The Power of Procedure

Abstract

While contemporary observers judged Suriname’s legal system to be extremely cruel, arbitrary, and above all outrageously biased, the written record reveals that its criminal court closely adhered to procedure, weighed slave testimony and did not cast judgement outright. This article asks what place slave punishment and legal procedure had in the Suriname system of slavery, and how and why this changed over time. The Suriname legal system offers an almost continuous record of criminal trials held before its main colonial court as well as a record of its locally passed regulations. Research indicates that the court turned away from severe physical mutilation and capital punishments over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The decline of plantocratic dominance and its overbearing use of force suggests a gradual embedding of the court system, making it a predictable institution promoting (an unequal) social cohesion. This leads us to suggest that the amelioration policies of the nineteenth century were not a transformation in the legal system resulting solely from a metropolitan intervention, but were partly a continuation of a trend in the colony itself.