Linguistic evidence and historiography:
the selection of slaves on Curaçao, 1650-1700
Bart Jacobs
Universität Konstanz & Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
Drawing on recent linguistic investigations on the origins of Papiamentu, this article
aims to cast new light on an intriguing but hitherto unresolved socio-historical aspect
of the initial decades of the Curaçaoan transit slave trade: the selection of slaves. In
answer to the controversial question which slaves were kept on Curaçao rather than
resold to third parties, we take a look at, and summarize, the body of linguistic
evidence that Papiamentu is genetically related to Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole.
This evidence, we believe, warrants the assumption that slaves from the Upper
Guinea region were particularly sought out by Curaçaoan colonizers in the period
between ca. 1650 and 1700. This assumption, in turn, allows us to hypothesize more
effectively about the reasons why certain slaves were more fashionable than others in
that particular period of Curaçao's history.
Keywords: Curaçao, transit slave trade, Papiamentu, Upper Guinea Portuguese
Creole, skin colour, Christianization.
1. Introduction
This article provides an example of how linguistic evidence can cast light on
nebulous historical issues. 1 While historical documentation on the early
decades of the Curaçaoan slave trade is scarce, the article shows how
linguistic data can be used to fill in some of the blanks. Drawing on recent
linguistic investigations on the origins of Papiamentu2, the article aims to cast
new light on an intriguing but hitherto unresolved socio-historical aspect of
the initial decades of the Curaçaoan slave trade: the selection of slaves. While
17th-century Curaçao was primarily a transit slave port whose incoming slaves
were subsequently resold and/or redistributed to third parties, slaves were also
needed on the island itself in order for it to become self-supplying. The
1
This article is a modified and elaborated version of arguments presented in Jacobs (2012a).
Papiamentu is the official language of the Leeward Dutch Antilles, which include Aruba,
Bonaire and Curaçao, three islands situated just off the coast of Venezuela and jointly referred
to as the ABC-Islands. Furthermore, an important diaspora community of speakers resides in
the Netherlands. The language has an estimated 270.000 speakers.
2
Revista de Crioulos de Base Lexical Portuguesa e Espanhola 3 (2012), 1-19
ISSN 1646-7000 © Revista de Crioulos de Base e Espanhola Lexical Portuguesa
The selection of slaves on Curaçao, 1650-1700
following bipartite question, to be addressed in this article, thus emerges:
which slaves were preferred to remain on the island rather than to be resold to
third parties and which criteria underlay this preference?
I first briefly sketch the development of Curaçao’s slave trade economy
in the period from roughly 1650 to 1700 (§2). In §3, the socio-historical issue
that is central in this article, i.e. the selection of slaves on Curacao in the
second half of the 17th century, is introduced. I then summarize the results of
recent historical-linguistic research into the origins of Papiamentu and explain
what it tells us in terms of which slaves were preferred for Curaçao (§4).
Following this, §5 discusses four criteria which I assume are of particular
importance in understanding why these slaves were preferred over others (§5).
Section 6 provides some final considerations.
2. The development of Curaçao’s slave trade economy
Although 1499 was the year of the discovery of the ABC Islands by Spain, the
islands were actively colonized and commercially exploited only after 1634,
which is when the Dutch West India Company (WIC) rather effortlessly took
control of the islands, forcing a small contingent of Spanish soldiers to
abandon them and re-settle on the Venezuelan mainland. Some Amerindians
present at the time were allowed to remain on the islands. Nonetheless,
historians and linguists agree that “The demographic as well as the linguistic
history of the ABC Islands starts from scratch in 1634”3 (Kramer 2004: 108).
Note that the present article is concerned exclusively with Curaçao, as
it was there that the WIC built its headquarters and developed the slave trade
and, indeed, where Papiamentu emerged, spreading to Aruba and Bonaire only
towards the latter part of the 18th century. Initially, Curaçao served the WIC
as a naval base only, but the slave trade increased in the 1650s. The island’s
slave-trade-based economy grew exponentially in subsequent decades owing
to several (overlapping) factors including:
the loss of the Dutch holdings in Brazil in 1654, causing the migration of
Sephardic Jews (often via Amsterdam) to Curaçao and an increased
concentration of WIC activity on Curaçao;
3
Original quote: “Die Bevölkerungs- wie die Sprachgeschichte der ABC-Inseln beginnt 1634
auf dem Nullpunkt”
2
Bart Jacobs
the Portuguese rebellion against the Spanish Crown in 1640, enabling
the Dutch WIC to become the principal slave suppliers for the Spanish
American colonies;
the commercial paralysis of Cartagena from the 1640s onwards due to
the aforementioned Portuguese rebellion (Castillo Mathieu 1982; Böttcher
1995);
the Spanish loss of Jamaica to the English (Klooster 1998:106),
increasing the importance of Curaçao for the supply of slaves to Spanish
America;
acquisition of the 1662 asiento, which sealed the Dutch WIC’s role as
principal provider of slaves to Spanish America (Hartog 1968:163).
