Masters replaced Code Noir mutilations with punishments preserving labor value.

Evidence

Maroons who were repeatedly absent for several weeks or more were, however, usually punished harshly. The Code Noir stipulated that a slave who had been away from the plantation for more than a month was to have one of his ears cut off and a fleur-de-lis branded on his shoulder. A slave who ran away again for a month was to receive a second brand and have a hamstring cut. The punishment for the third offense was death. Rather than follow these prescriptions for mutilation, however, most masters and managers devised other punishments that caused suffering but did not damage their property. Maroons were usually whipped, and sometimes their garden plots were confiscated. They might be locked up in the plantation hospitals, which often doubled as prisons and were outfitted with bars or posts used to immobilize punished slaves at night, or else in the cachots, small stone prisons that proliferated on plantations during the late eighteenth century. Chains might be attached to the slave’s legs, sometimes with a ball added to make running difficult, and iron collars with spikes placed permanently around the neck. Only a blacksmith could remove them. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 193

Categorization

• XREF: The economics of punishment — preserving labor value over following law — parallels the economic-institution logic in your Law Merchant and diamond bourse readings.