Slavery at the Court of the ‘Humanist Prince’ Reexamining Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen and his Role in Slavery, Slave Trade and Slave-smuggling in Dutch Brazil

From 1630 until its fall in 1654, the Dutch West India Company maintained a colony in northeastern Brazil where it tried to profit from the cultivation of sugar using enslaved African labor. Count Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen served as this colony’s governor-general from 1636 until 1644, this being the most heavily studied period of the colony’s existence. But the role of Johan Maurits in the transatlantic slave trade and enslavement in Brazil is poorly covered by research, with some historians recently arguing that there is ‘no proof’ of any personal involvement. This article presents a clear argument for the personal involvement of Johan Maurits in the slave trade and shows his involvement in slave-smuggling. Understanding the social relations between the count, his court and the Luso-Brazilian elite is in fact simply impossible without bringing in the trade and smuggling of enslaved Africans.

Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen e os trajes dos ameríndios1

resumo Em 1644, no coração de Haia, na atual Holanda, Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen promoveu uma festa para os cidadãos ricos da cidade para exibir seu Gabinete de Curiosidades e suas conquistas no Brasil. Em um momento de terror, houve uma performance de 11 nativos brasileiros: todas as portas foram fechadas e os “ameríndios antropófagos” realizaram a sua apresentação, alguns em trajes ritualísticos, outros nus, em escândalo nunca dantes visto em Haia e suficientemente forte para perpetuar a imagem do “selvagem da América do Sul” que, de alguma maneira, ainda hoje perdura. Este artigo é sobre trajes e hábitos (não)vestimentares dos indígenas brasileiros, naquela noite e antes dela. Os referenciais teóricos principais são Buvelot (2014) e Françozo (2014).

Precursors of the botanical exploration of South America. Wilhelm Piso (1611–1678) and Georg Marcgrave (1610–1644)

The Dutch colonization of northeastern Brazil from 1630 to 1654 is described, with emphasis on the years 1636–1644, when the colony was under the administration of Johan-Maurits Prince of Nassau-Siegen (1604–1679). During his rule, the Company sent the geographer and astronomer Georg Marcgrave (1610–1644) and the physician Wilhelm Piso (1611–1644) to Recife. Both explored northern Brazil and made rich botanical and zoological collections, which were published in Amsterdam in 1648, after Pisos’s return, under the title Historia Naturalis Brasiliae; a second edition followed in 1658. In this work Piso mentions for the first time the orchid Vanilla in its current spelling. Both Piso and Marcgrave collected and illustrated Catasetum maculatum L.C.R., whilst a third orchid species, Trigonidium acuminatum Batem., can be found in Marcgrave’s herbarium.

The Empire that Never Was

This book forum focuses on Wim Klooster’s The Dutch Moment: War, Trade, and Settlement in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World (Cornell University Press, 2016). In his book, Wim Klooster shows how the Dutch built and eventually lost an Atlantic empire that stretched from the homeland in the United Provinces to the Hudson River and from Brazil and the Caribbean to the African Gold Coast. The fleets and armies that fought for the Dutch in the decades-long war against Spain included numerous foreigners, largely drawn from countries in northwestern Europe. Likewise, many settlers of Dutch colonies were born in other parts of Europe or the New World. According to Klooster, the Dutch would not have been able to achieve military victories without the native alliances they carefully cultivated. Indeed, Klooster concludes, the Dutch Atlantic was quintessentially interimperial, multinational, and multiracial. At the same time, it was an empire entirely designed to benefit the United Provinces. The four reviewers – Trevor Burnard, Joyce Goodfriend, Cynthia Van Zandt, and Willem Frijhoff – all offer praise, some more profusely than others. Their reviews critically question some aspects of Klooster’s narrative, particularly in relation to slavery, the inevitability of the Dutch Atlantic empire’s decline, his assessment of the rule of Johan-Maurits van Nassau-Siegen in Dutch Brazil, the role of violence and of women in Dutch colonization, as well as the relationship between microcosmic and macrocosmic perspectives on the history of Dutch America.

Material Mediators: Johan Maurits, Textiles, and the Art of Diplomatic Exchange

Although textiles were key facilitators in global diplomacy in the early modern period, there has been little scholarly consideration of the dynamic role they played in shaping diplomatic relationships during a time when textiles of all types from both east and west were circulating actively as wholesale commodities across world markets. This case study addresses this lacuna by examining the role that textiles, including linens, silks, and tapestries, played in mediating the inter- and intra-cultural diplomatic negotiations of Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen (1604-1679), the governor-general of Dutch Brazil from 1637 to 1644. As I argue, the production and dissemination of objects such as linens and especially the Old Indies tapestry series, based on designs made under Johan Maurits’s patronage, demonstrate how textiles, in their many forms and formats, were uniquely suited to negotiate the dynamic shifts that characterized cross-cultural diplomacy in the early modern period.