities were indeed worried by the massive black and mulatto affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church. Since 1661 Catholic priests had, on certain conditions, been allowed to preach in Curacao. Between 1680 and 1705 no less than fifty-five of them came to the island.26 Some arrived merely to baptize the newly born, while others settled on the island.

Unlike the Protestant ministers, these priests directed their efforts towards the Africans and their descendants. As time went by the Protestant authorities of Curacao found themselves governing a predominantly Catholic population. It took considerable time before the WIC directors were informed about this situation.

In 1740 Governor Faesch pointed out to them that almost all blacks and mulattoes, either slave or free, were Roman Catholics, "this religion being more congenial because of its ceremonies, while its priests take more trouble attracting them than our clergymen do.

The WIC directors were alarmed and took up their pens, assigning the Rev. Wigboldus Rasvelt to pay special attention to the conversion of blacks and mulattoes, and advising him to set an example with a pious and edifying way of life. Rasvelt responded that there was an unfair competition going on:

It is, indeed, no surprise that Father Cloeck [the Catholic priest] has converted many blacks to Christianity (if those who don't know anything about the faith in Christ, and at the very most mumble some prayers, though without knowledge or attention, can bear the name of Christians) as it is well-known that ex navitate, and as it were ex natura, blacks are Roman Catholics or have a leaning to it. That is why a priest will baptize a bozal [a recently arrived slave] ... for two reales. if he can only say some common prayers, and has a godfather and godmother. even though he does not understand the religion at all.

In the end, the secular arm acquiesced in the general non-white adherence to Roman Catholicism. In the closing years of the eighteenth century, the Curacaoan governor Johannes de Veer even opposed the sending of an Anglican parson. It would only disturb the peace:

All blacks in this land. slave or free. profess the Roman Catholic religion and there - fore they are Christians. a faith that in view of the common weal of this land is more suitable and beneficial to that kind of people than the Protestant or Lutheran one, because the Roman Catholic priests manage to keep them in check, owing to a more despotic authority, as a result of which there is. until today, among those people not even the semblance of insurgency. which there is in the colonies of Suriname. Essequebo. Berbice etc. where the slaves are mainly left in their pagan opinions and are not given the slightest instruction in the Christian religion. so there has to be continuous rebelliousness, while the slave owners fancy they may treat these poor creatures as animals.

Ironically, only seven months after these words were written down, in August 1795 a large rebellion broke out among Curacaoan blacks and mulattoes. Between two hundred and three hundred joined an unsuccessful movement aimed at putting an end to taxes and slavery.

Several rebels were killed in battle, or executed afterwards. As underlined by De Veer, Curacao and Suriname differed markedly in terms of their respective numbers of non-white Christians. In the eyes of Suriname's colonists, no slaves qualified for Christianization. Up to the 1820s, planters preferred that their bondsmen stuck to pagan beliefs, which they used as another justification for slavery.

In Curacao, planters initially watched with indifference how Catholicism became an important constituent of non-white culture. The colonial authorities were not troubled by conversion to Roman Catholicism, even though some officials were worried by the regular church attendance of blacks and mulattoes, fearing that large meetings could lead to rebellion.

The conversion of the Africans and their descendants reinforced latinization of Curacao's population, since there were many Spaniards and a few Frenchmen among the priests on the island. The blacks and mulattoes had a distinct preference for the Spanish priests, to the great dissatisfaction of the Dutch Catholic Church wardens who depicted the Spaniards as "good-for nothings. When thereupon a Dutch priest arrived, the bishop of Caracas was angered, claiming religious authority in Curacao.

 Through diplomatic channels, Spain now requested the States General to allow the bishop of Caracas to appoint the island's priests, if only to solve the language problem. 

The Dutch priest wasn't exactly fluent in Spanish, and therefore his contacts with the faithful left much to be desired.32 The decision in 1776 of the Dutch Franciscans to preach in Papiamento should therefore be seen as a Dutch bid to gain the confidence of the faithful. Spanish priests, however, continued to arrive. Father Theodorus Brouwer in 1785 complained that they turned up from time to time, saying Mass, preaching, baptizing, and marrying.

This meant a substantial financial loss for Brouwer's mission, which missed out on 50 Dutch guilders for every celebrated marriage. The black and mulatto Catholics - white Catholics constituted only a small minority - did not welcome all priests. They wanted somebody they respected, like Miguel Grimon in the early 1750s, whom they almost worshipped.

The religious leader had to be of unimpeachable conduct and should not administer the sacraments in a drunken stupor, as once had happened.34 When in 1747 the blacks and mulattoes found out that their priest, Michael Roldan, was living in sin, they demanded he be removed from office.

The church wardens called him to account and the priest immediately sent his woman away. Unsatisfied, the blacks and mulattoes unrestrainedly expressed their dislike in church on Sunday, and the following day they assembled in large numbers in front of the church building

committing all sorts of mischief, and they even tried to break down the doors with chopping-knives and other weapons in order to get hold of the priest, who managed to fiee and hide with one of his neighbors.

Escorted by the bailiff and his servants, Roldan could later be brought back to his church. There was more to this incident than just moral indignation of the blacks and mulattoes.

