Dutch-Latin American Relations

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Dutch-Latin American Relations

In the sixteenth century the Dutch carried sugar, salt, and East and West Indian spices from Portugal to the north of Europe. However, when Portugal was occupied by the forces of Philip II of Spain in 1581, trade relations with the Netherlands—which had declared independence from that same king in 1568—changed to a war footing. Philip II sent troops to reconquer the United Provinces (the Netherlands), but managed to take only Flanders. A large number of Flemish Calvinist traders fled to the north, particularly to Amsterdam. Prosperous Portuguese Jews also settled in Amsterdam following their expulsion from Spain and Portugal. Thus, Amsterdam assumed the commercial and financial leadership that previously had been centered in Antwerp and Brussels. The Dutch gradually began to seek out the territories that produced salt, sugar, and spices in the East and West Indies, which previously had been occupied by Spain and Portugal.

In Asia, the Dutch established colonies in what became the present-day countries of Indonesia and Sri Lanka. In Africa they trimmed back much of Portugal's strength, and built permanent settlements in South Africa. They moved next to the Caribbean and Brazil. In 1621 the West India Company was created in Amsterdam for the purposes of trade, pirating, and conquest. In May 1624 the Dutch occupied Salvador de Bahía, capital of the Portuguese colony in Brazil, and stayed for a year. In 1630 they attacked the captaincy of Pernambuco and occupied its capital, Olinda. Over the next several years they also occupied the captaincies of Pernambuco, Itamaracá, Paraíba, and Río Grande do Norte. Many of the new colonizers were Portuguese Jews from Amsterdam.

In Brazil the Dutch became interested in the slave trade. As early as 1630 they had encountered some 45,000 black slaves in Pernambuco, and soon realized that sugar production needed a steady supply of slaves from Africa. The West India Company conquered São George del Mina in 1637 and São Paulo de Luanda in 1641, both Portuguese ports used to transport slaves to Brazil. From 1636 to 1645 the Dutch imported some 23,000 slaves to Brazil.

In 1637 Count Johan Maurits was named governor of Dutch Brazil. His government, which lasted until 1644, was relatively liberal. He founded Mauritsstad (present-day Recife), created a parliament, regulated sugar production, and struck a treaty with the Portuguese landowners in 1641. Nonetheless, the Portuguese started a rebellion in 1645. Dutch Brazil gradually shrank in size from 1645 to 1654, when the Dutch finally left to resettle themselves and their slaves in the Guyanas and the Caribbean. There the Dutch owned several islands, including Curação, which began to serve as a port for the slave trade. From 1651 to 1675 they brought 63,000 slaves from Africa to the New World. Usually more than half the slaves brought to Curação were sold to the Spaniards.

The formerly Brazilian Dutch and their slaves moved mostly to Tobago, Barbados, and the French colonies of Guadalupe and Martinique, where they introduced sugarcane farming and taught the technique of sugar processing. A Dutch colony also was founded in Cayenne, the present-day capital of French Guiana, where many of the Portuguese Jews settled. When the French took Cayenne from the Dutch in 1664, the settlers emigrated to the neighboring British colony of Suriname.

The West India Company fell into bankruptcy at the end of the eighteenth century. In 1821 the recently created Kingdom of the Netherlands formally converted the company's former holdings into colonies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boxer, Charles. The Dutch in Brazil, 1624–1654. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1957.

Lier, Rudolf Asveer Jacob van. Frontier Society: A Social Analysis of the History of Surinam. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971.

Mello Neto, Jose Antonio Gonsalves de. Fontes para a História do Brasil Holandês: A Economia Açucareira. Recife: Parque Histórico Nacional dos Guararapes Mec/Sphan, 1981.

Mello Neto, Jose Antonio Gonsalves de. Tempo dos flamengos: Influencia da ocupação holandesa na vida e cultura do norte do Brasil. Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, 3a ediçaõ aumentada, 1a ediçaõ. Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1987 [1947].

Dirk Kruijt

Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture