Archive for November 9th, 2019

1716: Maria of Curacao, slave rebel

Add comment November 9th, 2019 Headsman

On this date in 1716, a woman named Maria was burned for leading a slave rebellion on the West Indies island of Curacao.

Maria was a cook owned by the Dutch West India Company itself who apparently instigated the slaves on her plantation to rise up and slaughter the white staff in September of 1716.

Whether Maria herself was Curacao-born or a recently captured import is not known, but her plantation of St. Maria held many of the latter category; Curacao was a major shipping nexus for the Dutch slave trade. It’s possible that this meant Maria’s newly-arriving peers were more liable to harbor that cocktail of hope and desperation needed to wager their lives on rebellion.

Whatever the case, the rising was quickly put down. Another slave named Tromp, Maria’s lover, told his torturers that she had sought revenge on a white overseer named Muller for killing her husband.

On this day..

Entry Filed under: 18th Century,Burned,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Execution,History,Murder,Netherlands,Netherlands Antilles,Power,Public Executions,Revolutionaries,Slaves,Torture,Women

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