Dissertation_A Bick_May 25 - DataSpace at Princeton University

with subtle differences of fact and emphasis that are suggestive as to their sources and their
interpretation of what had taken place. Both stories appeared near the end of page two, on the
reverse side, in the place customarily reserved for domestic news that preceded last-minute
additions and advertisements. Both papers devoted the bulk of the story to the revolt: Van
Hilten’s Courante began with the statement that “all the towns of Brazil have begun to plan
against us, led by the Senores d'Ingenios [sugar planters] who have brought the inhabitants to
their side and seek to take over various quarters [of the colony].” Broer Jansz.'s Tijdinghe
reported more simply that several ships had been held up from departing Brazil “on account of a
conspiracy of the Portuguese living in that land.” Both papers also reported that the plot involved
“a certain wedding” at which the foremost Dutchmen would be murdered, and that this plot had
been foiled. But their assessment of the outcome was starkly different. Broer Jansz. reported that
twelve of the conspirators had been killed to only two Dutchmen, and suggested that much had
been made of little in Recife. “All the Portuguese,” his story concluded, “were called to swiftly
return to their Ingenios [sugar mills].” Van Hilten, by contrast, ended on a foreboding note: “The
citizens and residents mustered here and found 1,800 strong persons resolved to fight for the
fatherland. [In addition] many Dutchmen fled to Recife.”
As Folke Dahl has pointed out, identifying the sources employed by early Dutch
newspapers has proven elusive. 47 Of the two papers, only one gave any indication of its source:
at the top of the story in Van Hilten’s Courante was written, “Out of Recife of Olinda 28 June.”
This date does not appear on any of the letters included in the generale missiven, but its
proximity to the departure date of the Walcheren, Rode Hart, and Grote Gerrit suggests strongly
that the letter traveled on one of those ships. If this is correct, we can hypothesize that the story
47 Folke Dahl, “Amsterdam Earliest Newspaper Centre of Western Europe: New Contributions to the History of the
First Dutch and French Corantos.”
56