dewulf - emulating a portuguese model - slave policy wic, reformed church in dutch brazil and new...

journal of early american history 4 (2014) 3-36

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014|doi 10.1163/18770703-00401006

brill.com/jeah

I would like to thank Janny Venema from the New Netherland Research Center as well as Jaap Jacobs and Koenraad Brosens for their assistance in the location and transcription of the original archival documents.

Emulating a Portuguese ModelThe Slave Policy of the West India Company and the Dutch Reformed Church in Dutch Brazil (16301654) and New Netherland (16141664) in Comparative Perspective

Jeroen DewulfDept. of German and Dutch Studies, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

[email protected]

Received 19 September 2013; accepted 5 January 2014

Abstract

This article presents a new perspective on the master-slave relationship in New Netherland in order to complement the existing theories on the treatment of slaves in that Dutch colony. It shows how prior to the loss of Dutch Brazil, the West India Company modeled its slave policy after Portuguese practices, such as the formation of black militias and the use of Christianity as a means to foster slave loyalty. It also points out that in the initial slave policy of the Dutch Reformed Church was charac-terized by the ambition to replace the Iberian Catholic Church in the Americas. While the Reformed Church in the early decades of the Dutch colonial expansion was char-acterized by a community-building spirit and a flexible attitude toward newcomers, the loss of Brazil shattered the dream of a Protestant American continent and gave way to a more exclusivist approach with a much stronger emphasis on orthodoxy. This led to a dramatic change in attitude vis--vis slaves, which is reflected in the segrega-tionist policiesboth at a social and a religious levelin later Dutch slave colonies such as Suriname.

4 Dewulf


1 Following John Thornton, I spell Kongo with K in order to distinguish between the histori-cal kingdom (located mostly in todays northern Angola) and the later Congo.

2 Carta de D. Garcia II Rei do Congo ao governador holands no Brasil (20 February 1643), in Antnio Brsio (ed.), Monumenta Missionria Africana, 11 vols. (Lisbon: Agncia Geral do Ultramar, 195271), 9:1316; Carta de Sousa Coutinho ao conde da Vidigueira (10 October 1643), in Brsio, Monumenta Missionria Africana, 9:81; Le gouverneur et le Conseil du Bresil au directeur Nieulant de Loanda (13 February 1643) and Extrait dune lettre de Hans Mols aux XIX (19 September 1643), in Louis Jadin (trans. and ed.), LAncien Congo et lAngola 16391655 daprs les archives romaines, portugaises, nerlandaises et espagnoles, 3 vols. (Brussels and Rome: Institut Historique Belge de Rome, 1975), 1:3925, 48294; Caspar van Baerle, The History of Brazil under the Governorship of Count Johan Maurits of Nassau, 16361644, Blanche T. van Berckel-Ebeling Koning (trans.) (Gainesville, Fla: University Press of Florida, 2011 [1647]), pp. 2378; Louis Jadin, Rivalits luso-nerlandaises du Sohio, Congo, 16001675, in Bulletin de lInstitut Historique Belge de Rome vol. XXXVII (1966), 137360 and 1501.

Keywords

New Netherland Dutch Brazil Curaao slavery West India Company Dutch Reformed Church Christianity African Catholicism Kongo black militias \ black brotherhoods

In 1642, three ambassadors representing Count Daniel da Silva of the rebel-lious Kongolese province of Soyo arrived in Dutch Brazil to discuss a possible alliance with Governor-General Johan Maurits, Count of Nassau.1 Later, da Silvas rival, King Garcia II of Kongo also sent ambassadors to Dutch Brazil. Both Kongolese rulers were well aware of the Dutch interest in obtaining slaves. To strengthen the new relationship, the count of Soyo offered Johan Maurits two hundred slaves, which offer was topped by the king of Kongo, who promised a gift of no fewer than seven hundred slaves. One of the presents from the Dutch that the ambassadors took back to Africa was an exquisite hat made out of beaver fur, New Netherlands main export product.2

