Curaçao in the Age of Revolutions, 1795–1800 Caribbean Series Series Editors Rosemarijn Hoefte Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies Gert Oostindie Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies Editorial Board J. Michael Dash New York University Ada Ferrer New York University Richard Price em. College of William & Mary Kate Ramsey University of Miami VOLUME 30 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/cs Curaçao in the Age of Revolutions, 1795–1800 Edited by Wim Klooster Gert Oostindie LEIDEN • BOSTON 2014 This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NonDerivative 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0) License, which permits any non-commercial use, and distribution, provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited. This paperback was originally published by KITLV Press, Leiden, The Netherlands, in 2011 under ISBN 978-90-6718-380-2. Original cover design: Creja ontwerpen, Leiderdorp, The Netherlands Library of Congress Control Number: 2014933180 ISSN 0921-9781 ISBN 978-90-04-27346-7 (paperback) ISBN 978-90-04-25358-2 (e-book) Copyright 2011 by the Editors and Authors This work is published by Koninklijke Brill NV. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect the publication against unauthorized use and to authorize dissemination by means of offprints, legitimate photocopies, microform editions, reprints, translations, and secondary information sources, such as abstracting and indexing services including databases. Requests for commercial re-use, use of parts of the publication, and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents preface vii 1 slave resistance, colour lines, and the impact of the french and haitian revolutions in curaçao 1 Gert Oostindie 2 slave rebellion during the age of revolution 23 David Geggus 3 the rising expectations of free and enslaved blacks in the greater caribbean 57 Wim Klooster 4 inter-colonial networks and revolutionary ferment in eighteenth-century curaçao and tierra firme 75 Linda M. Rupert 5 revolution and politics in venezuela and curaçao, 1795-1800 97 Ramón Aizpurua 6 the patriot coup d’état in curaçao, 1796 123 Karwan Fatah-Black 7 patriots, privateers and international politics: the myth of the conspiracy of jean baptiste tierce cadet 141 Han Jordaan contributors 171 index 173 Preface This is a book about five years that rocked Curaçao. From 1795 through 1800, a combination of internal and external factors pro- duced a series of revolts in which free and enslaved islanders par- ticipated with a range of objectives. The opening salvo for these tumultuous five years was provided by a major slave revolt that broke out in August 1795. While this revolt is a well-known episode in Curaçaoan history, its wider Caribbean and Atlantic context is much less known. Nor have past historians sketched a clear picture of the turbulent five years that followed. It is in these dark corners that this volume aims to shed light. The events fall squarely within the Age of Revolutions, the period that began with the onset of the American Revolution in 1775, was punctuated by the demise of the ancien régime in France, saw the establishment of a black republic in Haiti, and witnessed the collapse of Spanish rule in mainland America. Some consider this age to have ceased with the defeat of the Spanish armies in Peru (1824); others see 1848 as a bookend. Nor were revolutionary changes confined to the Atlantic world. A growing number of histo- rians portray the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a transition that was global in scale. This ‘World Crisis’ was not just political and ideological in nature, but also economic and cultural (Armitage and Subrahmanyam 2010; Bayly 1989). Gert Oostindie’s introduction establishes the parameters for the essays that follow, synthesizing the salient elements of eighteenth- century Curaçao’s social and political history. Oostindie argues that Curaçao’s commercial character left its imprint on both the resi- dent and the floating population. The port of Willemstad offered free and enslaved workers access to news and ideas from afar and enabled sailors direct contacts with numerous parts of the Carib- bean and coastal North and South America. It was therefore no surprise that the Age of Revolutions also touched on Curaçao. But while the Age of Revolutions was a major watershed elsewhere in the Atlantic world, the long-term impact of Curaçao’s riotous fin de siècle was modest – even if unlike previous slave revolts, the 1795 insurrection had a clear ideological dimension. vii | Preface These previous slave rebellions had been much smaller in scope and scale. In his contribution, David Geggus focuses on both the 1795 revolt and the events that transpired in 1800, when many Curaçaoan slaves sided with French invaders from Guadeloupe. What