Making peace beyond the line: capitulations, interpolity law, and political pluralism in Suriname and New Netherland, 1664–1675

This chapter examines efforts to legislate peace following the conquests of Suriname (1667) and New Netherland (1664) by Dutch and English forces, respectively. In each colony, settlers quickly surrendered and negotiated articles of capitulation to establish the privileges and protections they would enjoy under new government. Though brief documents, these capitulations required lengthy justification, involved protracted negotiation, and produced long-running contestations, as settlers and colonial officials strained to establish the rights of foreign subjects within legally and politically heterogeneous empires. This chapter argues that such small-scale conquests and localized peace negotiations – frequently repeated across the Atlantic world – contributed to an emerging inter-imperial legal repertoire for managing mobility and diversity within and between empires. Colonists and officials alike looked to neighboring colonies and previous capitulations for models of how to retain and govern conquered subjects. The resulting articles of capitulation took on quasi-constitutional qualities as reference points for inter-imperial claims-making and contests over the movement of settlers and their property. Ultimately, frequent capitulations contributed to a rough but widely replicated set of protocols for establishing terms of government in pluralistic Atlantic colonies, centered on an expansive understanding of private property as a global domain of political rights