Dissertation_A Bick_May 25 - DataSpace at Princeton University

Chapter Two
News from Brazil: The Political Geography of Information
1. Introduction
Bad news travels fast, as the old English proverb says, and for the WIC the ocean was no
impediment. On August 30, 1645, three Dutch ships—the Walcheren, Roode Hart, and Grote
Gerrit—arrived at the port of Middelburg carrying letters from the Hoge Raad (High Council) in
Recife, capital of Dutch Brazil. 1 That morning the directors of the Zeeland chamber were busily
making plans to outfit a ship to trade for slaves in Guinea and Angola and putting the finishing
touches on the agenda for the meeting of the Heren XIX, scheduled to begin the following week.
In the midst of these activities, a page informed them that ships had arrived from Brazil and
handed over a hefty bundle of letters, reports, inventories, and other documents. 2 These told a
most unfortunate tale: in early June, and under the pretence of a wedding ceremony, a number of
leading Portuguese planters had plotted to murder nearly the entire staff of the Dutch colonial
government. The plot itself had been foiled, but the conspirators had successfully retreated into
the vast scrublands beyond Dutch control. There they joined up with as many as five thousand
black, Indian, and Portuguese soldiers who had marched, undetected, from the Portuguese capital
1 NA 1.05.01.01, inv.nr. 26, entry for August 30, 1645, fol. 106v.
2 The originals of these documents can be found in NA 1.05.01.01, inv.nr. 60, Overgekomen Brieven ende Papieren
uit Brazilie, 1644-1646, fol. 74. My account of the morning's discussion in the Zeeland chamber is drawn from NA
1.05.01.01, inv.nr. 26, entry for August 30, 1645, fol. 106v.
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