While the joining of people into marriage was key in the formation and perpetuation of orderly communities, and while its regulation served to police the boundaries of those communities, divorce takes place within already established families and communities. Frequently taking the form of a conflict, the end of a marriage can reveal much about the institution that stable, enduring marriages do not, such as the economic stakes for the parties involved, gendered power (im)balances, and norms for marital conduct that are only spoken when they are broken. Both because of the need for mediation that frequently arose from the antagonistic nature of divorce, and because of governments’ own regulatory efforts, divorce formed a key moment in which men and women alike actively engaged with colonial institutions in the early modern Dutch Empire, most prominently the notary and the court system. This chapter examines the records that these institutions produced and zooms in on the ways people in VOC and WIC settlements navigated the end of a marriage. This reveals both the fault lines in the ordered way of life offered by marriage in colonial societies, and the new ways in which order was created through the resolution and regulation of divorce. Doing so requires, first, an understanding of the legal framework governing Christian divorce that was applied in the Dutch Republic and its overseas settlements alike, followed by an examination of the ways this played out in practice in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean settings.1
1 Christian Divorce and the Law
Traditionally, Roman Catholicism does not permit divorce in the sense of the dissolution of marriage, because of its conception of marriage as a holy sacrament in which God binds two people together: what God has joined, living human beings cannot separate. Over the course of the church’s history, alternative arrangements did develop, most notably annulment and separation. In case of annulment, the church retroactively declared that no valid marriage had been contracted in the first place – for example if the spouses turned out to be
One of the most consequential innovations of the Protestant Reformation was that, with marriage now a worldly affair rather than a sacrament, it made divorce – the dissolution of a legal, valid marriage – possible. With the Dutch Revolt and the new Republic’s embrace of Calvinism, two legal grounds for divorce came to be recognized: adultery and the malicious desertion of one spouse by the other. The justification for these grounds was given by Protestant theologians, who argued that after these events the bond of marriage had already been broken, and the innocent party should thus be permitted to remarry.5 The Political Ordinance of 1580 listed adultery as the only legitimate reason for the dissolution of a marriage and as a crime punishable by banishment.6 Malicious desertion, or purposefully abandoning a spouse with no intention of returning, became accepted as a second legitimate reason a few decades later, becoming a point of consensus for Dutch legal scholars over the course of the seventeenth century. The degree to which it was a punishable offense varied regionally, however, as did the time which the abandoned
2 Divorce and Separation in the VOC-World
All divorce of Christians living under VOC rule (including, theoretically, Catholics but excluding St. Thomas Christians in Malabar) fell under the jurisdiction of the Dutch colonial courts. Christians in Batavia who wanted an officially sanctioned separation needed to turn to either the Schepenbank (if they were free burghers) or the Court of Justice (for company servants and all appeal cases).10 In smaller settlements, which did not have a separate Schepenbank, Christian divorce generally fell under the jurisdiction of the VOC’s local Raad van Justitie. The VOC court in Cochin, for example, served not just Company servants and their members, but also Catholic Luso-Indians – frequently referred to as Toepassen – who lived in the area, particularly those from the Vaipin peninsula across the estuary from the fort, although it is likely that local Catholics also used the services of Catholic institutions for matrimonial affairs such as annulments – not just the Carmelite-run Vicarate of Verapoly, with whom the VOC had a tacit agreement, but also as the Portuguese-affiliated
The records of the Councils of Justice of Colombo and Gale on Ceylon, meanwhile, suggests that where divorce was concerned, these courts primarily served their respective urban populations of Company servants and Dutch and mestizo burghers, rather than Sinhalese Christians from the areas further inland.11 For Christian burghers and VOC-personnel alike, the rules governing divorce followed that of the Dutch Republic. In fact, preciously little VOC legislation on the dissolution of Christian marriages was issued between the establishment of territorial rule in the early seventeenth century and 1809, when the first ‘modern’ divorce was granted in the Dutch East Indies, marking a definitive departure from the VOC regime that had officially ended a decade prior.12 Up until this point, Christian marriage in Dutch colonies fell under Dutch-Roman law, and indeed, those involved in marital court cases frequently cited Dutch legal scholars such as Grotius and Van Leeuwen.
As with most other aspects of life, local authorities were free to issue ad-hoc legislation in the form of ordinances targeting specific situations not already covered by this jurisprudence. However, unlike non-Christian divorce, which, as will become clear in Chapter three, became increasingly regulated in this period, Christian divorce is only addressed in two eighteenth-century publications recorded in the Nederlands-Indisch Plakaatboek, both addressing specific, one-off cases: a 1734 order to the Schepenbank to auction off the privilege of running a bakery between a divorcing bakers’ couple, and a 1766 exemption for separating couples from the tax for splitting their estate.13 In Ceylon, an early ordinance reflects the Company’s wider attempt at bringing local marriage custom under company control: in 1647 Galle, inlandse Christenen were not only called upon to register their marriage, but also, once legally married, banned from informally separating and starting up separate household without the government’s knowledge and permission.14 After this, however, no specific local legislation concerning divorce appears among the island’s plakaten.
Quite possibly the most high-profile separation in VOC history is the one extensively documented in the work of Leonard Blussé, between company widow Cornelia van Nijenroode and her second husband, Court of Justice member Joan Bitter.15 This battle between Van Nijenroode, daughter of a Japanese woman from the island of Hirado and a VOC-merchant stationed there, fabulously wealthy from her previous marriage to the merchant Pieter Cnoll, and Bitter, a Dutch lawyer who had found in her a solution to his lack of funds following his arrival in Batavia, is notable for a number of reasons. Aside from its dramatic appeal – it caused quite a stir among contemporaries of the influential Batavian couple – the case highlights the precarious position that marriage put even the most well-connected and moneyed women in. As soon as Cornelia van Nijenroode spoke her marital vows to Joan Bitter, she, like all brides, essentially signed over all control over her assets to her husband, despite having drawn up a seemingly iron-clad prenuptial agreement. When, after a very brief honeymoon period, Cornelia became convinced that her husband’s true intentions had been to take control of and siphon away as much wealth as possible from her impressive estate, she began a legal battle that would drag on through decades, starting in 1676 when she first petitioned to be allowed to start a legal procedure against her husband and ask for a separation of table, bed, and goods, and ending with her death in 1691. Despite her wealth and her friends in high places – including Cornelis Speelman, who was Governor-General from 1681 to 1684 – she was only granted a provisional separation from Joan Bitter once, in 1671, and this decision was later reversed. On multiple occasions, she was ordered to once again place herself and her assets under her husband’s authority under threat of being declared a malicious deserter, which would have forfeited any rights she still had by virtue of her prenuptial agreement, as well as the lion’s share of her fortune.16
The case highlights the different roles played by the various institutions regulating marriage. The church can be seen prioritizing reconciliation above all else, with less concern for legal aspects, and using exclusion from holy
It should be noted that the Bitter-Van Nijenroode case is hardly representative of divorce and separation in the VOC world, or even that among Batavia’s elite. Bitter’s position on the Court of Justice, his wife’s connections to the highest echelons of VOC leadership in Batavia, and the extreme escalations resulting from Joan Bitter’s legal maneuvering all resulted in an extraordinary entanglement of political and judicial authorities’ involvement in the case. The conflict even traveled to several courts in the Dutch Republic, including the High Court of Holland.19 This was highly unusual, as the Court of Justice in Batavia was generally understood as the final appeals court in the Dutch East Indies: whereas litigants in West-Indian jurisdictions could travel to the Netherlands to appeal with the States-General, the highest form of redress those in the East Indies could hope for was a revision of a sentence in Batavia.20 The ‘ordinary’ legal practice for ending a marriage in the VOC world, insofar as can be observed in the judicial records, can be divided into three main categories: separation by mutual agreement, separation of table and bed through litigation, and the formal dissolution of a marriage through the court (‘capital D Divorce’).