This anecdote illustrates the transatlantic nature of Dutch colonial opera-tions in the seventeenth century and also highlights the importance of the slave trade in the global flow of commerce organized by the West India Company (WIC). In the broader context of the Companys slave trading opera-tions, New Netherland (161464) played only a minor role. Despite the fact that the number of slaves was relatively small, the Dutch colony on the American East Coast presents an intriguing case. Quite remarkable, for instance, is the decision to distribute weapons among the blacks in order to defend the colony

5Emulating a Portuguese Model


3 The Commonality of New Netherland assembled by the Directors order, to answer three Articles proposed by Him (29 August 1641), Dutch National Archives, Archives of the States General (hereafter abbreviated as NA, SG), inv.nr. 12564.25; Edmund Bailey OCallaghan and Berthold Fernow (trans. and eds.), Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, 15 vols. (Albany, N.Y., 185387) (hereafter abbreviated as DRCHNY),1:415; Manumission of Manuel de Gerrit de Reus, and ten others, with their wives, from slavery, (25 February 1644), New York State Archives, New York Colonial Manuscripts (hereafter NYCM), vol. 4, p. 1834; Arnold J.F. van Laer (trans. and ed.), Council Minutes, 16381649. New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch. Vol. 4. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1974), pp. 21213.

4 Jaap Jacobs, New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 31417.

5 James Fenimore Cooper, Satanstoe, or The Littlepage Manuscripts: A Tale of the Colony (New York: State University of New York Press, 1990 [1845]), p. 69; William Elliot Griffis, The Story of New Netherland: The Dutch in America (Boston, Mass., 1909), p. 60.

6 Johannes Menne Postma, The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade, 16001815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 25.

against Native American attacks, which shortly afterwards was followed by a request for freedom submitted by a group of slaves.3 Another surprising char-acteristic of master-slave relations in New Netherland was the eagerness of the Dutch Reformed Church to reach out to the slave community, baptizing some fifty children of black parentage.4

As these examples illustrate, the slave system in New Netherland differed considerably from the way slaves were to be treated after the colony had come under English rule in 1664. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, it was common to explain the exceptional master-slave relationship in New Netherland with reference to the alleged tolerance of the Dutch, both at home and overseas. As James Fenimore Cooper put it in his novel Satanstoe (1845), [a]mong the Dutch, in particular, the treatment of the negro was of the kind-est character. This inspired William Elliot Griffis in The Story of New Netherland (1909) to claim that slavery in New Netherland was very mild in form and that the black slave scarcely felt his bonds.5 Later historians moved away from such a mild judgment, but still acknowledged the exceptional relationship that existed between masters and slaves in New Netherland. A case in point is Johannes Postma, who went as far as to suggest that slaves in New Netherland had not really been treated as slaves but rather as if they were indentured servants.6

Postmas conclusion may have been too rosy. When the European settlers Gijsbert Cornelisz Beijerlandt, Michiel Christoffelsz, Pieter Hendricksz, and Gerrit Pelser were convicted for crimes in New Netherland, they were sen-tenced to work with the Negroes, which shows that the type of work done by

6 Dewulf


7 Edmund Bailey OCallaghan (trans. and ed.), Calendar of Historical Manuscripts in the Office of the Secretary of State, 2 vols. (Albany, N.Y., 18656), 1:194, 198; NYCM, 4:31 (nevens de Swarten de dienst te doen), p. 190 (mette Comps. negros te arbeijden); Van Laer, Council Minutes, 16381649, p. 37, 220; NYCM, 9:780 (neffens des Comps. negros aende fortresse te arbeijden).

8 Even Willie Page admitted in his radical interpretation of slavery in New Netherland that slaves enjoyed some degree of legal protection in the Dutch colony, Willie F. Page, The Dutch Triangle: The Netherlands and the Atlantic Slave Trade, 16211664 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1997), p. 208.

9 Ira Berlin, From Creole to African: Atlantic Creoles and the Origins of African-American Society in Mainland North America, in The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 53, no. 2 (1996), 25188.

