Dutch in Colonial Brazil

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Dutch in Colonial Brazil

One of the great tragedies in the history of Brazil took place between 1624 and 1654 when the Dutch West India Company attempted to occupy Portuguese America, with enormous loss of life and property and massive dislocation of populations. At least 10,000 Dutchmen, Germans, Frenchmen, and other Europeans in the service of the company lost their lives, as did a similar number of opposing Portuguese, Spaniards, and Italians. Untold numbers were maimed. In addition, at least a thousand Amerindians and possibly an equal number of blacks also died fighting for one side or the other. More than a thousand ships were captured or sunk during the thirty years of conflict. Several hundred sugar mills were destroyed, countless cane fields burned, and numerous oxen killed. Tens of thousands of inhabitants of northeastern and northern Brazil were uprooted and forced to march southward to Bahia or Rio de Janeiro, flee into the interior, or return to the Iberian Peninsula. The economy of northeastern Brazil was seriously disrupted, and many decades elapsed before parts of that region were restored to normalcy.

Initially, Dutch contacts with Portuguese America were peaceful. By the latter decades of the sixteenth century, despite Spanish Hapsburg prohibitions against foreign trade with Brazil, an increasing number of Dutch ships and crews were helping carry cargoes, especially textiles, from Europe to Brazil, returning with sugar and brazilwood. By 1621 an estimated ten to fifteen ships were built annually by the Dutch solely for the Brazil trade. By that time, the Dutch controlled about one-half to two-thirds of the carrying trade between Portuguese America and Europe. The end of the twelve-year truce (1609–1621) between the Spanish Hapsburgs and the United Provinces of the Netherlands was marked by the founding of the Dutch West India Company (1621). With governmental support, the Dutch West India Company and explorers began colonization efforts in Portuguese America, Chile, the Caribbean, Suriname, and the Northeastern United States.

BAHIA AND THE DUTCH, 1624–1627

In late 1623 and early 1624, twenty-six ships and 3,300 men left the Netherlands in a successful effort to capture the Brazilian capital, Salvador, in the captaincy of Bahia. By the time the Dutch troops reached the city's limits, Salvador's defenders had fled. However, the Portuguese soon rallied and succeeded in confining the invaders to the capital. In the meantime, a joint Spanish-Portuguese force of fifty-two ships and 12,566 men under Don Fadrique de Toledo y Osorio sailed from the Iberian Peninsula and recaptured the capital of Brazil (May 1625). Although the Dutch had been ousted from Brazil, they were able to capture a considerable amount of Portuguese shipping both off the coast of Brazil and in the Atlantic. In 1627, Piet Heyn twice sailed into Bahia's harbor and captured or destroyed dozens of ships. The following year Heyn captured the richly laden Spanish silver fleet in Cuba's Matanzas Bay, providing the Dutch West India Company with the wealth to make another attempt at conquest in Brazil.

THE DUTCH OCCUPATION OF BRAZIL, 1630–1654

In February of 1630, a Dutch West India Company fleet of sixty-seven ships and more than 7,000 men, under the command of Hendrick Corneliszoon Loncq, captured Olinda, Recife, and the island of Antônio Vaz in the sugar-rich captaincy of Pernambuco. Although most of the Portuguese defenders initially fled, the inhabitants of the captaincy were rallied by Matias de Albuquerque, brother of Pernambuco's lord-proprietor. Albuquerque and his forces were able to restrict the Dutch to their coastal positions and for the next two years successfully mounted a campaign of guerrilla warfare from the fortress called Arraial do Bom Jesus while awaiting a rescue armada from the Iberian Peninsula.

