Dissertation_A Bick_May 25 - DataSpace at Princeton University

the revolt pushed the colony’s fate to the top of the political agenda and stimulated an intense
period of negotiations to determine an appropriate response. At the center of these negotiations
was the Heren XIX, the body responsible both for the colony and for the company’s relationship
with the States General. This chapter examines how the Heren XIX collected, interpreted, and
represented information about the revolt. It seeks to understand what happened in Brazil and to
reconstruct how news from the periphery impacted politics at the center, using the circulation of
information to delineate the corridors of power through which that information passed. In this
way the chapter clearly defines the most important issue the Heren XIX had to confront during
their fall meeting in Middelburg. It is largely narrative, rather than analytic, an approach that is
intended to introduce some of the key individuals and institutions involved in colonial politics in
the Dutch Republic.
The Republic’s extensive trade networks and its largely urban, literate population made
for a lively news culture. 7 In assessing this culture, scholars have largely focused on Amsterdam,
“cradle of the modern periodical press.” 8 Although news had long circulated in manuscript form,
and the first printed newssheets appeared in Germany, it was in Amsterdam during the early
years of the Thirty Years’ War that the collection, editing, and printing of weekly newspapers
became professionalized. By 1640, the city boasted ten different newspapers, published not only
in Dutch but also in English and French. 9 These newspapers collected political and commercial
7 See Folke Dahl, “Amsterdam Earliest Newspaper Centre of Western Europe: New Contributions to the History of
the First Dutch and French Corantos,” Het Boek XXV, no. 3 (1939): 161–198; Woodruff D. Smith, “The Function of
Commercial Centers in the Modernization of European Capitalism: Amsterdam as an Information Exchange in the
Seventeenth Century,” The Journal of Economic History 44, no. 4 (December 1984): 985–1005; Frijhoff and Spies,
1650: Hard-Won Unity; Peter Burke, A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 2000).; Marika Keblusek, Boeken in de Hofstad: Haagse Boekcultuur in de Gouden Eeuw (Hilversum:
Verloren, 1997).
8 Clé Lesger, Handel in Amsterdam ten Tijde van de Opstand: Kooplieden, Commerciële Expansie en Verandering
in de Ruimtelijke Economie van de Nederlanden, ca. 1550-ca. 1630 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2001), 223.
9 Folke Dahl, “Amsterdam Earliest Newspaper Centre of Western Europe: New Contributions to the History of the
First Dutch and French Corantos,” 186–195.
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