African slaves was considered degrading by the colonys white population.7 Although Postmas conclusion is questionable, his reticence in using the word slavery does reflect a common unease among scholars in classifying the treatment of blacks in New Netherland. However one interprets the few sources on slaves and slavery in the Dutch colony, it cannot be denied that the master-slave relationship was exceptional not only in comparison to the English slave policy in New York but also to the segregationist policies that came to characterize later slave colonies under Dutch rule such as, for instance, Suriname.8

Debunking the tendency of past generations to use overly mild colors in painting the history of slavery in New Netherland does not exempt contempo-rary scholars from searching for possible answers for the reason(s) behind this exceptional slave system. Did the exceptional treatment of slaves in New Netherland relate to the general lack of people to do the hard, dangerous, and dirty work in the colony so that, once more slaves arrived, rules automatically became stricter? Was it related to the Native American and English threat, which forced the Company to adopt a lenient attitude in order to ensure the slaves loyalty in case of an attack? Or was the exceptional treatment, as Ira Berlin has argued, not so much the result of a deliberate Dutch policy but rather of slaves themselves, who aptly used their Atlantic Creole talents of negotiation to secure a minimal set of rights and privileges?9

Although each of the above explanations has its merits, it would be nave to assume that one single theory can explain the complexity of master-slave rela-tions in New Netherland. This article argues that our understanding of slavery in one Dutch colony can be increased on the basis of a comparative perspec-tive with another colony: Dutch Brazil (16301654). This comparison will high-light to what extent the Dutch treatment of slaves in the first half of the seventeenth century was influenced by their ambition to overtake the



10 Wim Klooster, The Dutch in the Atlantic, in Hans Krabbendam, Cornelis A. van Minnen and Giles Scott-Smith (eds.), Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations 16092009 (Amsterdam: Boom Publishers, 2009), pp. 6373.

11 Nigel Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 1667; Peter R. Christoph, The Freedmen of New Amsterdam, in Nancy A.M. Zeller (ed.), A Beautiful and Fruitful Place: Selected Rensselaerswijck Seminar Papers (New York: New Netherland Publishing, 1991), pp. 15770; John K. Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 14001680 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 156; Kees Zandvliet, The Dutch Encounter with Asia, 16001950 (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 2002), p. 99; Mark Meuwese, Brothers in Arms, Partners in Trade: DutchIndigenous Alliances in the Atlantic World, 15951674 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 15861.

12 Graham Russell Hodges, Root & Branch: African Americans in New York & East Jersey 16131863 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999), p. 26. See also Postma, The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade, p. 17; Oliver A. Rink, Before the English (16091664), in Milton M. Klein (ed.), The Empire State: A History of New York (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 56.

13 Benjamin Nicolaas Teensma (ed.), Suiker, verfhout & tabak: het Braziliaanse handboek van Johannes de Laet, 1637 (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2009), pp. 28, 32; Janny Venema, Kiliaen van Rensselaer (15861643): Designing a New World (Hilversum: Verloren, 2010), pp. 24167.

Portuguese dominion in the Atlantic slave trade and their tendency to emulate the successful Portuguese slave model they had encountered in Brazil.

As Wim Klooster has shown, the Dutch East and West India Companies (VOC and WIC) adopted several aspects of the Portuguese imperial system: from the building of fortified trading posts and the design of factorijen to accounting practices.10 Other studies on Dutch overseas settlements in the early seven-teenth century confirm that the VOC and WIC often based their initial practices on Portuguese models and developed their own policies only gradually.11

Unlike the Portuguese, the Dutch had no experience with slavery in their own country when they ventured in the overseas trade. Moreover, the entire transat-lantic slave-trading infrastructure they encountered had been constructed according to a Portuguese model. As Graham Hodges has indicated the Dutch had entered the slave trade in Africa in the late sixteenth century, borrowing methods of the Portuguese in Lower West Africa.12 This was even more the case in Pernambuco (Dutch Brazil), which from its beginning had been developed as a slave colony in accordance with Portuguese norms and values.

For the WIC board of directors, New Netherland and Dutch Brazil were not just two separate colonies but parts of what was to become an Atlantic empire under Dutch rule. Significantly, in March 1628, Company Director Kiliaen van Rensselaer, who later became patroon of Rensselaerswijck in New Netherland, wrote a report on Brazil based on the lengthy interviews he had held with indigenous Brazilians who had come to the Dutch Republic in 1625.13 As the

8 Dewulf


14 Postma, The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade, p. 19; Thelma Wills Foote, Black and White Manhattan: The History of Racial Formation in Colonial New York City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 37.