set these two rebellions apart from most slave revolts in the Americas, Geggus contends, was the large number of participants. Having assembled information on as many as 180 revolts, Geggus is on solid ground with his assertion that black Curaçaoans staged two of the eight largest revolts during the Age of Revolutions. Based on his database, Geggus reveals to what extent slaves throughout the Americas were influenced by the three great upris- ings that occurred in the last quarter of the century. If the Ameri- can, French, and Haitian revolutions all left their traces, the French may have had the largest impact, and not only because of its liber- tarian message. It also enabled slaves in many parts of the Americas to rebel by weakening colonial power structures that created divi- sions among the free populations. Geggus notes that the Haitian Revolution may have been a source of inspiration, but practical aid from the Haitians was hard to come by. Its divided leadership shied away from exporting the revolution. Apart from the shockwaves that these revolutions sent, Geggus stresses another factor that explains slave revolts during the Age of Revolutions. Many reflected an awareness of the antislavery move- ment in Britain and of reformism in various imperial centres. Wim Klooster takes up this point in his essay, arguing that slaves appro- priated texts and ideas emanating from Europe, in particular as they interpreted news about colonial reforms as confirmation of a ‘monarchist’ rumor. According to this rumor, the king had set them free, but local slave owners and authorities refused to honor the royal decree. Klooster maintains that the revolutions also had a more direct influence in the Greater Caribbean on free people of color than on enslaved blacks. In many places, free blacks and mulattoes openly embraced the message of the Declaration of the Rights of Man adopted by the French National Assembly in 1789, a seminal manifesto defining fundamental human rights. Linda Rupert zooms in on the close historical relations between Curaçao and Tierra Firme. She notes that Curaçao remained in Tierra Firme’s religious realm after the Dutch conquest, with Span- ish Catholic priests administering to the spiritual needs of Cura- çao’s population, especially its black majority. At the same time, Curaçaoans made Tierra Firme into their economic hinterland by establishing intensive and often illegal commercial ties with the mainland. As these ties expanded and were consolidated, runaway slaves increasingly availed themselves of the smuggling routes to viii Preface | seek freedom in Tierra Firme. Their preferred destination was Coro, where, as in Curaçao, a large slave revolt took place in 1795. One of Coro’s rebel leaders, Ramón Aizpurua tells us, was a former slave from Curaçao who had earlier obtained his freedom by fleeing to the Spanish Main. Aizpurua investigates the politi- cal links between the two areas in the period 1795-1799, when two major republican conspiracies were set up in Venezuela, featuring motley crews indeed. White officials, merchants, and soldiers, as well as mulatto militiamen, were involved in the 1797 conspiracy, while alongside privateers from Guadeloupe, sailors from Curaçao took part in the 1799 Venezuelan plot. While these conspiracies fizzled, a genuine coup d’état was car- ried out on Curaçao in late 1796. Karwan Fatah-Black shows that the Military Committee behind this coup could count on popular support. In the previous months, Curaçaoans had begun to recruit leaders and catalog demands without consulting the authorities across the Atlantic. Once the take-over had succeeded, the new leaders issued a declaration that started, tellingly, with the words ‘Freedom, Equality, Fraternity’. The coup prompted a naval retali- ation from the so-called Batavian Republic, the Dutch metropolis that ironically was a de facto vassal state of France. The final essay in this volume, by Han Jordaan, analyzes the impact of international politics on Curaçao in the final three years of the century. In these years, France and the United States fought an undeclared maritime war (the ‘Quasi-War’). As leaders of a colony of the Batavian Republic, Curaçao’s authorities had little room for manoeuvre in their relationship with the French. From their headquarters in Guadeloupe, the French engaged in a pri- vateering war against U.S. ships, for which they used Curaçao as a base. Jordaan shows that the Curaçaoan government was caught in the middle, trying to remain on good terms with North American traders while not alienating the French. In 1800, the French took their war to the shores of Curaçao, as soldiers disembarked from a fleet of five ships to pre-empt an attack on the island by their other enemy, the British. After a British frigate broke the French blockade, Curaçao ended up in British hands.