2.1 Separation by Mutual Agreement
By and large the easiest, fastest, and least costly form of legally separating was for husband and wife to split amicably by means of a separation agreement. As research on divorce and separation in the Dutch Republic has shown, this was a frequently used method in many Dutch cities, and overseas settlements
To be legally valid, the separation needed to be confirmed by the court: the Court of Justice if the husband worked for the VOC, and the Schepenbank for burghers.23 For this reason, both parties appointed an attorney that would act as a procureur on their behalf in court. One party needed to formally initiate the procedure by filing a suit against the other; if the wife did so, she needed to first petition the government for veniam agenda (permission to take independent legal action).24 Once the soon-to-be separated couple showed up in court, the procedure was simple: because the pair had already come to an agreement, the court generally made no attempt at further mediation and simply rubber-stamped their approval. With the court’s judgement, both parties were now legally obliged to comply by the terms of their agreement. To make sure external parties (such as creditors) were aware of the split, the separation would be formally and publicly advertised, ‘with the ringing of the bells and through placards.’25 As these separations did not constitute a full and final divorce, neither party would be permitted to remarry until the other spouse had died.
Although confirmation by the court was all but guaranteed, separating couples by no means expected authorities to take the matter lightly: the contracts often went to great lengths to explain the separation was absolutely necessary and took place despite the couple’s best efforts and intentions. The Batavian
The justifications for parting ways that agreements such as Nicolaes and Anna Joyia’s gave generally tell us less about the specific couple’s marital troubles, and more about what reigning expectations of a ‘good’ marriage were and what was considered a valid reason for ending it. A contract drawn up by notary Andries Jan Zalle for a separating couple in 1765 makes clear what the ideal was that the two had been woefully unable to meet: ‘the pleasant fruits that a well-conceived marriage continuously produces through mutual love and accommodation.’27 Since the contracts were to be signed by both parties, they almost never laid the blame with anyone’s particular actions to explain the absence of this conjugal bliss, but instead almost invariably used the euphemism of incompatible humeuren.28
By the 1770s, separation agreements began to take on a standardized, almost formulaic form, which may be linked to this type of ‘divorce’ becoming more common in this period, as it did in the Dutch Republic.29 With little variation,
Others chose to reconcile due to practical considerations: a Semarang-based couple, Anthonij Schops and Maria Roode, had been formally separated since September 1772 and were even enmeshed in a court case to dissolve their marriage when, in May 1774, they decided to move back in together, citing the well-being of their children and the untenable cost of maintaining two separate households.31 Many, however, had no intention of reconciling and never did. The Batavian government seems to have recognized this reality, for it allowed separated husbands, in some cases, to repatriate to Europe, leaving their wives in the Indies.32 Marten Huijsvoorn, a former sailor who over a 30-year career had climbed to the rank of Senior Merchant, repatriated with the fleet of 1767
Of the voluntary separations that can be found in the Court of Justice records, high-ranking company servants and their wives are strongly overrepresented. The VOC-affiliation is unsurprising, as the only non-employees that could use the Court of Justice were those involved in an appeal from the Schepenbank. The absence of low-ranking company servants, however, is striking: although soldiers, sailors, and low-ranking clerks made up the vast majority of the company’s workforce in Asia, almost all the men drawing up separation agreements belonged to the so-called ‘qualified’ personnel (merchants, bookkeepers, military and maritime officers, and skilled craftsmen in leadership positions), with the lowest-paid being a medical scribe and a bottelier (chief steward) both earning 20 rixdollars a month. Among VOC employees, the separation agreement was thus a relatively elite phenomenon. This can be explained, in part, by the fact that many among the rank-and-file never married, avoiding the financial obligations and repatriation prohibitions that came with marriage by opting for concubinage instead, and by the fact that mortality rates for soldiers and sailors were high, making death a more likely end of marriage than divorce. Among those that did marry and whose marriage stranded, moreover, many likely separated informally, without a paper trail. Without assets to divide, a formal separation agreement must have seemed not worth the notarial and judicial costs, even if the alternative was technically illegal.
Indeed, the bulk of the content of the contracts involved the financial arrangements made between the separating parties. These could vary considerably, although in most cases the couples did not opt for a 50/50 division of
If the couple was slightly wealthier, the wife generally also took one or more enslaved servants with her. As we saw in chapter one, the promotion of enslaved marriages was fashionable among elite households, and this seems to have been maintained as well-to-do couples split up: Geertuijda Theodora van Batavia, separating wife of VOC bookkeeper Joan Jochim Plaat, took with her not only a small fortune in jewelry and trinkets, but also several enslaved family units: aside from a cook and a ‘good houseboy’, she left with the enslaved man Februarij ‘with his wife Soenting and her three daughters Roosje, Leha, and Santje’ as well as ‘Malatie and her daughter Sipiet’.37 Patronella Wintink, wife of the merchant Jan Edzardus Jeremias Verklokke, took seven enslaved men and women with her, among whom were three married couples. Although not at the absolute top of Batavian society (as, for example, Bitter and Van Nijenroode had been), the Verklokke-Wintink household can certainly be considered elite: in addition to her personal possessions and the seven slaves, Jan Edzardus also paid out a sum of 45.000 rixdollars to Petronella, in addition to yearly alimony payments of 1200, to be adjusted to his future earnings.38
The alimony stipulated for wives was generally proportional to the husband’s income: Ida Wilhelmina Bake, whose husband, Councillor of the Indies Johannes Vos earned 350 rixdollars per month, would receive 2000 rixdollars per year from him (amounting to just under half his wage) in addition to the 500 per year he would pay her in child support for their youngest daughter.39 Joan Joachim Plaat agreed to pay his wife, Geertruijda Theodora, 20 rixdollars a month, two-thirds of his bookkeeper’s wage of 30 rixdollars – this payment likely included financial support for the child that the couple had adopted together, Johannes Theodorus.40 The assets the wives took from
2.2 Full Divorce
Whereas separations by mutual agreement, by necessity, involved compromise, full divorce in the Early Modern period was considerably more akin to a zero-sum game. No-fault-divorce was not possible until the nineteenth century: if a marriage was dissolved, there was always one innocent and one guilty party, with generally only the former being allowed to remarry. Moreover, because the two legitimate grounds of divorce, adultery and malicious desertion, were both punishable offences, the guilty party could find themselves facing criminal prosecution in addition to a divorce trial.43 Sometimes the two went hand in hand, with the criminal verdict of the adulterous or deserting partner simultaneously dissolving the marriage.44 Alternatively, there could initially be a civil trial that later gave rise to a criminal prosecution, as in the
Not all prosecutions ended in a dissolution of marriage, although very often a de facto divorce was the result. If the accused party was acquitted, a return to conjugal bliss was understandably not always in the stars, especially if the injured partner had played a vital role in the prosecution. This was the case with Otto Hendrik Hoek and Aaltje Petronella Bliek, whose ‘voluntary’ separation belied a dramatic preamble: Otto had accused Aaltje of adultery with one of their slaves, Sima. Because the only evidence against her was the testimony of enslaved women, however, she could not be convicted, and her husband could not legally divorce her.47 It was clear to both that the marriage was over, however: less than a month after Aaltje was cleared of her charges, the couple officially separated from table and bed.48
Conversely, if the accused was found guilty, the injured party did not always feel the need to file for a dissolution of the marriage: since the standard penalty was fifty years – essentially a lifetime – of banishment (or, for women, incarceration in the women’s tuchthuis, discussed in chapter four), many seem to have been satisfied with simply being rid of their spouse. Military officer Johannes Wassenberg, who had married fifteen-year-old Anna Gijsberta Borwater, only to find her in an affair with one of his colleagues less than a year later, had ample ground on which to divorce his young bride: not only had
The scenario in which someone successfully petitioned the court to dissolve their marriage without a criminal trial taking place was also possible. Although the ‘guilty party’ in this case escaped banishment or the workhouse, their prospects were generally still less favorable than those of their now ex-partner. Not only could they not remarry, they also had a weaker position when it came to negotiating the terms of the separation. The marriage of Jacobus Balans and Johanna Suijlkom was dissolved in September 1775, after more than nine months of legal proceedings, with Johanna (the ‘guilty’ party) sentenced to pay the judicial costs.52 When the pair came to a settlement on the division of their assets in December, it was agreed that Jacobus would pay the fees instead, but this concession came at a price: Johanna would not receive alimony money, was no longer entitled to a portion of Jacobus’ wage (the Delft Chamber of the VOC had previously paid 180 rixdollars, or three months’ wages, to her each year) and only received 433 rixdollars from the marital assets, even though a will Jacobus drew up a year later suggests he possessed considerably more.53 But that was not all: the contract also stated that Johanna no longer had custody over their eleven-year-old son, losing ‘all rights she had enjoyed as
When examining the gender ratio of the divorces enacted by the Court of Justice in Batavia, a remarkable pattern emerges: almost all the spouses who successfully filed for divorce and were given permission to remarry were men. This is quite distinct from the situation in the Netherlands, where wives were just as likely as their husbands to file for divorce, if not more: in eighteenth-century Amsterdam, for example, 48 per cent of divorces on the ground of adultery were initiated by women and 79 percent of those on the ground of desertion.55 The Batavian judicial record, in some cases, is ambiguous as to whether parties were petitioning for a separation or a full divorce. In the years 1728–1775, judicial clerks used the term divortie, for example, for both types, but a closer look at the verdicts reveals a sharp gender divide: out of a total of sixteen identified cases in the Civiele Rolle during this period in which the term divortie is used, thirteen are initiated by the wife and three by the husband. All three male-initiated divorces resulted in the dissolution of the marriage, with the man permitted to remarry. None of the female-initiated proceedings had this outcome, however: five were denied by the court, with the woman ordered to place herself under her husband’s authority once more, and four resulted in a separation without a dissolution.56
In the same period, the term dissolutie was used less ambiguously to refer to a full divorce with permission to remarry for the innocent party. Out of eleven identified cases in which this term is used in the civil records, only one is confirmed to have been initiated by a woman. Notably, although this case – between Maria van Spanjen and junior merchant Nicolaas de Lamotte – was introduced as a dissolutie, the verdict could be interpreted as an annulment rather than a divorce: the marriage between Van Spanjen and De Lamotte was declared ‘null and void’ and Maria was permitted to contract a new marriage and retrieve her personal effects from Lamotte.57 Out of the other cases, nine
Because the statements of claim are usually missing in the civil records, it is unclear what exactly the women in the cases above had requested (full divorce, separation, or annulment) and on what grounds, but the verdicts fit in a larger trend throughout the period in which women either did not try, or did not manage to fully dissolve their marriage. In one case from 1780, a woman named Amelia Olimpia Swart did attempt to obtain an annulment, which like divorce would have allowed her to marry someone else. However, after her husband Jacob van Haak had been examined by a medical practitioner who had determined that Haak was not, as Swart had claimed, impotent, her request was denied, and she was ordered to place herself under her husband’s ‘marital authority’ once again.59 In a rare case where a husband, bookkeeper Johannes Hoffman, was criminally prosecuted for adultery, and his wife thus had demonstrable ground on which to divorce him, she opted for separation instead.60
What explains this relative absence of women-led divorces? It seems highly unlikely that Batavian women were not aware of the legal possibilities afforded by Dutch marriage law, considering the sophisticated legal strategies employed by female litigants and their councilors in marital as well as non-marital lawsuits. Was there a stronger social stigma against divorced women in Batavia than in the Dutch Republic? Or was there a reticence (or perceived reticence) among the High Government or Court of Justice to permit this specific type of divorce, perhaps to avoid the friction between company servants that might result if they could marry each other’s ex-wives? It is difficult to say, but the lopsided divorce rates do fit in a larger pattern of marital power relations that were marked by greater inequality than in the Netherlands, if we take the extremely young age of the average Batavian bride and the extensive age difference between spouses as a marker for wives’ empowerment.61 Another factor
2.3 Litigious Separation
In the space between these two alternatives for broken marriages (separation by agreement and full divorce) was litigious separation, in which at least one party wanted to split but the spouses could not agree on the terms, thus necessitating arbitration by the court. Just like full divorces often were, this type of separation was antagonistic in nature (the Bitter-Van Nijenroode case being a prime example) with one party ‘winning’ at the other’s expense. Unlike full divorce, however, the separation was not necessarily permanent and did not dissolve the bonds of marriage. Formally, the procedure started the same way separations by mutual agreement did, with one party, via their attorney or procureur, summoning the other before the court. Here too, if the wife initiated the trial, she first needed to obtain veniam agenda from the High Government. Unlike in voluntary separations, however, the court would first refer the couple to a designated sub-committee (frequently designated as simply ‘the commissioners’) to see if they could be persuaded to reconcile or at the very least separate by mediation. If this failed, a court case would commence that
Despite these difficulties, litigious separations were considerably more common than full divorces, being easier to obtain and more morally acceptable for those for whom divorce was anathema. This, combined with the zero-sum aspect of litigious separation making it a prime target for appeals, has resulted in non-VOC couples also appearing in the Court of Justice records as they appealed verdicts from the Schepenbank. Roeland Hannibals, described as a mestizo burgher, appealed to the Court of Justice in March 1730, after his wife Cornelia Tsiaijnio had filed a suit against him in 1728, with the Schepenbank ruling in her favor in 1729. In 1770, Francina van Timor, whose name suggests she was a manumitted woman, filed a suit against her husband, the leermeester (i.e. teacher) Salomon Davids. Salomon reported he was ‘not inclined to separate,’ which was to be expected considering his job was to help convert non-Christians to the Reformed faith, so he could be penalized for not living an exemplary Christian life.64 Francina anticipated a long and difficult trial, so she requested a temporary disposition by the court, to safeguard her material interests. The court complied: for the duration of the trial, Salomon would not be permitted to ‘alienate, embezzle or otherwise lose any and all goods or slaves,’ his wife would not be liable for his debts, and he would be required to pay her half his salary each month and give her access to her clothing and jewelry. Such an appoinctement, as it was called, was quite a common feature of separation procedures by this point in time.65 Obtaining a separation of table and bed, it seems, could be so complex that the legal practice developed a temporary solution in anticipation of a more permanent resolution – one that, in theory, was itself intended as a temporary stop-gap for marital discord.
In contrast to divorce, this type of separation was almost always requested by wives rather than husbands, and here the VOC world did not differ much from the Dutch Republic.66 As Donald Haks has pointed out, women had more to gain from using legal means to enact a separation, because it was the only way they could compel their husband to pay them a share of his wages while living apart.67 A court-sanctioned separation could thus be financially
Husbands were keenly aware of the disadvantage separation could put them at, and some accused their wives of having mercenary intentions in initiating the proceedings. Dominicus van den Bosch, A VOC bookkeeper in 1762 Colombo, for example, claimed that his wife was falsely accusing him of abuse ‘to make herself the mistress of half his wage to take her pleasure with.’68 Another, in 1786, complained that dividing his assets in two, as his wife was demanding, would lead to the ruin of his household, and that she was only out to make him miserable.69 In rare cases, a wife could even win complete control of the marital assets, as was the case for Ilaria de Cardoza, a Toepas woman from Vypin island near Cochin. Ilaria had turned to the VOC court on multiple occasions between 1743 and 1749, each time complaining of abuse by her husband, a Luso-Indian soldier, but each time the case failed to come to a formal separation. It is likely that Ilaria, a Catholic, initially did not intend to divorce her husband, but instead used the court as a way of pressuring him into better behavior. The situation changed in 1749 when Ilaria brought new witnesses to the court and her husband subsequently disappeared and failed to respond to three consecutive court summons, enabling her to claim he had forfeited any rights to their estate. Thus, while Ilaria de Cardoza lost whatever income her husband may have brought to the family, she gained complete independence from him, without a formal divorce being pronounced.70
Ilaria was not alone in her complaints of abuse: besides financial mismanagement, the most frequent complaint levied by women in litigious separation
It is not surprising, then, that women who petitioned for separation on the ground of violent abuse never did so on account of a single instance of violence or unacceptable treatment, but instead evoked scenes of long, sustained suffering that they had patiently endured until it had either become unbearable or life-threatening. Even then, courts demanded extensive evidence – usually in the form of witness statements – before considering granting a formal separation. Again, these accusations were frequently accompanied by those of excessive drinking, which aided a woman’s case because it could serve as an explanation for a husband’s poor behavior, emphasized his moral failure, and left the wife free of blame in domestic disputes. Whereas a sober man might claim he was beating his wife as a form of discipline, a drunk who turned to violence was clearly in the wrong. Because men often drank in public, moreover, wives could easily point to their husband’s reputation as a heavy drinker as a form of evidence, whereas violence taking place behind closed doors might be more difficult to prove, and not taken as seriously as public misconduct. Thus Amelia Willems, wife of the VOC ship’s surgeon Roelof Winterhof, turned to her husband’s notoriety for evidence after her chief witness, a VOC Sergeant who had stayed in their home, died before he could testify under oath, claiming that ‘she had been cruelly treated by her husband and that the latter had
Domestic violence was not exclusively perpetrated by men against women, as wives were known on occasion to turn violent against their husbands. Husbands, however, were much less likely to file for separation on these grounds, which can partly be explained through a lack of financial incentive: because separation did not dissolve the marriage, a husband would still be financially responsible for his wife. There is also reason to believe that husbands as victims of domestic abuse were not taken as seriously as battered wives, as they did not conform to dominant expectations of masculinity and femininity. The above-mentioned Colombo bookkeeper Dominicus van den Bosch felt the need to explain himself when he claimed that not he, but his wife was physically abusive: she had hit him on multiple occasions and once even dragged him across the room by his hair ‘while he was lame and had diminished use of his arms and legs.’ This condition, which he claimed to still suffer from (and indeed he would die shortly after, before the completion of the trial) incidentally also caused people to erroneously perceive him to be drunk. He did not, however, petition for a formal separation on the ground of his wife’s violence, but rather used it to illustrate her general malice in arguing she should not be granted a separation and the benefits that would grant her: ‘It would go too far for the respondent to have to miss half his wage for the benefit of an evil woman who abuses him and has even hit him, and moreover has smeared his good name without any cause or reason.’74
While money and violence are nearly universal mainstays of marital disputes and divorce cases throughout history, the VOC separation cases also feature points of conflict that were more particular to the stratified and diverse world of South East Asia under Company rule. The prevalence of domestic slavery, for example, colored perceptions of status in relation to the acceptability of violence in the household. While wives’ petitions generally reflected an acquiescence to women’s subservient status with regards to their husbands, as ‘lady of the house’, a married woman the Indies did expect her position in the household to be above that of slaves, and as a result many a battered wife complained that she was treated ‘worse than a slavin’ to illustrate that her husband’s abuse had gone too far. Acrimonious divorce cases could also illuminate racial and ethnic fault lines in ways that were otherwise not frequently made explicit in the Indies. In the Van Nijenroode case, for example, we learn that
A specific source of conflict that could arise within the ‘typical’ mixed VOC marriage between a Dutch male newcomer and a local woman concerned the shifting power balance between the spouses over the course of the marriage. An example is a Colombo-based wife who accused her husband of wanting to get rid of her after having taken advantage of her: he had married her when he was penniless, relying on her mother for money and clothes, but had grown bored with her once he had begun to climb in his career, she asserted. She made reference to several racial markers in her sketch of the shift in status taking place within their marriage: ‘he imagined himself to have risen too highly to keep a house with a woman of low birth, in mestizo clothing, not white and beautiful enough for his vanity […].’76 European husbands, conversely, would sometimes stress their relative helplessness as newcomers, such as VOC soldier to Jan Ulrich Moeklij who was stationed in Jaffnapatnam, Ceylon. Jan Ulrich had married a local woman named Francina Rodrigues briefly after his arrival, and tried to divorce her for adultery after he found out she had already been pregnant with another man’s child at the time of their marriage. When Rodrigues defended herself by stating that Moeklij could have known the condition of the woman he was marrying, he responded by presenting himself as a ‘poor European’ who had been tricked by a woman whose ‘public whoredom’ was not known in the fort, but a well-known fact ‘among the papists’ (i.e. the Catholics living in the surrounding area).77 It is unclear whom the court sided with, but cases such as this make clear that partners in ‘mixed’ marriages often had contrasting resources at their disposal – social, cultural, material, and institutional – which they could leverage to aid one another, or use against each other.