15 dat om het lant te beneficeren soude raetsaem wesen daer naer een goet aental boere knechts en negros daer int lant te brengen, door welckers arbeijt den lantbouw sulcx soude comen bevordert worden, dat men den grooten overvloet van vivres van daer oock naer Brazil soude connen vervoeren (Rapport ende advijs over de gelegentheijt van Nieu nederlant), NA, SG, inv.nr. 12564.30A; DRCHNY, 1:152.

16 Ende tot de bevorderinge vande culture des lants aldaer, soude niet ongeraden wesen, op begeren van den patroonen, coloniers en andere bourenluijden, soo veel negros uijt brasil derwaerts te laten vervoeren, als sij tot civielen prijs contant sullen willen betalen (Rapport ende advijs over de gelegentheijt van Nieu nederlant, NA, SG, inv.nr. 12564.30A); DRCHNY, 1:154.

17 soo behoorden diergelijcke ambachten, als timmeren, metselen, opperen, smeden ende anders, geleert te worden aende negros, gelijck voor desen in Brasil (NYCM vol. 12, doc. 56, p. 3), Letter from the Directors to Stuyvesant (7 April 1657), in Charles T. Gehring (trans.

profits from Brazilian sugar exceeded that of North American beaver pelts by far, Dutch Brazil was considered much more important to the WIC than New Netherland. The sugar cane plantations required large numbers of slaves and Dutch Brazil was therefore systematically privileged when slaves were distrib-uted.14 Thus Brazil was where the Company initiated its policy on the treat-ment of slaves. Until the loss of the colony in 1654, it remained the center of Dutch slave operations in the Americas. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the slave policy adopted by the Dutch in Pernambuco set the standard of how slaves were to be treated in other Company possessions, including New Netherland.

It is, indeed, indicative that in 1644, when sending substantial numbers of slaves to New Netherland was discussed, this was done with explicit reference to furthering the sugar production in Brazil: It would be advisable to intro-duce a goodly portion of farm servants and negroes into that country. By whose labor, agriculture would be so much promoted, that a great quantity of provi-sions could be exported thence to Brazil.15 These slaves were to be transferred from Brazil to New Netherland: [I]t would not be unwise to allow at the request of the patroons, colonists, and other farmers, the introduction, from Brazil there, of as many Negroes as they would be disposed to pay for at a fair price.16 Even after the fall of Dutch Brazils capital Recife in 1654, the Company continued to refer to its former Brazilian colony as a model on how to deal with slaves in New Netherland. In 1657, for instance, the Company directors sug-gested crafts as carpentering, bricklaying, carrying, blacksmithing, and others ought to be taught to the negroes, as was formerly done in Brazil.17



and ed.), Correspondence 16541658: New Netherland Documents Series Volume XII (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2003), p. 127. Appeals had, indeed, been made in Dutch Brazil to European craftsmen to teach their craft to one or more blacks (dat se n of meer negros in haer handwerk souden onderwijzen), see Brief van de Raad der Heren XIX aan de Graaf van Nassau en de Hoge Raad (24 October 1643), quoted in Jos Antonio Gonsalves de Mello, Nederlanders in Brazili, 16241654 (Zutphen: Walburg, 2001 [1947]), p. 195. Some of these black craftsmen were later sent to Luanda to assist the Dutch in the building of a new fortress. See Brief van de Raad der Heren XIX aan de Hoge Raad (17 September 1644), in Mello, Nederlanders in Brazili, p. 196.

18 Linda M. Heywood and John Thornton, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 15851660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. ix.

19 Linda M. Heywood and John Thornton, Intercultural Relations between Europeans and Blacks in New Netherland, in Hans Krabbendam, Cornelis A. van Minnen and Giles Scott-Smith (eds.), Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations16092009 (Amsterdam: Boom Publishers, 2009), p. 199.