It was not until May 1631 that substantial reinforcements left Portugal for Brazil under the command of Biscayan Don Antonio de Oquendo. He landed troops in Bahia, but on his way to disembark additional troops in Pernambuco and Paraíba, he encountered a Dutch fleet of sixteen ships commanded by Adriaen Janszoon Pater. They fought to a draw. Although Pater was killed in the struggle, only 700 of Oquendo's men (including 300 Neapolitans) reached the Arraial do Bom Jesus. The remainder of Oquendo's fleet returned home, leaving the coastal waters of Brazil in Dutch hands. However, the Portuguese resistance continued to keep the Dutch fighting force of about 7,000 men hemmed in at Recife and forced the abandonment of Olinda in November 1631. Even though the Dutch erected a fort (Oranje) in the neighboring captaincy of Itamaracá to the north, Albuquerque's troops were able to prevent the Dutch from capturing the northern captaincies of Paraíba and Rio Grande do Norte and from occupying the várzea, the rich sugar lands of Pernambuco.

By mid-1632, the tide of war began to turn with the desertion to the Dutch side of the Pernambucan-born Domingos Fernandes Calabar. He knew the terrain intimately and directed the Dutch forces to the Portuguese weaknesses. In addition, substantial Dutch reinforcements arrived in Pernambuco. By mid-1633, the standoff between Albuquerque's troops and the Dutch had ended, and the latter were making major advances. The Dutch expanded into the sugar lands of Pernambuco and into the captaincy of Itamaracá. They also captured the fort of Reis Magos in the captaincy of Rio Grande do Norte. The Portuguese forces fought valiantly, but they were no match for the continuing reinforcements sent by the Dutch West India Company. By the end of 1634, the Dutch had occupied the Brazilian coastline from Rio Grande do Norte to Pernambuco's Cabo de Santo Agostinho. In addition, they continued to control the seas, thus largely cutting off resupply and export. By 1635, increasing numbers of Portuguese settlers were accepting Dutch offers of freedom of worship and security of their property in Pernambuco and in the three captaincies to the north.

Both sides employed Amerindian allies in the fighting. The majority of the indigenous of northeastern Brazil allied themselves with the Dutch, though they made up only a relatively small percentage of the fighting forces of either side. The most famous of the these Portuguese allies was the Petiguar chieftain Dom Antônio Filipe Camarão, who was rewarded by the Hapsburg crown with a patent of nobility and a knighthood and commandery in the Order of Christ. The Portuguese and the Dutch also used African slaves in the war, at times promising freedom to those who took up arms. The most famous of the black leaders fighting for the Portuguese cause was Henrique Dias, who was given a patent of nobility by King Philip IV but who never received the knighthood in the Order of Christ he was promised and awarded.

In 1635 the Dutch captured three Pernambucan strongholds: the town of Porto Calvo, the Arraial do Bom Jesus, and Fort Nazaré on Cabo de Santo Agostinho. Control at these areas gave the Dutch access to major sugar-growing lands of the captaincy. Additional settlers accepted Dutch terms, but more than 7,000 inhabitants of the captaincy, including women, children, Amerindians, and black slaves and freedmen retreated southward under the leadership of Albuquerque. On their way south, they temporarily recaptured Porto Calvo, apprehending Calabar and executing him as a traitor. In September 1635, the first major Iberian reinforcements since 1631 left Portugal for Pernambuco. The 2,500 soldiers (Spaniards, Portuguese, and Neapolitans) were under the command of the Spaniard Don Luis de Rojas y Borgia, who led the war against the Dutch until he was killed in combat less than two months after his arrival. The Italian Giovanni Vincenzo de San Felice, count of Bagnuoli, who had arrived in Brazil with Oquendo's 1631 armada, succeeded Rojas. Bagnuoli accelerated the tactics of guerrilla warfare, as did the Dutch. The victims frequently were those who were trying to continue or revive sugar production under Dutch control and who were caught in the middle of a "scorched earth" policy adopted by both sides.

