Talk:Dutch Brazil

Dutch capital was Olinda
The Dutch capial in New Holland was Olinda. Let me get my history books out of the closet. --Wloveral (talk) 17:39, 9 May 2008 (UTC)


 * You are wrong. Olinda was the capital of Pernambuco under Portuguese rule. When the Dutch took over, they moved the capital to Recife, renamed Mauritsstad. Olinda, being the main seat of the Roman Catholic church in Pernambuco, was actually burned down by the Calvinist Hollanders. 161.24.19.112 (talk) 12:34, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

They didn't exactly moved the capital to Recife, the Dutch indeed founded Recife in the lowlands nearby Olinda in order to establish the capital. In its present form, the text implies Recife already existed before the invasion, which is not true. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.1.232.2 (talk) 12:20, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

The ones who came to the place known as 'Dutch Brazil' was an enterprise, not any state and/or goverment. The "history books" of Brazil were modified (more than once) about this unique and peculiar time. There's no capital. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2804:7F7:DB80:1008:D726:2022:8B7C:A31C (talk) 11:24, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

There is considerable truth in these posts. The West India Company (WIC) was not technically a sovereign entity (although this is not really a unique circumstance, the British had the Hudson Bay Company, the Dutch the much more successful East India Company). So it might be more accurate to call Recife (which existed as "port of Olinda" village catering to ships, seamen, and their associates before the WIC incursion). However, I submit that this is a distinction better left to a detailed history of Dutch Brazil (such as Boxer's The Dutch in Brazil and can be glossed over in an encyclopedia article. Mauritsstad (Recife) certainly replaced Olinda as the principal city in Dutch Brazil and I don't see that it matters whether it was technically the capital.P2dwight (talk) 20:13, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

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Status of Pernambuco's sugar industry
User:Juniorpetjua‬‪ has raised issue with this article's statement "The sugar industry in Pernambuco never fully recovered from the Dutch occupation, being surpassed by sugar production in Bahia."

The article's statement is taken from Stuart Schwartz's book Tropical Babylons, which states on p. 170 that "The sugar economy of Pernambuco never fully recovered from the Dutch interlude and its effects. Bahia surpassed it and then remained the principal producer in Brazil until the nineteenth century."

I'll let Juniorpetjua elaborate on his criticisms here.OmgItsTheSmartGuy (talk) 18:22, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

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Under the "population" section: I question this sentence: "The Vrijburghers were mostly ex-soldiers formerly employed by the WIC but who then began to settle down as farmers or engenho lords." As has been previously noted in the article buying our building an engenho was a very expensive proposition, then once it is built you needed to invest a lot of money in slaves to operate it. I'd be very interested to learn about any "ex-soldiers" who came to own an engenho. Perhaps a few commanders could have mustered the capital, but most officers senior enough to have access to a lot of money were more likely to return to Europe than remain in Nieuw Holland.P2dwight (talk) 20:35, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Usage of Várzea
Under the section on the demise of the WIC, in the following sentence probably the use of the word "várzea" is incorrect in context. "That year, the Portuguese gained Várzea, Sirinhaém, Pontal de Nazaré, the Fort of Porto Calvo, and Fort Maurits. By 1646, the WIC only controlled four toeholds along the Brazilian coast, chief among them being Recife." Várzea probably refers to the flood plain of the Capibaribe river, one of the early sites of some very productive engenhos. I doubt it is an entity such as those it is grouped with.P2dwight (talk) 20:45, 19 September 2020 (UTC)