Another factor in shaping master-slave relations in New Netherland is that the large majority of slaves in the colony shared an Afro-Portuguese background. Referring to the arrival of slaves in the Americas during the first half of the sev-enteenth century, Linda Heywood and John Thornton have used the term Angolan wave.18 In the case of New Netherland, this term is by no means inap-propriate. As the abundance of names ending with Congo and Angola indi-cates, the vast majority of slaves in New Netherland were of West-Central African origin. Others with names such Van Capo Verde and Santomee had lived on the Portuguese-controlled Cape Verde islands and So Tom where a Luso-African culture had developed. The slaves typically Lusitanian baptismal names such as Francisco, Joo, Manuel, Sebastio, Antnio, Ceclia, Madalena, and Maria, as well as surnames such as Portogys, Premero, and Britto, indicate that these slaves had gonewith various degrees of exposurethrough a process of Portuguese Catholic acculturation before their arrival in North America. Thus it appears that in their interaction with Company officials in New Netherland, slaves themselves were also inclined to make use of a Portuguese model. Heywood and Thornton argue that this background with its engagement with European culture, and particularly its Christian and Catholic component, as well as the contact that the Dutch had with them in Angola and in Brazil, shaped the way in which they integrated into Dutch society in New Netherland.19

This article further explores this theory. It begins with a survey of master-slave relations in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Brazil. The next section focuses on slavery in Dutch Brazil, which is followed by the analysis of the master-slave relationship in New Netherland and other Dutch possessions in the Atlantic.

10 Dewulf


20 Evaldo Cabral de Mello, Olinda Restaurada: Guerra e Acar no Nordeste, 16301654 (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Forense-Universitria; So Paulo: Universidade de So Paulo, 1975), pp. 1668; Stuart B. Schwartz, A Commonwealth within Itself: The Early Brazilian Sugar Industry, 15501670, in Stuart B. Schwartz (ed.), Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 14501680 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), pp. 15866.

21 Stuart B. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 15501835 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 1319, 6572; Herbert Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade to 1650, in Stuart B. Schwartz (ed.), Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 14501680 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), pp. 2048.

22 Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, O trato dos viventes. Formao do Brasil no Atlntico Sul, sculos XVI e XVII (So Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2000), pp. 6370.

Slavery in Portuguese Brazil

In order to stimulate the development of Brazil, the Portuguese monarchy in 1534 granted large tracts of land, so-called capitanias (captaincies), to loyal members of the nobility who were willing to invest in the New World. As a result of the cultivation of sugar cane, the northeastern captaincy of Pernambuco quickly became one of Brazils most prosperous regions. It is esti-mated that on the eve of the Dutch conquest about forty thousand slaves worked on the plantations in the vrzea, the riverside lowlands of Pernambuco.20

The Portuguese had previously introduced sugar cane on Madeira and later also on the African island So Tom, which became an important source of slaves for the plantations in Pernambuco.21 The plantation owners in Pernambuco were well aware that the whip alone was insufficient to keep con-trol over a quickly growing slave population. Thus they introduced a strategy that had been successful on So Tom and which made Luiz Felipe de Alencastro conclude that this small island functioned as a laboratory of what the Brazilian slave society was to become.22

On So Tom, the Portuguese recognized that they could not rule the ini-tially uninhabited island in the same way as they had Madeira and the Azores. The latter islands had primarily been populated by white settlers, but this proved to be impossible on tropical and malaria-infested So Tom. Africans thus soon made up the overwhelming majority of the population on the island. Subsequently, the Portuguese decided to grant cartas de alforria (letters of manumission) to selected groups of blacks. As a result, the island developed a hierarchical society that included a black, predominantly mulatto, elite that remained exempt from doing manual work and in return collaborated with the Portuguese rulers. The slave class in So Tom was thus stratified, with certain



23 A.C. de C.M. Saunders, A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal 14411555 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 1556; Robert Garfield, A History of So Tom Island 14701655: The Key to Guinea (San Francisco, Cal.: Mellen Research University Press, 1992), pp. 1516; Gerhard Seibert, Comrades, Clients and Cousins: Colonialism, Socialism and Democratization in So Tom and Prncipe (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 2731.

24 Carta de El-Rei D. Joo III (9 July 1526), in Brsio, Monumenta Missionria Africana, 1:4724.

25 Toby Green, The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 13001589 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 114, 18991.