3 Divorce in the Caribbean
The legal practice concerning divorce in the colonies in the WIC-charter area had much in common with that of the Dutch Republic as well as the VOC world, but the institutional arrangements were distinct. Unlike Batavia, Suriname, being a separately run colony not directly governed by the WIC, did not have a separate urban court for burghers like the Schepenbank, but unlike
The procedure for women taking legal action against their husband, at least in Suriname, was also slightly different: whereas in VOC-Asia a woman could independently appoint an attorney and sign a separation agreement before a notary, only turning to the government to request veniam agenda once she wished to start a formal procedure, in Suriname a married woman could not take any action in a divorce process, including drawing up a separation agreement, without a male representative. This curator ad lites, who did not have to be a trained attorney but could also be a family member, could be appointed at the woman’s request, if she filed a petition with the Governing Council. The Court, in this case, could decide to first send the couple to the ‘Commissioners of Marital Affairs’ for an attempt at reconciliation, before granting the request, even if husband and wife were in agreement on wanting to separate and ready to draw up a separation contract. Only once the mediation process had proved fruitless was the woman granted a curator and could the separation procedure commence.
In terms of content, however, separations and divorces among the free Christian population of Suriname had much in common with those under the VOC as well as in the Dutch Republic. Formal separations were rare: in the middle of the eighteenth century, on average only around one to three were announced each year, and the same was still true by the 1790s.79 Dissolutions of marriage were even more uncommon because just as in the Netherlands and
The most common type of divorce, again, was voluntary separation by agreement. Although Suriname did not have an official notary, contracts and other forms of notarized documents could be drawn up before sworn-in secretaries or their clerks. Again, the legal practice here closely resembles that of Batavia and the Dutch Republic, with couples stating they were separating by contract to avoid lengthy and costly legal procedures, and remaining vague on the cause of the separation, euphemistically citing incompatible dispositions. In terms of financial arrangements made in the agreements, there was considerable
Many separating couples had married with a prenuptial agreement, which meant that upon separating each party took back the property they had brought into the marriage – for separating women this sometimes came down to their dowry, or the sum paid by her family to the groom upon marriage. In this sense, Christian divorces in Suriname could be similar to those among Surinamese Jews (see chapter three). In some cases, moreover, one party paid a sum to their partner that had not necessarily originally been the partner’s property but ostensibly served to persuade them to agree to the separation – another practice that was known among Jewish couples. Andreas Ridderbag, for example, paid his wife Dorotea van Soestdijk a sum of 2400 guilders, and in exchange she denounced all her claims on the couple’s estate and promised to repatriate with the first departing ship to the Netherlands, ‘without ever returning to him.’84 Catharina Adriana van de Lande, who had started a separation procedure against her husband Willem Pieter Visscher but later decided to come to a settlement with him, ‘considering the long duration of procedures and their uncertain outcome,’ agreed to pay him a total of 10.000 guilders, as well as a fee for the administration of her property, and the legal costs of the separation.85
Another notable difference can be found in the gendered patterns in divorce. Here, Suriname appears to resemble Dutch cities more than Asian settlements such as Batavia or Cochin. Despite the extreme rarity of divorce cases in Suriname, several divorces can be identified that were initiated by the wife. Wilhelmina Schroder filed for dissolution of her marriage to Johannes van Hertsbergen in February of 1750, on the grounds of malicious desertion. The pair had in fact been separated for quite a while already: they had married in 1741, but months after the wedding Wilhelmina found life with him unbearable. Citing abuse, she had managed to obtain a separation of table and bed. Since then, through the mediation of third parties, there had been multiple – unsuccessful – attempts at reconciliation, during which Wilhelmina claimed his comportment had only deteriorated. In early 1750, Johannes had disappeared, and Wilhelmina seized her chance, citing the Echt-Reglement to argue that she ought to be declared free to remarry.88 This plan backfired, however, because Van Hertsbergen re-emerged several months later, claiming he had been upstream on business matters, and went to Paramaribo ‘in order to
More successful was Apolonia Jacoba van der Meulen, a wealthy widow who married Herman Nicolaas van der Schepper (son of the former Governor Gerard van de Schepper) in 1743. Out of affection and trust, she claimed, she had not insisted on a prenuptial agreement, but soon after the wedding her opinion of her groom changed radically. He became abusive, ‘treating her with extreme contempt,’ and on top of that had ‘unseemly and criminal conversation’ with enslaved women; this latter accusation she could back up with witnesses.90 Therefore, citing adultery, Apolonia asked for her marriage to be dissolved, and argued that her adulterous husband had legally forfeited his right to her money which technically fell under their community property. This was not a rule described in the Politieke Ordonantie or the Echt-Reglement, but it was not entirely without precedent in Dutch legal practice, although it had mostly applied to adulterous wives in the past. Drawing on the Hollandsche Consultatiën [Dutch Consultations], a popular body of juridical advisory literature, Apolonia’s council Aubin Nepveu cited several sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cases in which Dutch courts had denied an adulterous spouse his or her share of the marital goods, both for community property couples and those who had married under a prenuptial agreement.91 As a backup, should Van der Meulen’s request for dissolution of the marriage be denied, she also asked for a separation of table and bed, but this proved unnecessary, because she won the case: on 5 March 1744 the Governing Council granted her permission to remarry and ordered Nicolaas van de Schepper to return to her the property she had brought into the marriage. Van de Schepper appealed to the States General in the Netherlands, but Apolonia Jacoba was nonetheless able to remarry in 1748.92
4 Conclusion
Divorce was difficult to obtain for Christians in the early modern world, and Christian communities across the Dutch empire were no exception to this. Once legally married, men and women alike were bound by legal obligations that could only be terminated under exceptional circumstances and only through a legal procedure that could be highly costly, especially if the parties could not come to an agreement. Both the types of marital discord and the types of divorce and separation proceedings that resulted from them show remarkable consistencies across the Dutch world in the eighteenth century, with variations being attributable to minor institutional differences, socio-cultural specificities such as the particular dynamics of mixed marriages, and differences in the economic foundations shaping men and women’s positions in different settlements.