The Dutch West India Company, deeply in debt, in an attempt to bring peace to the region and restore sugar production, named Johan Maurits, count of Nassau-Siegen, as governor-general of Netherlands Brazil in 1636. He arrived in Recife on 23 January 1637, and his stay of just over seven years marked the height of Dutch power in Portuguese America. Soon after his arrival in Brazil, Maurits, commanding 3,000 European soldiers, 1,000 sailors, and 1,000 Amerindians, easily ousted Bagnuoli from Porto Calvo. He then pursued him southward to the Rio São Francisco. Hoping to make that river the boundary between Portuguese and Dutch Brazil, he laid waste to Alagoas, forcing Bagnuoli's troops to cross the São Francisco into the captaincy of Sergipe del Rey. The Dutch leader then returned to Recife, where he began rebuilding the city, connecting it to the island of Antônio Vaz, which became the new town of Mauritsstad.

Maurits also restored discipline and attempted to conciliate the Portuguese living under Dutch control and restore the economy of the region. He increased protection for the large number of Dutch Jews, the great majority speaking Spanish or Portuguese, who had made a home in Brazil. A much smaller number of New Christians already living in the Northeast abjured the Catholicism forced upon their ancestors and openly proclaimed their Judaic heritage. Jews living in Dutch Brazil had their own synagogues. It is estimated that in 1645 the Jewish population under the protection of the Dutch West India Company was at its peak and numbered 1,450, a little less than half of the total white civilian population.

In order to gain easier access to African slaves, Maurits sent an expedition in 1637 that captured the Portuguese fortress and trading center of São Jorge da Mina (Elmina) on Africa's Gold Coast. Later that year he dispatched a Dutch fleet southward along the coast of Portuguese America to raid São Jorge de Ilhéus in the captaincy south of Bahia. Another expedition devastated Sergipe, forcing Bagnuoli to retreat to within forty miles of the Brazilian capital. To the north, the captaincy of Ceará was taken before year's end. In May 1638, a force of 4,600 Europeans and indigenous confederates, led by Maurits, attacked Salvador but was driven off by the town's defenders.

Toward the end of 1638, a large armada of forty-six ships and 5,000 soldiers under the command of Dom Fernão de Mascarenhas, count of Torre, left Portugal to reconquer the Brazilian Northeast. The voyage was a slow one, and more than 3,000 of the fighting men and sailors died en route to Brazil. Torre made what proved to be a costly decision by landing at the Brazilian capital rather than attacking Recife immediately. In Salvador the count organized an expedition to attack Recife. He dispatched bands of guerrilla fighters led by André Vidal de Negreiros, Camarão, and Dias overland to encourage the Portuguese settlers to revolt and to hem in the Dutch while he and the majority of his troops, loaded into eighty-seven ships, attacked by sea in late 1639. But unfavorable winds and strong ocean currents drove the count of Torre's armada northward past Recife. The Dutch fleet, which gave battle in January 1640, was relatively small, and the naval results were not decisive. But Torre's mission was a failure, and he was forced to put Luis Barbalho Bezerra and some 1,200 troops ashore near Cape São Roque to make the 1,200-mile trek through Dutch territory back to Bahia. En route, they joined up with the guerrilla fighters sent out from Bahia. Most of the armada was scattered, some ships making their way to northern Brazil, others to the Azores, while the bulk ended up in the Spanish Caribbean before attempting the return trip to the Iberian Peninsula.

The majority of Barbalho Bezerra's troops, after skirmishes with the Dutch and their Amerindian allies, reached Bahia. Both sides accused each other of atrocities, and a bitter war of reprisal followed. When fresh troops arrived from the Netherlands, an expedition led by Jan Corneliszoon Lichthart destroyed twenty-seven sugar mills in the environs of Salvador before it was driven off by the Portuguese defenders augmented by Barbalho Bezerra's men. On 1 December 1640, the Portuguese overthrew Hapsburg rule, and the eighth duke of Bragança became King João IV of Portugal. Most of Spain's enemies became Portugal's allies. A ten-year truce between Portugal and the Netherlands was signed on 12 June 1641. Although it took effect immediately in Europe, its implementation was delayed in the colonies. Maurits took advantage of the delay by occupying the captaincy of Sergipe del Rey and capturing São Luis do Maranhão. In 1641 he sent a force of twenty-one ships and 3,000 men (including 240 Brazilian natives) to Africa to capture Angola, Benguela, the islands of São Tomé and Ano Bom, and the fortress of Axim on the coast of Guinea. The Dutch West India Company had reached its territorial apogee.

King João IV found himself in a difficult position regarding the Dutch interlopers in Brazil since he needed Dutch help in Europe against King Philip IV of Spain. A number of influential Portuguese, including Padre Antônio Vieira, initially recommended that João IV give up claims to Dutch Brazil in exchange for further Dutch aid against Spain in Europe. However, there were others, such as Antônio Teles da Silva, governor-general of Brazil from 1642 to 1647, who clandestinely plotted to oust the Dutch and sent men and supplies to achieve this aim, especially after the departure of Maurits in 1644. Teles da Silva's envoy, the Paraíban-born military man André Vidal de Negreiros and Madeiran-born João Fernandes Vieira, a Portuguese planter living in Pernambuco under Dutch rule, secretly planned a revolt for 1645. Teles da Silva also covertly dispatched to Pernambuco experienced soldiers and leaders like Antônio Dias Cardoso, Henrique Dias, and Dom Antônio Filipe Camarão to join the revolt. Betrayal of the conspiracy forced Fernandes Vieira to begin the revolt prematurely, on 13 June 1645.

The Portuguese governor in Bahia used the pretext of helping the Dutch to send two Portuguese regiments under Martim Soares Moreno and Vidal de Negreiros to Pernambuco. The troops landed in Tamandaré. Salvador Correia de Sá, returning to Portugal with the sugar fleet from Rio de Janeiro and Bahia, was encouraged to attack Recife by sea. On 3 August 1645, at Monte das Tabocas, 30 miles from Recife, Fernandes Vieira and Dias Cardoso with 1,000 supporters defeated a Dutch contingent of 400 whites and 300 autochthonous allies. Ten days later, they joined up with the troops of Dias and Camarão. In the meantime, Moreno and Negreiros occupied the district of Serinhaém and captured the fort of Nazaré. On 16 August 1645, they joined Fernandes Vieira. The following day, another Dutch force was defeated at Casa Forte. However, Salvador de Sá failed to attack Recife by sea, and the sixteen caravels that had disembarked Portuguese troops at Tamandaré were defeated and destroyed by a Dutch fleet under Lichthart.

News of the Portuguese victories on land encouraged many of the settlers living under Dutch rule to join the revolt. In September 1645, the Portuguese insurgents recaptured much of the captaincy of Paraíba, the town of Porto Calvo, Fort Maurits on the Rio São Francisco, and Sergipe del Rey. By the end of 1645, the Dutch were confined to Recife and its environs, the islands of Itamaracá and Fernão de Noronha, and the coastal forts of Cabedelo and Reis Magos (Ceulen). The Portuguese had recovered most of Netherlands Brazil, including the best sugar-producing areas.

When news of these losses was relayed to the Netherlands, efforts were made by the Dutch West India Company to aid their beleaguered colony, but for a variety of reasons only twenty ships and 2,000 men were sent to Brazil by May 1646. In the meantime, King João IV claimed no involvement in the rebellion and emphasized that he wanted nothing to interfere with Dutch support in the war against Spain. Gradually, however, he was won over to the cause of the Pernambucan rebels. In December 1646, he appointed Francisco Barreto de Meneses as commander in chief of all forces involved in the restoration of Pernambuco to Portuguese control. However, en route to Brazil near Bahia, Barreto was captured by the Dutch and imprisoned in Recife until he managed to escape early in 1648.

