6.3.1 Jan Nepveu’s Request: Does the Metropolitan Soil Render Free?
The only time when the States General considered the difficulties related to the status of slaves who had come to the Republic seems to have been created by its own imprudence. In February 1775, the governor of Surinam, Jan Nepveu, sent a request for clarification to the States General.
In the past few months, he had been faced with two similar cases. In the first one, the Surinam slave Andries had claimed that he was free after having travelled to the metropolis. He had left his master and had already become a wage labourer for another citizen of the colony. The widow of his former master was flabbergasted by this claim and asked the governor whether it was truly so that slaves who had travelled to the metropolis became free, as she had never heard this claim before. The second case explained where the idea came from. The creditors, the money lending company Valckenier and Du Quesne, of a deceased plantation owner called Thomas Wybrand van Rees wanted to sequestrate several slaves who belonged to the deceased owner’s mortgaged plantation. However, the widow of the plantation holder refused to turn over two slaves, known as Blondin and Sabina. These two were probably amongst her favourites. She justified her refusal by referring to the fact that the two slaves fell under the scope of a resolution of the States General, which had purportedly declared that slaves who had come to the United Provinces became free upon arrival.33 This case must have been typical for its time, as the Amsterdam stock exchange had suffered a dramatic crash in 1773, which led to a string of bankruptcy and sequestrations in Surinam.34The governor said that two resolutions of the States General, dated 9 August 1771 and 23 June 1773 were the source of this confusion.35 In both cases, some individual slaves were declared free, after they had been in the metropolis with the consent of their masters.
As this was obviously causing troubles in Surinam, Nepveu wanted to know whether it was truly the case that all slaves who had once travelled to the Republic became free. If so, were these blacks to be treated as being fully free (“vrye Lieden”) or solely as manumitted persons (Gemanumitteerden), against whom some legal obligations could still be imposed?What were these two resolutions about? Both of them can be found in the archives of the States General, as they were both discussed during one of its meetings.
The first resolution, dated 9 August 1771, related to a woman called Marytje Criool and her daughter Jacoba Leilad (who, the source indicates, was a mulatto).36 Both of them were originally slaves of Willem Hendrik van Steenberg, who was active in one of the most important organs of state of the Surinam colony, the Raad van Politie. Criool asked the States General to send her letters confirming her freedom, in order for her to be able to enjoy the same freedoms in Surinam as freeborn persons, and in order for Steenberg not to be able to claim her back. We do not know what the source of her apparent conflict with her former owner was, but we do know why she claimed her freedom: she had set foot in the Dutch republic with her master before. The States General had decided to hand over this case to its lawyers, who subsequently seem to have given a positive advice in favour of the slave’s freedom, most likely on the basis of Criool having been in the Netherlands.37 As a result, we find the States General confirming that Criool and her daughter immediately and legally received their freedom (“daar door haar vrijheid dadelijk en wetteglijk verkreegen hebben”) because they had been on the soil of the republic with permission of their master (“met kennis en bewilliging van haren toenmaligen Heer en Eigenaar den voorn. Willem Hendrik van Steenberg”). As a result, the two of them did not need letters to confirm their freedom, they had been free from the moment they had set foot in the Republic and had to be legally considered as manumitted persons back in Surinam.
This is a rather general confirmation of the freedom principle, with an exception for stowaways who obviously did not get permission from their masters.38The second resolution of 23 June 1773 reads as a variation on the first one. This time, the case related to Jan Nepveu’s predecessor as governor of Surinam until 1770, Wigbold Crommelin. He had taken two of his slaves, called Christiaan Africaanus and Anna Elisabeth van Chattillon, with him to the Republic in 1770. Back in Surinam, the by then ex-governor decided to give freedom to his slaves. Therefore, he asked the States General to send him letters confirming the freedom of these two slaves. The text learns us that the Sociëteit van Suriname, whose opinion was asked by the States General, clearly had some misgivings (“bedenkelijkheeden”) with doing so. However, the States General decided to stick with the 1771 precedent, reiterating that freedom letters were not needed for slaves that had set foot in the Republic with the permission of their masters.39
Although Nepveu’s request was sent to the States General, we find it discussed by the States of Holland. This should not surprise us too much. Holland paid for more than half of the national finances, and was the pre-eminent power in the States General. Therefore, many affairs were discussed concurrently by the States of Holland and the Generality, or even first by the States of Holland. In the latter case, the issue would only be referred to the Generality after it (mostly informally) became clear what the views of Holland were.40
When the States of Holland learned of Nepveu’s request early in 1775, they decided to send this issue to its Gecommitteerde Raad, after which pensionaris Bosschaert reported his findings to the States of Holland on 19 July 1775.41
Bosschaert started by pointing out that the two aforementioned resolutions of the States General were given in particular cases, and definitely not intended to serve as general policy.
