Dissertation_A Bick_May 25 - DataSpace at Princeton University

the council's size and authority, decreased the powers of its senior member, and more clearly
delineated responsibility for administering justice, tracking money, and corresponding with the
company at home. All these measures were implicitly intended to correct what the company's
directors perceived to be the failures of the colonial government in Brazil under Maurits'
direction.
This was in fact only the latest stage in a longer history of Dutch efforts to govern the
colony. The 1621 charter originally had envisaged a Governor General who would administer
not only Brazil, but all of the company's territories and forts within the Western Hemisphere. It
was no coincidence that this mirrored the administrative structure of the VOC, which had
appointed Pieter Both (1568-1615) in 1610 to serve as Governor General at Batavia with
responsibility for all of the East Indies. 33 A document drafted after the short-lived seizure of
Bahia in 1624, however, sought to institute a significantly less centralized model. According to
this document, Bahia would be governed by a council of nine members and a rotating presidency
that followed the detailed representative formula and hierarchy of the Heren XIX itself. 34 The
plan was never implemented, as the colony was lost to a joint Portuguese-Spanish fleet the
following year, but it showed the degree to which at least some of the company's directors had
been unwilling to establish a strong and independent central authority in Brazil. 35 Later, when the
company captured Recife and Olinda in 1630, the Heren XIX experimented with a whole range
gedaen inde vergaderinge van haer hooch Mogh. By de Heeren van der Capellen toe Ryssel, Vierssen, en van
Santen de 27 Decemb: 1644.
33 Gaastra, The Dutch East India Company, 62; Schiltkamp, “Legislation, Government, Jurisprudence, and Law in
the Dutch West Indian Colonies: The Order of Government of 1629,” 326.
34 Concept van Regieringe. soo in politie als justitie in de Bahia de todos los Sanctos, ende andere plaetsen noch te
veroveren in Brasil. This document was drafted by Albert Coenraads Burgh, Simon van Beaumont, Philips Doubleth
and Diderich Scherff in mid-September 1624. NA 1.01.04 inv.nr. 5751A. For the discussions within the Heren XIX,
see NA 1.05.01.01 inv.nr. 1, entry for 13 September 1624.
35 See Stuart B. Schwartz, “The Voyage of the Vassals: Royal Power, Noble Obligations, and Merchant Capital
Before the Portuguese Restoration of Independence, 1624-1640,” The American Historical Review 96, no. 3 (June
1991): 735–762.
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