Curaçao’s booming slave trade came to a halt in the early 1700s when the
Dutch lost the aforementioned asiento to supply the Spanish colonies with
slaves (Hartog 1968 Ch. 7; Postma 1990:50; Klooster 1998:118).4
The present article is concerned exclusively with this initial period (i.e.
the second half of the 17th century). It is clearly no coincidence that this
period is generally (and correctly, I believe) considered to be the period in
which Papiamentu emerged on Curaçao as a vehicle of interethnic
communication (e.g. Joubert & Perl 2007: 139; Maurer 1986: 97; 1988: 2;
Portilla 2008: 165; Bartens 1996: 247, Kouwenberg & Muysken 1995: 205;
Munteanu 1996: 84; Fouse 2002: 83).5
The historical documentation of this early period, however, is
extremely fragmentary, owing to the bankruptcy of the First Dutch WIC in
1674 and the subsequent destruction of records pertaining to the Chamber of
Amsterdam, which was in charge of the ABC Islands: “Neglect and,
regretfully, destruction of documents are the main reasons for our lack of
knowledge today of the First West India Company’s history in New
Netherlands, the Caribbean area and, in particular, of the settlements on
Curaçao” (Römer, in the preface of Gehring & Schiltkamp 1987; cf. Moraes
4
The asiento was awarded to the French according to Postma (1990:50), but to the English
according to Klooster (1998:118).
5
That by the early 18th century Papiamentu had indeed established itself in Curaçao as the
dominant speech variety of the slave population is suggested by a reference to a ‘broken
Spanish’ spoken among the Curaçaoan slave population in the travel accounts of a certain
Father Alexius Schabel who visited Curaçao in 1704. Furthermore, the first written attestation
of Papiamentu, parts of a love letter written by a Sephardic Jew in 1775, shows that by that
time Papiamentu had already fully stabilized and spread from the African slave population to
parts of the European colonial upper class (Wood 1972; Kramer 2008).
3
The selection of slaves on Curaçao, 1650-1700
1995:319; Moraes 1998a:317). While scholars agree that Curaçao drew its
slaves not from one particular area but from the whole of West Africa (i.e.
Senegambia, the Gold Coast, the Slave Coast, the Niger Delta area, as well as
present-day Congo and Angola; see, for instance, Parkvall 2000:136, 137;
Postma 1990:112; van Welie 2008:55), up to now very little has been known
about the origins of the first generations of Curaçaoan slaves, i.e. of those
slaves that were selected to remain on the island in the early period (16501700) thus constituting the founder population of Curaçao’s slave society.
3. On the selection of slaves on Curaçao, 1650-1700
As noted, in the period at issue (i.e. the second half of the 17th century), the
Dutch WIC had gotten hold of the highly profitable asiento to supply the
Spanish New World colonies with slaves. However, as well as the Spanish, the
French and the English colonies in the Caribbean initially relied on slave
supplies from the Dutch (Parkvall 2000: 126, 127; Rawley & Behrendt 2005:
74). As a consequence, the central role of Curaçao in the second half the 17th
century was that of a transit slave port, meaning that the vast majority of the
slaves shipped to Curaçao were held in slave camps and subsequently
redistributed to third parties. Except for their short ‘layover’ at Curaçao and
their impact on the island economy, most of these Africans quickly
disappeared from the Dutch colonial realm. And while this transit trade
enhanced the historic reputation of the Dutch as slave traders, the slaves
themselves ended up in Spanish, not Dutch colonies (van Welie 2008: 62)
For Curaçao to become self-supplying, the WIC officials as well as the
Sephardic Jews (i.e. the two principal colonizing and thus slave holding
powers on Curaçao) soon also needed slaves to remain on the island, mainly to
do construction work in the urban area of Willemstad (the capital of Curaçao),
to work on farms, and particularly to labor as domestic help. The fact remains,
however, that, in the period that interests us (1650-1700), the fate of the vast
majority of slaves was to be (re)sold to third parties in the Caribbean; only a
relative minority of slaves remained on the island.
