Online seminar – Revisiting Dutch Brazil and Johan Maurits

The history of the Dutch colony in Brazil (1630-1654) continues to fascinate both professional historians and a broader audience alike. The Mauritshuis naturally has a long-standing interest in the history of the Dutch colony in Brazil: Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen had the Mauritshuis built during the time he was governor-general of the colony in 1636-1644.

Research project

On March 15 the Mauritshuis will organise an online seminar in which historians who were part of, or were affiliated with, the Mauritshuis research project Revisiting Dutch Brazil and Johan Maurits (2018-2021) will present their research. The project, including a fellowship programme (2020-2021) with an international group of four researchers, was funded by the Gieskes-Strijbis Fund. This project focused on research of the period of Johan Maurits’s tenure as governor in Brazil, with an emphasis on subjects that previously had been given little attention. Head of the research project was Dr. Erik Odegard, who specializes in the history of Johan Maurits, Dutch Brazil and the Dutch West India Company. The presented papers will be published afterwards in several peer-reviewed journals.

Registration

Admission to the online seminar is free, but registration is required. To register, please send an email to seminar@mauritshuis.nl.

Programme

• 15.00 – 15.10 Opening
  Martine Gosselink, Director Mauritshuis
• 15.10 – 15.30 The Count in the Colony: Reappraising Johan Maurits and the Dutch colony in Brazil
  Erik Odegard, Head of the Research Project
• 15.30 – 15.50 A Tale of Two Counts: Contending Empires, Indigenous Know-how and the building of Luso-Dutch border In Brazil (1637-1641)
  Irene Maria Vicente Martín, Fellow of the Research Project
• 15.50 – 16:10 Tracing Black Lives: Afro-Brazilian servants, sailors, and families from Recife to Amsterdam
  Mark Ponte, Fellow of the Research Project
• 16.10 – 16.25 Q&A
• 16.25 – 16.35 Short break
• 16.35 – 16.55 The insertion of the Dutch in the Trans-Amazonian routes of indigenous slaves
  André Luís Bezerra Ferreira, Fellow of the Research Project
• 16.55 – 17.15 Dutch and Portuguese business ventures in the south Atlantic: Competition, partnership, and trans-imperial slave networks between Angola and Brazil (1600-1654)
  Miguel Geraldes Rodrigues, Fellow of the Research Project
• 17.15 – 17.35 Beyond numbers: Enslaved Africans and the social construct of Dutch Brazil
  Carolina Monteiro, PhD candidate at Leiden University – ERC Project BRASILIAE
• 17.35 – 17.45 Q&A
• 17.45 – 18.00 Closing Remarks by Erik Odegard

For more information, visit the event page on the Mauritshuis website.