Economically speaking, wives generally had most to gain from the most common type of ‘divorce’, the separation of table and bed, but the degree of financial independence women were able to win varied considerably. Many
The consistency of the norms regarding a good marriage that are expressed in the legal practice – primarily in the negative, with separating spouses listing the various ways their union failed to live up to the expectation of domestic bliss – can in part be explained as larger cultural norms that transcend the early modern Dutch empire: concerns about violence in the home, financial stability, and mutual affection are not uniquely Christian, Dutch, or colonial, nor are they confined to the eighteenth century. The consistency in solutions for broken marriages, and in the legal and rhetorical strategies levied by husbands and wives when engaging with Dutch colonial institutions, however, suggests that at least for the Christian communities forming around centers of colonial power, the use of Dutch institutions helped advance a surprisingly robust normative order that offered colonial authorities a fairly high degree of control over the intimate and economic lives of these communities. A qualification that needs to be made here, of course, is that this engagement was limited to a relatively small group: not reflected in the records, in addition to those who never married, are the men and women who dealt with marital strife without turning to a Dutch court or notary, which in some places such as rural Ceylon and among the majority of the Catholic population of Curaçao seems to have
The focus in this chapter will be on Batavia and Suriname, which produced the most comprehensive institutional records showing the variety of legal solutions to marital strife available.
Roderick Phillips, Untying the Knot: A Short History of Divorce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 5.
Edward J. Behrend-Martinez and Edward J. Behrend-Martínez, Unfit For Marriage: Impotent Spouses On Trial In The Basque Region Of Spain, 1650–1750 (Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 2014), 144–45.
Dini Helmers, Gescheurde bedden: oplossingen voor gestrande huwelijken, Amsterdam 1753–1810 (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2002), 19.
Donald Haks, Huwelijk En Gezin in Holland in de 17de En 18de Eeuw (Utrecht: HES Uitgevers, 1985), 178–179.
Cau, “Ordonnantie vande Policien binnen Hollandt, in date den eersten Aprilis 1580,” sec. XVIII.
The 1656 Echt-Reglement, marriage regulations issued for the Generaliteitslanden, the unrepresented territories in the Dutch Republic directly ruled by the States General, stated that malicious deserters would be banished for life and the innocent part permitted to remarry, after all possible means had been employed to convince the guilty party to return. Cau, “Echt-Reglement,” sec. XC–XCI.
“Echt-reglement,” sec. XCII.
Helmers, Gescheurde Bedden, 377.
In Dutch: Raad van Justitie. This section draws on civil cases presented before the Court of Justice, which are available in the Dutch National Archives, and thus primarily reflects the situation among VOC personnel and their families. NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.nos. 9224–9282, 9329–9331.
National Archives of Sri Lanka, Archives of the Dutch Central Government of Coastal Ceylon, 1640–1796 access number 1.11.06.08 [hereafter: SLNA VOC 1.11.06.08], inventory numbers 4194–4547. Rupesinghe has argued it is unlikely that Sinhalese Christians and other groups beyond the coast frequently engaged in formal divorce proceedings, and that local custom permitted more informal modes of separating. Rupesinghe, “Navigating Pluralities Reluctantly,” 227–28.
NIP Vol XV, 460–2. The divorce was ‘modern’ in the sense that it comprised essentially a no-fault divorce, in which both parties were permitted to remarry.
NIP vol IV, 354; Vol VIII, 145–6.
CP vol. I #15 (01–08–1647), 13.
Blussé, Strange Company, 172–259; Leonard Blussé, Bitters Bruid: Een Koloniaal Huwelijksdrama in de Gouden Eeuw (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Balans, 1997).
Blussé, Strange Company, 225–26.
This is consistent with the attitude of the church consistories in the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century, as demonstrated by Van der Heijden. Van der Heijden, Huwelijk in Holland, 238.
A foundational role was played by the Politieke Ordonnantie (1580) and the 1656 Echt-Reglement.
Blussé, Strange Company, 249–51.
Van Wamelen, Family life, 92; NIP vol II, 470, 9 January 1669.
For Amsterdam, see Helmers, Gescheurde Bedden, 177–79; For South Holland, see Haks, Huwelijk en gezin, 184–206.
The notarial archives of Batavia, consisting of nearly 9000 inventory numbers, can be found at the Indonesian National Archives (ANRI, Notarieel archief van Batavia, 1621–1817, hereafter: ANRI Notarissen).
NIP vol IX, 113–114 (1693).
Unlike in the Republic, where women asked permission from the court, Van Wamelen claims Batavian women were required to turn to the Governor-General and Council. Van Wamelen, Family life, 319; Paullus Merula, Pauli G. F. P. N. Merulae J. C. Manier van procederen, in de provintien van Hollandt, Zeelandt ende West-Vrieslandt, belangende civile zaaken; getrouwlyk en met neerstigheid by een vergadert … (Leiden: S. & J. Luchtmans, 1781), 417.
ANRI, Archief van de Raad van Justitie, 1620–1809, inv.no. 154, Civil Sentences 1765, folio 177; NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9331 Raad van Justitie Civiele Rolle [hereafter: CivR], 1781, folio 59.
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9239 CivR, 18 April 1730, folio 785–789.
“de aangename vrugten, die een wel getroffen huwelijk door wedersijdse liefde en toegevendheijd onafscheijdelijk voortbrengt,” ANRI Notarissen, inv.no. 6244, #17321 (April 1765).