The state of affairs described above raises the following two closely
related questions:
(1) Which slaves were chosen to be kept on the island rather than to be resold?
(2) Why were these particular slaves preferred and not others?
4
Bart Jacobs
These questions have of course been raised in the literature before, but, at least
in the case of Curaçao, have never been satisfactorily answered. One
complicating factor is that, as Postma (1990: 106) notes, “such preferences
might differ from one market area to another, and also from one time to
another”. An additional and obvious disadvantage is the aforementioned lack
of historical records of the relevant period as a direct result of the First Dutch
WIC’s bankruptcy. Although, as noted, there is agreement that slaves traded
on Curaçao were drawn from all over the African West Coast, scholars have
hitherto remained fully in the dark as to which of those slaves actually
remained on Curaçao rather than being (re)sold to other parties: “The question
as to why certain enslaved people were kept on the island while others were
transported is a difficult one to answer due to the lack of available historical
sources” (Allen 2007:68). Hoetink (1958: 69) is more pessimistic still: “The
question of positive or negative selection of the Curaçaoan negro slaves
cannot be answered due to a lack of data”6.
Here, however, due to the lack of explicit historical sources, the input that
linguistics can have to historiography becomes evident. First, though it might
seem obvious, it is important to stress that Papiamentu arose on Curaçao as the
language of the slaves, even though it rapidly spread to all other segments of
the population. 7 This logically means that insights into the origins of
Papiamentu can inform us about the origins of the first slaves brought to
Curaçao. Similarly obvious, and important to stress, is that Papiamentu most
likely emerged not among the export slaves awaiting transhipment in the
transit camps such as Zuurzak and St. Joris, but rather in the interior, i.e.
among the slaves that were kept on Curaçao to work in domestic and
agricultural service.8 Put differently, the origins of Papiamentu may provide
some answers to question (1).
6
Original quote: “De vraag naar positieve of negatieve selectie der Curaçaose negerslaven
kan bij gebrek aan gegevens niet beantwoord worden”
7
This is suggested, first of all, by historical accounts such as Schabel’s (1704, mentioned in
§2) or another from 1769 (see Hartog 1968:157) in which the creole is explicitly linked to the
slaves, but it can also logically be inferred from the fact that the Europeans (i.e. the Dutch and
the Sephardic Jews) could have had recourse to several more prestigious languages (Dutch,
Spanish, and/or Portuguese) in order to communicate among one another. A further indication
is the name of the creole: Papiamentu is derived from the Spanish/Portuguese verb papia ‘to
chatter, babble, rant’ and thus means ‘the act of chattering/babbling’. If Papiamentu had
emerged among the European colonizers, such a derogatory name would not be expected.
8
While there is no concrete evidence for this scenario, I assume that if the language had
emerged among the slaves residing in the transit camps such as Zuurzak and St. Joris, the
5
The selection of slaves on Curaçao, 1650-1700
4. Which slaves were preferred for Curaçao (1650-1700)?
In recent scholarship (Martinus 1996, 2003, 2007; Quint 2000, 2001; Jacobs
2008, 2009a, 2009b, 2010a, 2011a, 2011b, 2012a), a substantial body of
linguistic evidence has been amassed suggesting that Papiamentu is a language
descended from Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole (a term covering the sister
varieties spoken on the Cape Verde Islands and, on the continent, in GuineaBissau and the Senegalese province of Casamance), which was partially
‘relexified’ towards Spanish probably almost immediately after arrival on
Curaçao. The term ‘relexification’ is used to denote a process by which a
considerable part of the original vocabulary of language A is replaced by the
vocabulary of language B (typically a socially dominant contact language). In
our case, then, the originally Portuguese-based vocabulary of an early variety
of Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole was, after arrival on Curaçao, partially
replaced and complemented by Spanish, the language of prestige, trade and
religion along the Venezuelan coast (see Jacobs 2012b for a detailed
discussion).
It is important to note that this process of relexification mainly affected
content words (i.e. words that carry meaning), while leaving intact most of the
original Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole (Upper Guinea PC) grammatical /
function words (prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, question words,
auxiliary verbs, etc.) and morphosyntactic rules (word order, negation patterns,
etc.). The smoking gun evidence that the two creoles share a common origin is
thus not found in the content words for man, woman, moon, bird, tree or water
(these all have Spanish roots in Papiamentu in distinction to the Portuguesederived forms found in Upper Guinea PC), but rather in the correspondence of
grammatical elements, such as the following:
language would have disappeared from Curaçao along with the exported slaves, rather than
becoming the principal vehicle for communication among the local Curaçaoan population.