In the meantime, because of the arrival of Dutch reinforcements, the insurgents decided to regroup and abandoned Paraíba, Goiânia, and Ita-maracá after destroying as much of the sugar-producing land as possible. The Dutch recaptured Fort Maurits—albeit temporarily—and in February 1647 a Dutch force of twenty-six ships and 2,400 men, led by the German Sigismund von Schoppe, occupied the island of Itaparica in Bahia's Bay of All Saints, holding it until 14 December. This action spurred King João IV to abandon all efforts at secrecy, and plans were made to send the Portuguese royal fleet to recapture the island. On 18 October 1647, an armada of fifteen ships and almost 4,000 men, commanded by Antônio Teles de Meneses, newly created count of Vila Pouca de Aguiar and governor-general of Brazil, sailed from Lisbon. The following month, a fleet of seven ships, commanded by Salvador de Sá, sailed for Rio de Janeiro to prepare an expedition for the recovery of Angola.

At the same time, the Dutch were preparing a fleet, under the command of Witte Corneliszoon de With, to capture Bahia and drive the Portuguese insurgents from Pernambuco. Internal rivalries in the Netherlands prevented de With from leaving until 26 December 1647. His fleet, slowed by bad weather and scattered by storms, began to arrive in Recife after mid-March of 1648, although the last of the ships did not reach port until late August. Many of his troops were in poor condition. After much debate, the Dutch decided to attack the insurgents by land rather than attack Bahia by sea. On 19 April 1648, at the site called Guararapes, more than 5,000 Dutch and their indigenous allies under von Schoppe met a Portuguese force, estimated to be between 2,200 and 3,000, commanded by Francisco Barreto, which included regiments headed by Fernandes Vieira, Negreiros, Camarão, and Dias. The Portuguese emerged victorious and also forced the Dutch to abandon Olinda. In August the Portuguese were reinforced by another infantry regiment with recruits from Madeira and the Azores, under the leadership of Francisco de Figueiroa.

In the meantime, Salvador de Sá had left Rio de Janeiro with fifteen ships and some 1,500-2,000 men to regain Angola from the Dutch. On 24 August, Sá captured Luanda, and shortly thereafter Benguela and São Tomé were in Portuguese hands. However, the Dutch still controlled the seas off Brazil. In December 1648 a Dutch force sailed into the Bay of All Saints and remained there for a month attacking the Bahian Recôncavo, destroying 23 sugar mills and capturing 1,500 chests of sugar while meeting little Portuguese resistance. Emboldened by this success, a Dutch army force of 3,500 left Recife on 17 February 1649 in an effort to avenge their loss at Guararapes a year earlier. Two days later, at the second battle of Guararapes, the Portuguese, led by Barreto and taking advantage of their superior knowledge of the terrain, gained another victory.

But the Dutch still ruled the seas. In fact, between 1 January 1647 and 31 December 1648, approximately 220 Portuguese ships were captured by the Dutch, most of the vessels being seized by ships fitted out by the Zeeland Privateering Board. To counter this superiority in sea power, the Portuguese organized a convoy system. The brainchild of Padre Antônio Vieira, the convoys were supplied by the newly organized (1649) monopoly called the Companhia Geral para o Estado do Brasil (Brazil Company), funded in large part by Portuguese New Christian investors, who were granted special privileges for their participation. In exchange for providing warships to escort merchant vessels to and from Brazil, the company was given the monopoly over the wine, flour, codfish, and olive oil entering Portuguese America. It was also given the right to levy taxes on such products as sugar, tobacco, cotton, and hides returning to Portugal.

Rivalries and disagreements among the seven provinces of the Netherlands over tactics regarding Brazil and Portugal hampered efforts to reverse Dutch losses in Portuguese America and West Africa, although the Dutch did recapture Ceará in April 1649. In May of that year, Admiral de With began an ineffectual blockade of Rio de Janeiro. Dutch forces in Recife continued to be hemmed in by land by the Portuguese insurgents. Since Recife had to be provisioned by the Netherlands, the besieged occupants were frequently close to starvation. Because of the dissension among the United Provinces, few supplies were being sent from Europe to feed the 4,000 white civilians and 3,000-4,000 troops living in Dutch Brazil. Discontent among the naval forces was so great that most of the Dutch warships returned home by the end of 1649 without authorization, leaving Recife largely unprotected by sea. However, because the Portuguese insurgents were almost equally short of supplies, a five-year stalemate ensued.