It so happened that there was a second priest on the island, a certain Salvator de Guebarza, who had been expelled two years earlier for obscure reasons, probably seditiousness. He came back and built up a host of followers among the blacks and mulattoes by treating them on the same footing as the whites. Roldan and Guebarza were avowed enemies.

Obviously, white, black, and mulatto are relative categories. As Gad Heuman has observed for Jamaica, continuous intercourse between whites and non-whites eventually made free coloreds form "a separate group ... with their own social hierarchies and a specific nomenclature to account for their varied racial origins." In the case of the free non-whites of Curacao, that prosperity and somatic traits tended to correlate, can only be endorsed.

In 1752 some members of the island's Council drew attention to a number of families with African origins that were not only well-to-do and powerful, but also had forged marital bonds with whites, as a result of which, according to the councillors, they should now be treated as the whites' equals.

The acceptance of this mulatto upper class in white circles was not accepted quietly, as is clear from a dispute in 1769 between the WIC's military commanders and the civil militia officers. The bone of contention was which organization could incorporate a group of twenty to thirty soldiers who were the offspring of either whites and mulattoes (so-called mustiesen), of mustiesen and mulattoes, or mustiesen and sambos (the children of mulattoes 'and blacks). Since Isaac Faesch's government, the free black and free mulatto militias had come under the jurisdiction of military commanders.

 The commanders wanted to keep the near-whites within the mulatto militia, but the white militia officers also laid claim to them, arguing that they were not real mulattoes. The white commanders eventually won the argument in most cases and by 1789,214 mustiesen were part of a 1,063 men strong white militia unit. Still, the authorities questioned their reliability in the event of a Spanish attack.

Free mulattoes had a great store on being considered as mustiesen, aiming to climb the social ladder, at least some of them looked down upon the free blacks in the same way as whites generally did. This was obvious, for instance, from their claim to precedence over the blacks on the day Governor Faesch was installed in 1740.

 The former governor had separated mulattoes and blacks on duty, creating distinct militias. The first time for the two corps to perform as such was at the inauguration of the new governor. Immediately, problems arose because the free blacks and the free mulattoes wanted to march ahead of each other in the parade. The mulattoes did not go on record as saying that they were entitled to have preference because of their lighter complexion, but this surely must have been one of their arguments. They may also have stressed their greater prosperity.

The blacks, interestingly enough, countered with two arguments in their own favor. Governor Faesch reported that they "argued that they should be considered superior to the mulattoes, because their race had produced kings, and besides, without blacks there would never have been any mulattoes.

For some time after, there was intense competition between two unidentified groups of free non-whites, probably divided into blacks and mulattoes, who came to blows at the slightest provocation. In the slave rebellion of 1795 the free non-whites were again divided amongst themselves.

On the one hand, free blacks and mulattoes were instrumental in spreading French revolutionary ideas, while on the other hand, the contribution of their respective militias in crushing the revolt was indispensable. There was no division along color lines in this case; instead, the dividing line was right across free nonwhite ranks, with blacks and mulattoes in both camps.

Throughout the eighteenth century, hooliganism and inflammatory actions were perpetrated concertedly by blacks and mulattoes. Such deviant behavior by mulattoes has been explained by Hoetink as part of his theory on Curaçao's ingrained patterns of slave holder behavior and slave behavior, two complementary complexes of ideas and rules concerning the suitable attitudes of these groups.

According to Hoetink, a majority of the mulattoes lived outside this system and were therefore insecure and unpredictable. Similar behavior by free blacks cannot, of course, be explained in this way.

Perhaps an economie explanation would do better. Taking into account the peculiar nature of Curacao's economy, in which plantation labor was not important, and many people of African descent, both free and slave, could make a living in a rather independent way, the unpredictability of black behavior could have resulted from the conflicting demands of the pattern of slave behavior on the one hand, and the lack of servitude in everyday life on the other.

In summary, it may be said that Curacao's mercantile character léft its mark on the island's demographic and judicial divisions and resulting social relations. The white minority viewed blacks and mulattoes with a mixture of fear and indifference. Feeling uncomfortable about the non-whites' numerical superiority, they were alarmed at the drop of a hat.

Nevertheless, although some prohibitions were issued, the non-whites were not excessively burdened with all sorts of restrictive laws. Not thwarted in their religious affiliation, blacks and mulattoes adopted Catholicism, which became an essential element of their culture.

To some extent, blacks and mulattoes were also left to their devices in the economie sphere. A good number of slaves were sent out to earn a living as artisans or sailors. If these examples of white lack of care were not unknown to plantation colonies, they were certainly less significant.

The same was true for Curacao's manumission rate, which eclipsed that of Suriname by far. In general, the manumission rate in Curacao was more comparable to the situation in the Spanish colonies than that in plantation societies like Jamaica and St. Domingue.

Consequently, a large group of free non-whites was created who competed with less affluent white traders. Obstacles were put in the way of these freedmen, which made them share the fate of their peers in other slave societies.

They were no slaves, nor were they free, but neither did they resign themselves to their fate. They manifested themselves when the occasion arose, sometimes vis-a-vis the whites, and at other times amongst themselves.

Their growing numbers and assertiveness alarmed the whites, who nonetheless as time went by were not able to get around admission in their midst of those mulattoes that were their equals in terms of social status.