Free Blacks and Coloreds and the Administration of Justice in Eighteenth-Century Curaçao

Two case studies show the daily practice of justice regarding free Blacks and Coloreds in Curacao and the functioning of the early modern Dutch legal system pertaining to colonial and slavery-related matters. According to the author, both cases reveal that the application of the law, when free non-Whites were involved, was apparently open to interpretation and that there was a divergence in this respect between the colony and the metropole. Author assesses this conflict between the theory of the law and the practice of the administration of justice in the colonies.