RELIGION AND SLAVERY IN DUTCH BRAZIL: A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF WHAT HAPPENED IN THE CAPTAINCY OF PERNAMBUCO (1630-1654)

Abstract

With the Dutch domination of the Captaincy of Pernambuco in the seventeenth century—a period that lasted twenty-four years (1630–1654)—the Dutch West India Company (WIC) obtained from the Seven United Provinces of the Netherlands administrative, political, economic, and legal authority over the territory occupied in the Brazilian Northeast. Among the Europeans who resided there, Jews, Calvinist Protestants, and Catholics coexisted while diverging in the practice of their respective religious doctrines. These divergences generated disputes and reaffirmations of their creeds in the territories under Dutch rule, together with the continuation of enslaving practices. Accordingly, this article seeks to explain how these disagreements unfolded and what repercussions they had for issues related to religion and to African and Indigenous enslavement in Dutch Brazil. It also aims to understand how Protestants, Catholics, and Jews confronted and negotiated the processes of enslavement within the occupied regions. To that end, through content analysis, we methodologically examine selected official communications from the period in order to understand the extent of Calvinist interference in the freedom of worship of Jews and Catholics in the region. Thus, we investigate how, and to what extent, religious and slavery-related questions and disputes were addressed by the Dutch colonial administration in its effort to secure—through the so-called pax nassoviana—the continued presence of Portuguese and Brazilian inhabitants in the occupied territories. Finally, we conclude that enslaving practices were met with Calvinist complacency amid the pressure to rigorously enforce the prohibition of Catholic and Jewish worship in public spaces at the time.