On 4 November 1649, the Brazil Company's first armada, composed of eighty-four ships, including eighteen warships, left Lisbon under the command of João Rodrigues de Vasconcelos e Sousa, count of Castelo Melhor, who was to replace the governor-general of Brazil. This expedition was probably strong enough to recapture Recife by sea, but a cautious King João IV did not want to expand the conflict. Futhermore, after the execution of King Charles I of England (30 January 1649), King João IV continued to back the royalist cause. In turn, the Puritan fleet under Admiral Robert Blake blockaded the Tagus in 1650. Blake hampered the second Brazil Company armada from going to America and captured most of the homeward-bound sugar fleet, upon which much of the Portuguese war effort against Spain was dependent.

Portugal's defensive posture in Brazil and Castelo Melhor's instructions not to risk a naval battle with the Dutch returned the mastery of Brazilian waters to the Dutch. Although naval losses continued, the Brazil Company was able to outfit a third armada of sixty ships, which arrived in Brazil in early 1652. Despite harassment by a small Dutch fleet, most of this armada reached Bahia safely. Shortly thereafter, the weakened Dutch fleet fled to Europe, thus enabling the Portuguese to regain control of Brazilian waters.

In June 1651 the ten-year truce between Portugal and the Netherlands expired. The United Provinces again were at odds with Amsterdam, which had commercial ties to Portugal and preferred peace to war. Even though João IV feared a Dutch blockade of the Tagus if he sent a Portuguese fleet to attack Recife, the outbreak of the First Anglo-Dutch War (May 1652) began to alleviate his fears. On 20 December 1653, the Brazil Company's fleet of seventy-seven ships, under the command of Pedro Jacques de Magalhães and Francisco de Brito Freire, arrived to blockade Recife while the Portuguese insurgents pressured the Dutch on land. On 26 January 1654, the Dutch surrendered and signed the capitulation of Taborda, giving up not only Recife and neighboring Mauritsstad but also the islands of Itamaracá and Fernão de Noronha and the captaincies of Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte, and Ceará, all of which had been in Dutch hands at the time Recife surrendered. The Dutch, including 600 Jews still living under their control, were given generous terms. They were allowed three months to liquidate their assets or take their possessions with them and were provided with shipping to leave Brazil. On 28 January 1654, the victorious Portuguese insurgents, led by Barreto, entered Recife.

AFTERMATH OF THE DUTCH OCCUPATION

This evacuation did not end Portugal's problems with the Netherlands. A treaty between the Portuguese and the Dutch needed to be hammered out. Although the Dutch West India Company was virtually bankrupt, there was still talk in the Netherlands of declaring war on Portugal and blockading the Tagus River to prevent Brazilian sugar from arriving to pay for Portugal's continuing war with Spain. Various ultimatums were issued to King João IV and later to his widow, Queen Luisa de Guzmán. In November 1657, a Dutch fleet under Admiral Michiel Adriaanszoon de Ruyter, which was blockading the Tagus, captured twenty-one of the thirty-four ships in the returning Brazilian fleet. However, England and France could not stand by and see a weakened Portugal lose its struggle with Spain. A treaty between the Dutch and the Portuguese was finally signed on 6 August 1661, providing that the Portuguese would pay an indemnity of 4 million cruzados over sixteen years to compensate the Dutch for their loss of Brazil. A special tax was instituted to pay this indemnity, almost half of which was to be paid by the Brazilians themselves. This tax lasted throughout the colonial period and late into the reign of Emperor Dom Pedro I (1822–1831) in an independent Brazil. A supplementary treaty of 1669 ensured that Portugal's part of the indemnity would be paid from Setúbal's salt duties. That part of the indemnity was not paid off until the early eighteenth century.

In the immediate aftermath of the restoration of northeastern Brazil to Portuguese control, old scores were settled as reprisals were carried out against Amerindians who had sided with the Dutch. Other problems festered. Animosity marked relations between the Portuguese who had lived under Dutch control and those who had fled the region and who now returned to recover their properties. Litigation over the ownership of sugar mills, houses, cane fields, and other properties dragged on for decades, leaving wounds that were slow to heal.

The Dutch were likewise expelled from Chile and North America. While the Dutch did not successfully set up a large colonial empire, they maintained important and lucrative trading posts in the Caribbean. The Dutch islands of Curaçao and St. Eustatius continued to be important trading outposts. Curaçao, for instance, became an important stop for illegal trade between the Netherlands and Venezuela. An active slave trade between the Dutch and the Spanish colonies also occurred on these islands. Suriname remained under Dutch control until the twentieth century and during the colonial era became an agricultural exporter based on slave labor.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Francisco Adolfo De Varnhagen, Historia das lutas com os Hollandeses no Brazil desde 1624 a 1654 (1871).

José Antônio Gonsalves De Mello, Tempo dos flamengos: Influência da ocupação holandesa na vida e na cultura do norte do Brasil (1947).

Charles R. Boxer, Salvador de Sá and the Struggle for Brazil and Angola, 1602–1686 (1952).

Charles R. Boxer, The Dutch in Brazil, 1624–1654 (1957).

Evaldo Cabral De Mello, Olinda restaurada: Guerra e açúcar no Nordeste, 1630–1654 (1975).

Pedro Calmon, Francisco Barreto: Restaurador de Pernambuco (1940).

Gonsalves De Mello, Francisco de Figueroa: Mestre de campo do têrço das ilhas em Pernambuco (1954).

Gonsalves De Mello, Antônio Dias Cardoso: Sargento-mor do têrço de infantaria de Pernambuco (1954).

Gonsalves De Mello, Henrique Dias: Governador dos pretos, crioulos e mulatos do estado do Brasil (1954).

Gonsalves De Mello, D. Antônio Filipe Camarão: Capitão-mor dos Indios da costa do nordeste do Brasil (1954).

Gonsalves De Mello, Filipe Bandeira de Melo: Tenente de mestre de campo general do estado do Brasil (1954).

Gonsalves De Mello, Frei Manuel Calado do Salvador: Religioso da ordem de São Paulo, pregador apostólico por sua santidade, cronista da restauração (1954).

Gonsalves De Mello, João Fernandes Vieira: Mestre-decampo do têrço da infantaria de Pernambuco, 2 vols. (1956).

Francis A. Dutra, Matias de Albuquerque: Capitão-mor de Pernambuco e governador-geral do Brasil (1976).

José Honório Rodrigues, Historiografia e bibliografia do domínio Holandês no Brasil (1949).

Bernardino José De Sousa, Luiz Barbalho (1601–1644) (1940).

Afranio Peixoto, Martim Soares Moreno: Fundador do Seará, iniciador do maranhão e do pará, herói da restauração do Brasil, contra Franceses e Holandeses (1940).

Adriaen Van Der Dussen, Relatório sôbre as capitanias conquistadas no Brazil pelos Holandeses (1639): Suas condições econômicas e sociais. Translated by Gonsalves de Mello (1947).

Herman Wätjen, Das Holländische Kolonialreich in Brasilien: Ein Kapitel aus der Kolonialgeschichte des 17. Jahrhunderts (1921), which has been translated into Portuguese (1938).

Pieter J. Bouman, Johan Maurits van Nassau, de Braziliaan (1947).

W. J. Van Hoboken, Witte de With in Brazilië, 1648–1649 (1955).

Arnold Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil (1960). The diplomacy of the Dutch episode in Brazil is best handled in Edgar Prestage, The Diplomatic Relations of Portugal with France, England, and Holland from 1640 to 1668 (1925).