The article discusses discrimination against free blacks and colored (mixed-race) people in the justice system of 18th-century Curaçao, then a colony of the Netherlands run by the Dutch West India Company. Two examples are examined, that of the Dutch prosecutor Hubertus Coerman, who complained of the situation to company directors in 1766, and the Curaçaoan free black woman Mariana Franko, who complained to the directors in the same year after being falsely accused of theft and banished from the colony. Differences between the administration of justice in the Netherlands and in the Dutch West Indies are then discussed.
Examines the lifestyles and entrepreneurial skills of Karen Theresa Curtis as a businesswoman managing her own huskers. While the free colored men were protesting their lack of civil rights, the women engaged in commerce were protected by no rights and were experiencing their own problems in defending their property.
Francis Humberston Mackenzie of Seaforth (1754-1815) was a Highland proprietor in what has become known as 'The First Phase of Clearance', was governor of Barbados (1801-6) in the sensitive period immediately before the abolition of the British slave trade and was himself a plantation owner in Berbice (Guiana). It is suggested that his concern for his Highland small tenants was paralleled by his ambition in Barbados to make the killing of a slave by a white a capital offence, by his attempts to give free coloureds the right to testify against whites and by his aim to provide good conditions for his own enslaved labourers in Berbice.
Discusses the issue of slavery experienced by the Blacks in Latin America. He explores the slave life experienced by the Black community as well as examines the role of gender, culture and ethnicity in evaluating the narrative of slavery and freedom in the country.