ANRI Notarissen inv.no. 6242, #17100 (18 February 1765); inv.no. 6244, #17321 (April 1765);
Dini Helmers, for Amsterdam, found an increase in divorce cases, including specifically voluntary separations, in the second half of the eighteenth century, although she attributes this growth primary to an increase in married couples.Helmers, Gescheurde Bedden, 203; Donald Haks, for Leiden, Maassluis, and Wassenaar, found both an absolute and a relative increase in separations of table and bed in the period 1771–1791. Haks, Huwelijk En Gezin, 184–89. The Batavian court records are more limited than those of Dutch cities, but nonetheless a tentative trend is discernible: whereas in 1730 Nicolaes and Anna Joija were the only couple whose separation agreement is recorded with the Court of Justice, between September 1777 and September 1781 (the latest consecutive period for which civil records of the Court of Justice are available) nine out of a total of thirteen divorce cases were resolved through separation by mutual agreement (the others being a single attempt at annulment, one full and final divorce, and two contentious separations in which no agreement was reached). NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.nos. 9239, 9329–9331.
Van Wamelen, Family life, 319–20.
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9280 CivR 1773–1774, 8 June 1774, folio 261.
As of 12 August 1728, married company servants were forbidden from returning to Europe without their wives and children, unless the wife gave consent and the husband continued to provide for her. NIP vol IX, 403.
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 5255 Qualified Company Servants 1765–1767, folio 16; inv.no. 12888 Personnel records of ‘t Vliegende Hart 1730–1731, folio 108.
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9281 CivR 1774–1776, folio 195. Maria Herega, incidentally, seems to have divorced twice, first from senior merchant Abraham de Clercq, as she is described as the latter’s separated wife in a court case from 1750: inv.no. 9256 CivR 1749–1750, 12 May 1750, scan 629.
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9329 CivR 1778–1779, scan 323.
“Alle sierraden en kleren tot des impetrantes lijf gehoorende,” NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9277 CivR 1770–1771, folio 165.
Note that, although Februarij’s marriage to Soenting is seemingly recognized, the phrasing still does not recognize his legitimate paternity of the daughters, who are described as hers, not theirs. NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9280 CivR 1773–1774, folio 283.
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9329 CivR 1778–1779, folio 247.
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9331 CivR 1781–1782, folio 69.
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9280 CivR 1773–1774, folio 283. Curiously, this boy is not mentioned in the separation agreement, but he does feature prominently in Plaat’s 1780 will, which specified that the boy was to inherit 2000 rixdollars from his adoptive father and that he was to live with Geertruijda Theodora until he reached adulthood. Although husband and wife never reconciled, the two households do seem to have remained somewhat intertwined, because the will also mentions Januarij and his wife Soenting: the enslaved couple was to serve and look after Johannes Theodorus until the latter reached adulthood, at which point they would be manumitted. NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 6847, folio 334.
F. S. Gaastra, Geschiedenis van de VOC: opkomst, bloei en ondergang, Geheel herz., 10e dr. (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2009), 106–7.
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9279 CivR 1772–1773, folio 190.
Van der Heijden, Huwelijk in Holland, 45, 158.
An early example is from 1637, when Catharina van Boijeme, who had attempted to flee into the woods outside Batavia with her lover, was sentenced to five years of chained confinement, with confiscation of her possessions and, at the request of her husband, the dissolution of her marriage. NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9338 Criminal Case Files [Hereafter: CrimPr] 1636–1637, scan 1087–1102.
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9248 CivR 1739–1740 scan 618; inv.no. 9391 CrimPr 1739–1740 scan 19; inv.no. 9393 CrimPr 1740 scan 95.
This was the case for Johanna Geertruijda La Haija, who on December 2, 1772, was sentenced to 25 years of banishment, a fine of 1000 rixdollars, and the judicial costs, for adultery. Two weeks later her husband Ajuereus van den Bergh filed for divorce and La Haija, who had little to gain from fighting this with another costly trial, consented. NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9279 CivR 1772–1773, folio 62.
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9507 CrimPr 1778, scan 686.
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9329 CivR 1778–1779, scan 323.
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9427 CrimPr 1749, scan 1071–1170.
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9312 Crimineele Rolle [hereafter: CrimR] 1750, scan 232–235.
An example is the former VOC assistant Jan Carel de Milaan, who divorced his wife Margaretha de Remedio, ten years after she had filed for separation from him. The dissolution was possible because Margaretha had been found guilty of adultery and banished to the women’s workhouse (see chapter four). NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9270, scans 439, 517.
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9281 CivR 1774–1775, folio 108, 350; inv.no. 9282 CivR 1775–1776, folio 331.
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9282 CivR 1775–1776, folio 58; Jacobus left 200 rixdollars to an enslaved woman who was to be manumitted after his death, 500 to his parents, and the rest of his estate to his son. NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 6882 Testament #7782, 23 November 1776.
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9282 CivR 1775–1776, folio 58; inv.no. 14023 Personnel records of Hoop 1763–1764, folio 34, 36, 38.
Helmers, Gescheurde Bedden, 207.
In the remaining four cases the outcome is unknown. NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9238, 9243–9247, 9250, 9253, 9255–9259, 9261, 9270, 9281. No eighteenth-century civil records prior to 1728 remain in the archive. After 1775, the term divortie is no longer found.
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9261 CivR 1755, scan 401, 456. Whereas with divorce a marriage that had previously been valid was dissolved, annulment implied that a valid marriage had never come into being, e.g. if it had never been consummated.
In two of the male-initiated cases, the outcome is unclear. The eleventh case concerns an appeal initiated by the wife, but it is unclear who had started the initial divorce proceedings at the Schepenbank, or what the outcome had been. NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9238, 9241, 9244, 9255, 9258, 9261, 9274, 9276, 9279, 9280.
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9330 CivR 1779–1780, scan 269; inv.no. 9331 CivR 1780–1781, scan 1218.
VOC 9470 CrimPr 1761–1762, scan 465–514.
In 1673, a year in which the Batavian marriage records list the bride and groom’s ages, 47% of brides were in their teens and 25% were sixteen or younger. The average age gap for VOC couples in Batavia that year was 8.6 years, considerably higher than the average of one to three years common in Europe. ANRI Burgerlijke Stand inv.no. 84. For the relation between (relative) ages of spouses and female empowerment, see Jan Luiten van Zanden, Tine De Moor, and Sarah Carmichael, Capital Women: The European Marriage Pattern, Female Empowerment and Economic Development in Western Europe 1300–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 8; Sarah Carmichael, “Marriage, Family and Gender Inequality: An Historical Exploration of the Relationship between Family Systems, the Position of Women and Development” (Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Utrecht, Utrecht University, 2016), 214.
Taylor, The Social World of Batavia, 71–75.
Helmers makes a similar argument for Amsterdam in explaining why divorce was unpopular among the propertied classes, drawing on the work of Kooijmans, De Jong, and Prak, who have shown the importance eighteenth-century Dutch elites placed in stability and continuity when it came to marriage. Helmers, Gescheurde Bedden, 213; J.J. de Jong, Met Goed Fatsoen. De Elite in Een Hollandse Stad. Gouda 1700–1780 (Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1985); L Kooijmans, Onder Regenten. De Elite in Een Hollandse Stad. Hoorn 1700–1780 (Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1985); Maarten Prak, Gezeten Burgers. De Elite in Een Hollandse Stad. Leiden 1700–1780 (Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1985).
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9277 CivR 1770–1771, folio 16; Niemeijer, “Calvinisme en koloniale stadscultuur,” 186. Davids was not the only leermeester fighting his own wife in court that year: his colleague, Pieter Mattau Saija, was being sued for separation by his wife Aggrippina Lea Valentijn around the same time. NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9277, folio 10.
NL-HaNA VOC 1.04.02 inv.no. 9277, folio 17.
Helmers, Gescheurde Bedden, 207.
Haks, Huwelijk en gezin, 215.
SLNA VOC 1.11.06.08, inv.no. 4336, 3 August 1762, folio 5–7.
SLNA VOC 1.11.06.08, inv.no. 4490, 20 September 1786, folio 5–7.
NL-HaNA, Nederlandse bezittingen India: Chennai [digitaal duplicaat], 1.11.06.11, inv.no. 486, Civil proceedings Ilaria de Cardoza contra Francisco D’Aroeija, 1743–1749.
Marianna Muravyeva, “‘A King in His Own Household’: Domestic Discipline and Family Violence in Early Modern Europe Reconsidered,” The History of the Family 18, no. 3 (August 1, 2013): 233; Haks, Huwelijk en gezin, 153–54; Helmers, Gescheurde Bedden, 232; Julie Hardwick, “Early Modern Perspectives on the Long History of Domestic Violence: The Case of Seventeenth‐Century France,” The Journal of Modern History 78, no. 1 (March 1, 2006): 11.
NL-HaNA, Nederlandse bezittingen India: Chennai [digitaal duplicaat], 1.11.06.11, inv.no. 940, scan 413.
SLNA VOC 1.11.06.08, inv.no. 4298, 20 July 1756, folio 12–13.
SLNA VOC 1.11.06.08, inv.no. 4336, 3 August 1760, folio 8–9.
Blussé, Bitters Bruid, 86.
SLNA VOC 1.11.06.08, inv.no. 4210, 3 July 1742, folio 1–12.
SLNA VOC 1.11.06.08, inv.no. 4346, 20 November 1767, folio 24.
Schiltkamp, Bestuur en rechtspraak in de Nederlandse Antillen ten tijde van de West-Indische Compagnie, 39. Although separated spouses are regularly mentioned in the Curaçao records, suggesting separations and divorces were not uncommon on the island, documentation of specific court cases is rare among the Council’s judicial record.
NL-HaNA, SvS, 1.05.03 inv.no. 188, Ordinances and Publications 1740–1763; NL-HaNA, RvP-S, 1.05.10.02, inv.no. 208, Ordinances and Publications 1793–1797; Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, Digitaal Duplicaat Suriname: Doop-, Trouw- en Begraafboeken (DTB), access number 1.05.11.16 [hereafter NL-HaNa, DTB Suriname, 1.05.11.16, inv.no. 43, Court Rulings on Separations of Table and Bed, 1795–1801.
NL-HaNA, Raad van Politie Suriname [hereafter: RvP-S], 1.05.10.02, inv.no. 22, Council Minutes 1742, scan 288, 31 July 1742; NL-HaNA, SvS, 1.05.03 inv.no.188, Ordinances and Publications 1740–1763, 106.
NL-HaNA, RvP-S, 1.05.10.02, inv.no. 550, Memos to the court, 1750–1753, 17, 10 March 1750; NL-HaNA, SvS, 1.05.03 inv.no. 188, Ordinances and Publications 1740–1763, 07 December 1746, folio 227.
Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, Digitaal Duplicaat: Suriname: Oud Notarieel Archief, access number 1.05.11.14 [hereafter NL-HaNA S-Not, 1.05.11.14], inv.no. 113, 1745–1746, folio 12.
NL-HaNA, DTB Suriname, 1.05.11.16, inv.no. 43, Separation agreement #7, 28 August 1798; #1, 21 April 1795; #3, 20 May 1795; NL-HaNA, RvP-S, 1.05.10.02, inv.no. 458 Petitions February 1795, #36, 9 February 1795; NL-HaNA, RvP-S, 1.05.10.02, inv.no. 208, Publications, #139, 5 June 1795.
NL-HaNA, S-Not, 1.05.11.14, inv.no. 107, 21 May 1723, scan 63–65.
NL-HaNA, S-Not, 1.05.11.14, inv.no. 130, 17 December 1783, folio 198.
NL-HaNA, DTB Suriname, 1.05.11.16, inv.no. 43, #5, 7 November 1797.
NL-HaNA, SvB, 1.05.05, inv.no. 143, 5 and 8 April 1768, scan 14, 61, 69, 81.
NL-HaNA, RvP-S, 1.05.10.02, inv.no. 346, Petitions February 1750, folio 36.
NL-HaNA, RvP-S, 1.05.10.02, inv.no. 347, Petitions February-June 1750, June 18 1750, scan 569; inv.no. 45, Council Minutes, 18 June 1750, scan 85.
Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, Staten-Generaal, access number 1.01.02, inv.no. 9502, scan 29.
NL-HaNA, Staten-Generaal, 1.01.02, inv.no. 9502, scan 38. It is unclear which version of the Consultatien Nepveu used. Although he wrote the statement of claim in 1743, it is unlikely he used the 1741 reprint which included more recent examples from the legal practice. Gerard de Haas, Nieuwe Hollandsche consultatien, advertissementen van regten, memorien, en andere schrifturen van voorname regtsgeleerden, (The Hague: Mattheus Gaillard, 1741); Maartje Vermeulen, “Vrij onder Voogdij? Rechtsgeleerden aan het woord over de rechtspositie van de vrouw in de Hollandse Consultatiën (1645–1666)” (Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Utrecht, Universiteit Utrecht, 2009), 7–9.
NL-HaNA, Staten-Generaal, 1.01.02, inv.no. 9502, scan 42.
NL-HaNA, SvS, 1.05.03 inv.no. 188, folio 20.