6
Bart Jacobs
Table 1. Functional items shared between Papiamentu and Upper Guinea PC
ETYMON
Papiamentu
Upper Guinea PC
GLOSS
Port. nos (≠ Sp. nosotros)
nos
nos
‘we’
Port. mesmo (≠ Sp. mismo)
mes9
mes
‘self’
Port. na (≠ Sp. en + la)
na
na
‘in’
Port. até (≠ Sp. hasta)
te
te
‘until’
Port. quem (≠ Sp. quien)
ken
ken
‘who?’
Port. onde (≠ Sp. donde)
unda
unde
‘where?’
Port. -mento (≠ Sp. -miento)
-mentu
-mentu
-ment
Port. vai (≠ Sp. va)
bai
bai
‘to go’
Perhaps it should be briefly explained why the corresponding function words
and morphology are considered to be strong evidence of genetic relatedness.
An answer is given by Muysken & Smith (1990:883), when they notice that,
in cases of contact-induced language change, function words and morphology
“are normally less susceptible to replacement than content words”. This, in
turn, is explained by the fact that content words, designating concrete realities,
can be learned relatively quickly, and thus be borrowed from one language
into another more easily than grammatical items. Though the motivation
behind the massive borrowing of Spanish words into Papiamentu is not yet
fully understood (another option would have been to simply learn Spanish), it
is plausible to assume that adopting Spanish vocabulary into their native
grammatical system would have been the easiest way for slaves to
demonstrate acculturation while at the same time retaining their own linguistic
identity.10
9
An anonymous reviewer correctly noted that /mesmo/ lived side by side with /mismo/ in
Spanish up to the 18th century and that it may still exist in some American varieties. However,
the claim that Papiamentu mes derives from Port. (viz. Upper Guinea PC) mesmo rather than
Sp. mismo~mesmo finds support not only in the preservation of the etymological stressed /e/
but also in its use as an adverb meaning ‘really, indeed’. This use is typical of Portuguese
mesmo, not of Spanish mismo. Compare, for instance, Port. (muito) velho mesmo ‘really (very)
old / (very) old indeed’ with Papiamentu (masha) bieu mes very-old-self ‘idem’ (van Putte &
van Putte-deWindt 2005:284, 290).215 It is not surprising to find the equivalent SCV me with
the same adverbial value: SCV bedju mé old-self ‘really old’ (Lang 2002:434) (cf. Jacobs
2012a:134).
10
It is interesting to point out that, due to heavy relexification towards Spanish, mutual
intelligibility between speakers of Papiamentu and Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole is by no
means guaranteed and in fact rather unlikely. Only if a speaker of Upper Guinea Portuguese
Creole has additional knowledge of Spanish, could he/she perhaps converse freely with a
speaker of Papiamentu. And vice versa, only if a speaker of Papiamentu has additional
knowledge of Portuguese, will he/she be able to understand Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole.
Note, however, that rumours of mutual intelligibility between the two creoles do circulate
among speakers of both creoles as well as among linguists. Though I remain sceptical about
7
The selection of slaves on Curaçao, 1650-1700
The linguistic correspondences between Papiamentu and Upper Guinea
Portuguese Creole – of which but a fraction is shown in Table 1 – are so
numerous and of such an idiosyncratic and paradigmatic nature that chance or
linguistic universals cannot plausibly account for them. Rather, they suggest
that a majority of the first generation of slaves to inhabit Curaçao were in fact
speakers of Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole. In Jacobs (2009a, 2012a, 2012c),
a historical framework is presented which fully supports the plausibility of this
claim: the Dutch WIC (in alliance with the local Sephardic Jews and converted
Christians) had set up a commercial network (including trade in slaves)
between Upper Guinea (particularly Gorée and the Petite Côte, but with
commercial activities extending to the Cape Verde Islands and Cacheu) and
Curaçao. The slave trade between the two regions reached its peak in the
period between ca. 1650 and 1675. Indeed, that period coincides with the
period in which Papiamentu is commonly thought to have emerged on
Curaçao (1650-1700). The genetic relatedness between Papiamentu and Upper
Guinea Portuguese Creole is gradually finding resonance in the literature
(Baptista 2009 & 2011, Hagemeijer & Alexandre 2010, Green 2009 & 2011,
Schwegler 2010, Mark & Horta 2011; Clements 2012; Rupert 2012;
McWhorter 2012).
