Historical Organization
Colonial Council
Colonial Council
Details
Organization Timeline
Colonial authorities report growing divisions among settlers
📅 24 March 1679Heijnsius reports serious divisions among the European settlers: some oppose him, refuse to pay taxes or consider leaving the colony. The war exposes the fragility of colonial rule; resistance...
Colonial council plans a scorched-earth expedition
📅 26 June 1680The government assembles an expedition of Europeans and Indigenous allies. Its plan is to destroy villages and food stores and kill residents, forcing the resistance to surrender or leave. This is...
Strike at Knip plantation
📅 17 August 1795On 17 August, enslaved people at Knip refused to work. A later colonial notice identifies worsening working conditions as the immediate trigger: Sunday labor, longer hours, and insufficient food. Hira...
The Colonial Council mobilizes against the strike
📅 17 August 1795Governor De Veer receives Van Uytrecht’s message and convenes the Colonial Council. The authorities immediately treat a collective refusal to work as a threat to the plantation system. The workers had...
Colonial troops advance on Porto Mari
📅 19 August 1795Captain Van Westerholt sets out for Porto Mari with a military detachment. The colonial state quickly organizes armed suppression and also deploys free Black and mixed-race men in an earlier...
Tula states the demand for freedom and equality to Father Schinck
📅 19 August 1795Father Schinck meets Tula at Porto Mari and hears his demand for freedom and equality, drawing on France’s abolition of slavery and its occupation of the Netherlands. Tula argues that all people...
First group of rebels is executed
📅 27 August 1795Hira’s overview lists eight enslaved people hanged on 27 August. The swift executions show how colonial justice used punishment to deter resistance, while the system of slavery itself remained...
Further executions after the military suppression
📅 4 September 1795Hira’s overview lists four executions on 4 September. Repression continued after organized resistance had been broken; punishment and terror were used to restore plantation order.
Executions and torture continue
📅 10 September 1795Further death sentences followed on 10 September, including strangulation and breaking on the wheel. The punishments show how colonial authorities used public bodily terror against people who had...
Colonial Council condemns leaders to severe torture
📅 25 September 1795The Council orders Tula, Carpatta, Mercier, Waccau, Juan Felix, and Louis to undergo severe torture. Hira stresses that confessions extracted under torture are unreliable and that the core of the...
Tula and other leaders are executed with extreme brutality
📅 2 October 1795On 2 October, Tula and Carpatta are broken on the wheel and beheaded; their heads are displayed. Pedro Waccau and other fighters are also killed with extreme violence. The executions serve as a public...
Colonial sources count more than one hundred dead
📅 2 October 1795Historian G.B. Bosch estimates that more than one hundred enslaved people died in the revolt: in fighting, through earlier sentences, and in the city. Hira reconstructs the names of those executed...
Colonial government introduces limited reforms
📅 20 November 1795An ordinance prohibits compulsory plantation work on Sundays and sets working hours and rations. It also limits deductions for clothing and collective punishment. These concessions follow the revolt...