Dutch Brazil-Angola Relations in the Context of the South Atlantic: States, Companies, and Merchants, 1630–54

In the secondary literature, the South Atlantic complex appears dominated by Brazilian, Angolan and Portuguese merchants operating bilateral commercial and financial circuits between Brazil and Angola, and at times with the Gulf of Guinea. Although this scholarship dates the formation of the South Atlantic complex to the mid-sixteenth century, most studies have focused in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, portraying the South Atlantic as exclusively Iberian-Brazilian and/or Portuguese-Brazilian. This paper aims to partially fill this void in the literature by looking at the seventeenth century South Atlantic and explore the role played by Dutch commercial companies and other private merchants based in Dutch Brazil and the Dutch Republic for the consolidation of the South Atlantic complex as we would know it in the following centuries.

This paper will examine the diplomatic, military, commercial and social relations established between the North-eastern Brazilian captaincies controlled by the Dutch West India Company (hereafter WIC) in the years of 1630-1654 and Angola. Here, we will be looking at diplomatic negotiations between the central government of the WIC in Brazil, its headquarters in Luanda and the Angolan rulers. We will be also exploring the military activities, especially the transfer of troops, including Europeans, Native Americans and Angolans between these two territories. Finally, we will analyse the commercial circuits and exchanges linking these two Atlantic regions. Here, we will pay special attention to both business activities carried out by the WIC as well as by private merchants and entrepreneurs based in Dutch Brazil and the Republic.

Our main goals are to highlight the role played by these relations on the consolidation of the South Atlantic complex and to emphasise that the South Atlantic was not an exclusively a Brazilian, Angolan and Portuguese experience.