To summarize, despite the fact that during the period in question
(1650-1700), the WIC purchased slaves from different areas along the West
African coast, the available linguistic evidence unequivocally suggests that, of
the ethnically diverse shipments of slaves brought to Curaçao, slaves from
Upper Guinea – more precisely those speaking Upper Guinea Portuguese
Creole – were preferred for keeping on the island rather than to be resold.
5. Why were Upper Guinean creole slaves preferred for Curaçao (16501700)?
The linguistic evidence thus provides vital clues as to which slaves were
present on Curacao in the period between 1650 and 1700. Now, knowing
which slaves remained on the island of course allows us to speculate more
effectively about the reasons why certain slaves, and not others, were chosen
to stay. This question is all the more intriguing if we acknowledge that the
this, whether these two varieties are presently mutually intelligible or not has no bearing on
the hypothesis that they are genetically related, since, as noted, this relatedness is revealed in
the function words and morphology much more than in the content lexicon.
8
Bart Jacobs
slave shipments from Upper Guinea (Senegambia) probably constituted but a
small minority (perhaps no more than 5%) of all the slaves traded on Curaçao
in the second half of the 17th century (see the estimated figures in Postma
1990:112 and Parkvall 2000:136, 137).
Below, I will propose four criteria (a-d) which, I believe, helped
determine the Curaçaoan slave masters’ preference for certain slaves over
others and the sum of which explains at least in part why creole slaves from
Upper Guinea (even though constituting only a minority of the total sum of
incoming slaves) indeed had very good chances of being kept on the island
instead of being redistributed to third parties. It is relevant to note here that
two main social groups on Curaçao were in the habit of keeping slaves: WIC
officials (not all of whom were necessarily Dutch; see Klooster 1994:284), and
Sephardic Jews.11
a. Preference for ‘experienced’ slaves
Owing to their alleged “inflammable nature and rebellious moods” (Goslinga
1985:163), slaves from Calabar (on the coast of what is now Nigeria) had
become unpopular among (Dutch) slavers. Postma (1990: 107, 108) accounts
for the disobedient nature of these slaves as follows: “One can speculate that
Calabary slaves originated from the predominantly stateless societies of that
region, people who were accustomed to a great amount of individual freedom
and were thus (...) less able to adjust to the degradation and regimentation of
enslavement” (cf. Klooster 1998:110 footnote 16). The same reasoning can be
applied to account for the “reputed laziness and rebelliousness” (Klooster
1998:107) of slaves from Angola, who consequently were similarly unpopular
on Curaçao in the period between 1658 and 1729 (Klooster 1998:107).
The island of Santiago was discovered by the Portuguese in 1456, and
they turned the island into a thriving slaving centre almost immediately
thereafter (e.g. Holm 1988: 273). Cape Verdean slaves who arrived on
Curaçao in the 1650s thus may have come from a society with four or five
generations of experience with European style chattel slavery.12 Therefore, we
may speculate that, owing to their own history of and experience with slavery,
11
Note, furthermore, that in 1683, no less than 75% of all the slaves residing in Curaçao
worked as domestic slaves (Hoetink 1958:58, Bartens 1996:243). The remainder were used
either as field slaves or in construction work. Note also that, while sugar plantations did not
exist in Curaçao, the larger agricultural farms in the interior sometimes had up to ca. 400 field
slaves.
12
On the colonial history of the Cape Verde Islands, see e.g. Carreira (1983), Holm, Lang,
Rougé & Soares (eds. 2006), Lobban (2007).
9
The selection of slaves on Curaçao, 1650-1700
slaves and natives of the Cape Verde Islands but also from the Petite Côte and
Cacheu (i.e. the regions where Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole was spoken13)
were more accustomed and able to adjust to the degradation and other aspects
of the slave society that Curaçao was rapidly turning into than slaves from e.g.
Angola and Calabar. At least, Curaçao’s Dutch and Sephardic Jewish slave
owners may have considered this to be the case and therefore, as a type of low
risk investment, have preferred slaves from the Cape Verde Islands and/or
Cacheu to work their plantations and perform domestic tasks.