This despite the fact that on their face value, the lawyers of the States General did seem to believe they were proceeding upon general principles, namely that a slave coming to the Republic with the permission of his master was deemed to be free. That being said, Bosschaert considered that it would be a good idea to make guidelines, so that the status of slaves who had been to the motherland became clear once and for all. For the moment, there was no legislation on the issue, although even Bosschaert acknowledged that there was a clear legal tradition in the United Provinces which held that all persons in his country were free (“volgens de seeden, maximes en constitutie deeser Landen”). Slaves enjoyed the same freedom as everyone else whilst they were here, and they could have themselves declared free in court if the master opposed this.42At the same time, he also held that if these slaves returned to the colonies, their residence in the Republic had not made them eo ipso free forever. In fact, the idea of freedom was trumped here by another interest, namely the property rights of masters. Bosschaert’s theory was that, whereas the rights attached to slavery could not be exercised in the Republic, the slave did not permanently “lose” his status because of a stay in the metropolis, and the rights of the master were “re-attached” to the slave when he returned to the colonies. This stood in contrast to the views of the Generality lawyers, who in their two resolutions had clearly argued in favour of full and permanent liberty for slaves who had come to the Republic with the permission of their masters. Bosschaert stated that this was a clear misuse of the authorities (quoting Voet, Groenewegen van der Made and the customs of Antwerp and Amsterdam). He believed that these scholars did not actually pronounce themselves on the issue of colonial slaves coming to the metropolis and were simply referring to each other as an authority for their statements.
He proposed that the 1636 Instructie voor de Reegering in Brazil, which referred to Roman law as the substantive provisions of slave law, was of much more relevance here. Bosschaert did agree that the rights attached to slavery could not be exercised in the Republic but he had an important proviso: a judge could decide to have a slave sent back to the colonies, notwithstanding the idea of the freedom principle, and he did not believe this to be in conflict with the idea of Dutch liberty.43Bosschaert then proposed a concept-Placaet to solve all these issues. In his opinion, it had to take four factors into consideration: whether slaves came here with or without the knowledge of their masters, whether those who had permission intended to stay here or not, whether their masters had liberated them before sending them to the motherland or not, and whether the slaves were mortgaged or not.44 Finally, to answer the governor’s request, he advised that the slaves referred to were only to be treated as manumitted persons.
We can only make educated guesses why Holland wanted to make severe modifications to the pre-existing freedom principle. It is very possible that the interests of the Sociëteit van Suriname, which already grumbled in 1773 upon the release of ex-governor Crommelin’s two slaves, might have been pivotal. As pointed out, one of the three shareholders of the Sociëteit was the city of Amsterdam itself. If they were particularly annoyed by the possibility of slaves asserting their freedom simply for having been in the Republic, this could well explain why they pushed for the placaet. Likewise, many of the Surinam slaveholders had outstanding debts with Amsterdam banks. The reference to mortgaged slaves might thus have been directly inspired by the case of the creditors hoping to sequestrate the slaves of the mortgaged plantation. Theoretically speaking, in the wake of the banking crisis of 1773, masters could try to avoid sequestration of slaves by sending them to the motherland and claiming that they had become free, as the widow Nepveu seems to have attempted. Given that a whopping 81% of loans committed to Surinam planters between 1766 and 1775 came from Amsterdam, and the second biggest lender was also a Holland city (Rotterdam),45 the States of Holland clearly had an interest in limiting the freedom principle.