- ISSN: 2589-4617
- E-ISSN: 2667-2081
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oa Seksualiteit in Suriname
Tegenverhalen over liefde en ‘vleselijke conversatie’ in een koloniale samenleving
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: De Achttiende Eeuw, Volume 53, Issue 1, jan. 2021, p. 173 - 189
Samenvatting
The social, gendered, and racial relations in the Dutch colony of Suriname have been predominantly studied in the context of the plantation system and the hierarchized divide between masters and those who were enslaved. More recently, however, scholars have demanded attention for the ambiguous position of free people of color within these colonial dynamics. This article aligns with this recent research trend, as it traces some of the complexities of the sexual relations in daily realities of eighteenth-century Suriname. By unearthing and analyzing hitherto unstudied archival sources such as testaments and records of criminal cases, it demonstrates that, while the colonial judicial system forbade sex between people with a different complexion, the reality of sexual relations in the Dutch colony was more complicated than it was long assumed and that women of color were at times able to circumvent the overarching white patriarchal system. Indeed, this article illustrates that sexual ties – prohibited or legitimate, tolerated or scandalous, coerced or loving – in some cases challenged the lines of color, gender, and class that shaped the demographic circumstances in colonial Suriname.