In addition, there appears to have been a useful overlap between the
Cape Verde Islands and Curaçao as far as the climate was concerned: due to
the island’s particularly dry soil, Curaçao, unlike many other Caribbean
colonies, never developed a (sugar) plantation economy (Klooster 1994:285)
and, indeed, the same is true for the Cape Verde Islands: “due to the lack of
precipitation, sugar production in the Cape Verdes never reached levels that it
did in Madeira and São Tomé” (Nunes 2003:100). It is not far-fetched to
assume that Curaçaoan slave holders were aware of these climatological
similarities, thus deeming creole slaves from the Cape Verde Islands
particularly suitable for life and work on Curaçao.14
One may legitimately object that there is no a priori reason to assume
Cape Verdean authorities and/or slave owners would have sold their own
natives to third parties such as the Dutch WIC. Indeed, under normal
circumstances, we would probably expect the Cape Verde Islanders to have
favored their natives to remain on the islands while fostering the sale of nonnatives to third parties. However, the circumstances on the 17th-century Cape
Verde Islands were all but normal: the 17th century was one of a permanent
crisis for Cape Verde (see e.g. Patterson 1988), forcing many owners to sell
their own slaves in order not to be obliged to feed them to third parties such as
the Dutch WIC. The linguistic data (viz. the structural similarity between
13
Cacheu was settled by Cape Verdeans towards the end of the 16th century (e.g. Brooks
1993: 237–244), whence Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole spread throughout the regions
presently known as Guinea-Bissau and the Senegalese province of Casamance (see Jacobs
2010 and the references therein). As for the Petite Côte, the available documentation suggests
that Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole was widely used there in the 17th century, but ceased
being used there in the course of the 18th century (Ladhams 2006; Jacobs 2010).
14
Note, furthermore, that weaving, sewing and related types of craftsmanship were highly
developed among slaves on the Cape Verde Islands (Andrade 1973:26) as they were also in
Curaçao, at least in the 18th century (see the figures in Klooster 1994: 285). But, of course,
this overlap could have simply been a consequence of the fact that Upper Guinean creole
slaves were kept in Curaçao, rather than a pre-existing socio-cultural similarity.
10
Bart Jacobs
Papiamentu and Upper Guinea PC) compel us to believe that this is indeed
what happened.
b. Preference for lighter-skinned slaves
While skin color is a theme well-studied in the context of slavery and
colonialism, an explicit connection between skin color and the selection of
slaves on Curaçao has not yet been proposed. However, the literature on early
Curaçaoan slave society warrants the assumption that Dutch and Jews in
search of slaves generally preferred lighter-skinned over dark-skinned slaves.
That a person’s degree of whiteness was directly proportional to that
person’s social prestige and status within the early Afro-Curaçaoan society is
explicitly suggested by scholars such as Hoetink (1958), Marks (1976),
Schorsch (2005) and Allen (2007). Hoetink (1958:74, 81), for instance,
described the establishment on Curaçao of a social hierarchy based on skin
color with a clear positive correlation between the higher social rank and
lighter skin color. In other words, ‘whiteness’ was an essential part of the
Curaçaoan colonizer’s ideal of beauty (cf. Hoetink 1958: 74, 75; Marks 1976:
86; Allen 2007: 73, 74; Bartens 1996: 246). This meant that in the 18th
century, “On Curaçao, nonwhites were simply and consistently denied
participation in the community”.15 Allen’s (2007: 73, 74) remarks in reference
to the 18th and 19th centuries on Curaçao are also pertinent:
The term ‘coloured people’, hende di kolo, meant that one had a lighter and therefore
more ‘appropriate’ skin colour, thus with slightly better chances for upward mobility.
Afro-Curaçaoan women especially could reach certain positions on account of their
lighter complexion. They were more likely to be chosen to work within the household
of the enslaved people’s owner; they would work, for example, as yayas (nannies) and
as domestic servants.
Although these observations apply to the post-1700 period, it seems fair to
assume that these racial attitudes trace back to the early days of colonialism
and thus also played a decisive role in the selection of (particularly domestic)
slaves to be kept on Curaçao in the period between 1650 and 1700. And of
course Curaçao was not the only place where this type of racial hierarchy
prevailed. A point in case of obvious relevance is the Upper Guinea coastal
15
If we can believe Cuales (1998: 89, 90), a color-based hierarchy is still prevalent on the
Netherlands Antilles, “with the more light skinned mixtures (...) being placed in a higher
social category of the continuum”. Cf. also the comments made by Holm (2004: 62, drawing
on Cohen 1980) regarding the generally positive attitude of Iberian colonizers towards lightskinned slaves.
11
The selection of slaves on Curaçao, 1650-1700
region. For instance, Searing (1993:108) describes how Gorée (the pivotal
harbor, fortress and factory belonging to the Dutch WIC from 1621 to 1677
and to the French afterwards) was characterized by a racial hierarchy in which
“Color was more important than religion”. Searing’s description, in turn,
reflects a broader tendency that appears to have been typical of most if not all
colonial, creolized or creolizing Upper Guinean areas. In his monograph on
Luso-African identity in 16th- to 19th-century Senegambia, Mark (2002:25)
asserts that “complexion [served] as the primary marker of identity”, with dark
skin signalling social inferiority and light skin reflecting elevated standing (cf.
Ribeiro da Silva 2011:156).
Against this background, it is important to recall that the racial mixing
of blacks and whites in the Cape Verde region had started as early as the
1460s, so that by the second half of the 17th century (i.e. when slaves from the
region were shipped to Curaçao), significant portions of the locally born
population were of mixed Afro-European descent and, hence, lighter skinned
than non-creole slaves from, say, the Gold Coast, Congo or Angola. Their
comparatively light skin color may very well have increased their value in the
eyes of the Curaçaoan settlers, making them more likely to be kept on the
island than ethnically unmixed slaves.
c. Preference for slaves with knowledge of an Iberian-based speech variety
A third reason why creole slaves from Upper Guinea may have been more in
demand than slaves from other areas is likely to have been the fact that they
spoke Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole. One can easily imagine that, if Dutch
or Jewish settlers were to pick one slave out of ten, they would pick the one
with whom mutual intelligibility was the least problematic. Note in this
respect that not only the Sephardic Jews (most of whom were fluent in both
Spanish and Portuguese), but also several of the (higher-ranked) Dutch WIC
officials had knowledge of either Spanish or Portuguese (whether restructured
or not), or both (cf. Kramer 2004: 122-137). Some of the slave masters may
even have had prior knowledge of creolized forms of Portuguese, such as
Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole, though this assertion remains speculative.
But even if a given slave owner’s knowledge of Portuguese was only basic,
Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole would at all times have been more
intelligible to him than any given African language. Particularly in as far as
12
Bart Jacobs
the selection of domestic slaves was concerned, the criterion of mutual
intelligibility must have weighed heavily.16
Note that this argument cannot be challenged by the claim that slaves
from other West African colonies spoke Portuguese. Very few actually did
(see, for instance, Bender 1978:211 on the lack of diffusion of the Portuguese
language among the local blacks in Angola).
d. Preference for Christianized slaves
It is well-known that slaves from Upper Guinea were quite systematically
converted to Catholicism prior to, or even during, their journey across the
Atlantic. Of course, one might argue that these slaves being Catholic may have
put off the Dutch Protestant and Sephardic Jewish slave masters of Curaçao.
However, given the obvious fact that there was no abundance of Jewish and/or
Protestant slaves in the period of 1650 to 1700, it is quite plausible to assume
that Curaçaoan slave masters would have viewed properly baptized and
catechized Catholic slaves as a safer investment than slaves who had not
enjoyed any evangelical instruction at all.
This assumption is supported by the fact that Protestant and Jewish
slave owners principally did not allow their slaves to become members of their
own congregations (Hartog 1968:148), suggesting they may not have been
bothered at all by their slaves being Catholic. Indeed, “The Jews of Curaçao
baptised their slaves in the Catholic Church [and] the majority of the
Protestants did the same” (Lampe 2001:132).
Furthermore, it is important to note that, although many of the WIC
officials on Curaçao were Protestant, the Company also had Portuguese and
Spanish Catholics in its service (Kramer 2004: 124). This of course suggests
that there must have been some tolerance towards Catholicism within the
ranks of the WIC and thus among WIC slave holders. This tolerance may
further have been conditioned by the commercial ties between the WIC and
the Spanish Crown (cf. in this respect Klooster 1998:114, 115). Indeed,
Venezuelan Catholic priests were given full freedom to operate on Curaçao,
since this was included in the terms of the asiento contract with Spain
obtained by the WIC (Hartog 1968:148). These priests ministered not only to
16
How knowledge of (some form of) Portuguese could raise a slave’s value is noted also by
Newitt (2010:154) when he explains the Portuguese practice of sending slaves to Santiago
prior to shipping them to the West Indies: “This practice kept the Spanish from trading
directly with Africa, thereby undermining the lucrative Portuguese monopoly, but it also
allowed the slaves to receive some instruction in the Portuguese language and in Christianity,
which enhanced their value in the American markets” (Newitt 2010:154).
13
The selection of slaves on Curaçao, 1650-1700
the transit slaves (i.e. those destined for resale), but notably also to those
permanently residing on Curaçao (Hartog 1968:152).
In light of the above, it comes as no surprise that, in the first half of the
18th century, Curaçao’s slave society had become predominantly Catholic,
rather than Protestant or Jewish (Klooster 1998: 291; cf. also Hartog 1968:
178), compelling the WIC to officially allow Catholicism on the islands in the
1730s (Israel & Schwartz 2007:29).
To summarize, it seems fair to assume that, if a slave master had the
choice between a Catholic slave and a slave with an exotic religious
background or none at all, he would have picked the first. Therefore, the fact
that baptism and the catechizing of slaves were the norm in the Cape Verde
region (in this regard see e.g. Carreira 1983; Benoist 2008) may have favored
the selection of slaves from that region to remain on Curaçao.
Admittedly, one could also argue in the opposite direction. Analyzing a
WIC letter from shortly after the seizure of Curaçao in 1634, Klooster
(1998:108) mentions that “Angolan slaves had been suggested as a solution to
the labour problem of Curaçao (...). Angolans were preferable to other
Africans who in one way or another had been influenced by Spanish
Catholicism.” Importantly, however, Klooster (1998:108) adds that “in the
following decades, Curaçao’s slave trade was almost non-existent”. As soon as
the Curaçao slave trade gathered momentum in the 1650s, the anti-Catholic
sentiments that had previously favored the selection of Angolan slaves by the
WIC no longer seem to have played such a decisive role. In a letter to the
directors of the WIC in 1659, for instance, Matthias Beck – governor of
Curaçao between 1657 and 1668 – explicitly demands slaves from the Cape
Verde region to be brought to the island (Moraes 1998b: 42). So by that time
either the Catholic background of creole slaves from Upper Guinea was no
longer considered problematic, or it was simply overruled by other selection
criteria.
6. Final considerations and conclusion
This article provides an example of how linguistic evidence can be used to
shed light on murky historical issues. Another, quite fascinating example of
the potential of linguistic data for historiography is provided by Smith (1999;
2009). It concerns the considerable linguistic contribution of the Niger Congo
Ijo language to Berbice Dutch, the now-extinct Dutch-based creole formerly
spoken along the Berbice river. Parkvall (2000:149) aptly summarizes the
14
Bart Jacobs
historical conclusions that can be drawn from this linguistic fact: “It is striking
that there is no [historical] proof that Ijo-speakers were ever taken to the
Berbice colony but, as Smith (1999) points out, the linguistic evidence is so
strong that the conclusion that a contingent of Ijos later lost to history played a
crucial role in the formation of the language is inescapable.” Particularly
enlightening is Parkvall’s (2006) argument for why, in any discussion on the
genesis of creoles, priority should be given to linguistic data (‘the terrain’)
over socio-historical data (‘the map’): “if the map and the terrain fail to match,
we should first and foremost reconsider the map” (Parkvall 2006: 329-330).
These and other examples underline the potential of linguistic data and, more
generally, the need for interdisciplinary research, if creolists are to cast new
light on historical periods which, for whatever reasons, remain only scarcely
and/or fragmentarily documented by historians.
In the present work, light has been shed on an issue hitherto considered
to be nearly unanswerable due to a lack of historical data: the selection of
Curaçaoan slaves in the second half of the 17th century. Based on linguistic
evidence provided elsewhere, (e.g. Martinus 1996, 2003, 2007; Quint 2000,
2001; Jacobs 2008, 2009a, 2009b, 2010a, 2011a, 2011b, 2012a), this article
has taken as a starting point the assumption that Papiamentu is descended from
Upper Guinea Portuguese Creole. Clearly, this genetic lineage is explicable
only if we assume that creole slaves from Upper Guinea were particularly
sought out by WIC and Jewish slave masters on Curaçao, at least in the period
between 1650 and 1700, which is when Papiamentu emerged on the island.
The article provides several arguments, the sum of which allows us to
understand why Upper Guinean creole slaves were more likely to be kept on
the island than to be resold, even though they only constituted a minority of
the sum total of slaves transported to Curaçao in the second half of the 17th
century.
Arguably, of the four selection criteria proposed above, the slaves’
religious background (criterion d) should be attributed least importance. (Cf.
Newitt’s 2010:154 observation, cited above, suggesting that skin color was a
more decisive criterion than religion in structuring social hierarchies in slave
societies.) Needless to say, there may have been other factors at play. Future
research is warranted to identify such additional factors and to further
corroborate (or falsify) the claims presented in this article.
To understand the importance of the issue discussed in this article, it
need only be borne in mind that the slaves who remained on Curaçao in the
early period (1650-1700) of the island’s development constitute a significant
part of the island’s founder population: the issue of slave selection therefore
15
The selection of slaves on Curaçao, 1650-1700
not only has linguistic and historical relevance, but touches upon the identities
of the peoples of the ABC Islands at present.
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