26 Serafim Leite, Histria da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil, 10 vols. (Rio de Janeiro: Civilizao Brasileira, 193850), 2:3401; Odulfo van der Vat, Princpios da Igreja no Brasil (Petrpolis: Vozes, 1952), p. 104; Richard Gray, Black Christians and White Missionaries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 13; Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, p. 204; Mariza de Carvalho Soares, Devotos da cor: Identidade tnica, reli-giosidade e escravido no Rio de Janeiro, sculo XVIII (Rio de Janeiro: Civilizao brasileira, 2000), pp. 1617; Marina de Mello e Souza, Reis negros no Brasil escravista. Histria da festa de coroao de Rei Congo (Belo Horizonte: UFMG, 2002), p. 189.

slaves being higher placed than others in a hierarchy that promised freedom at the top of the scale.23

The adoption of specific (Afro-)Portuguese cultural elements, such as speak-ing a Portuguese Creole language and honoring Catholic rituals, was a precon-dition for slaves to rise in the hierarchy. The local confraria (lay brotherhood) played a crucial role in the transmission of these elements. In 1526, the Portuguese had introduced a Catholic lay brotherhood for the black popula-tion on the island, which was dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary. The brother-hoods charter granted the possibility to request freedom for any slave, male or female, who had proven to be a loyal member.24

Although freedom remained an unreachable goal for the large majority of slaves, the system at least offered some hope since it allowed negotiation and opened the possibility to raise of ones own social status or at least that of ones children. This encouraged slaves to demonstrate their loyalty. It was, for instance, common practice in Portuguese-controlled territories in Africa to employ slaves as agents in slave trading operations and in military campaigns.25

Similar to what had happened on So Tom, brotherhoods came to play a key role in the slave system in Brazil. The first references to black brotherhoods in Brazil date to the mid sixteenth century. By the late seventeenth century an estimated eighty percent of slaves in Brazil were members of a brotherhood.26 This high number is not surprising considering that brotherhoods allowed black solidarity to strengthen, enabled the maintenance or construction of a

12 Dewulf


27 Mary C. Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro 18081850 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 86; Gray, Black Christians and White Missionaries, p. 13; Souza, Reis negros no Brasil escravista, p. 209.

28 Didier Lahon, Black African Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal during the Renaissance: Creating a New Pattern of Reality, in T.F. Earle and K.J.P. Lowe (eds.), Black Africans in Renaissance Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 26179.

29 Editaes que se pusero pelos generaes e governadores que em nome de Vossa Magestade lhes prometiam serem forros, quoted in Jos Antnio Gonsalves de Mello, Henrique Dias, governador dos crioulos, negros e mulatos do Brasil (Recife: Editora Massangana, 1988), p. 50. See also Hebe Mattos, Black Troops and Hierarchies of Color in the Portuguese Atlantic World: The Case of Henrique Dias and His Black Regiment, in Luso-Brazilian Review 45, no. 1 (2008), 629; Mello, Olinda Restaurada, p. 177.

30 The largest community of runaway slaves in Brazilian history was that of Palmares, near Pernambuco, which at its peak achieved a population of several thousand inhabitants,

collective identity, provided a mutual-aid system, and permitted the securing of a minimal social mobility that, in exceptional cases, could lead to freedom. Moreover, brotherhoods functioned as a means of cultural affirmation as they provided blacks with a chance to have their own chapel, to elect their own leaders or kings, to participate in processions with their own performances and to make sure that their members received an honorable funeral and burial place.27 As Didier Lahon has shown, the latter was a major concern to slaves living in Lisbon, where until the creation of a black brotherhood deceased slaves used to be thrown at the mercy of the raving dogs on a heap of ordure by the banks of the Tagus.28

Closely related to these brotherhoods were black militias, the most famous of which was founded in response to the Dutch invasion of Pernambuco. Its leader, Henrique Dias, was called the capito dos negros (captain of the blacks) and later even governador dos negros (governor of the blacks). Dias commanded the tero da gente preta (regiment of the blacks) and was granted the title of Knight in the Order of Christ for his contribution in expelling the Dutch from Brazil. As beneficiary of these royal favors, he traveled to Lisbon in 1656 to request (and obtain) recompense for his services carried out in the Brazilian wars as well as freedom for those who had joined his militia following calls by generals and governors who in Your Majestys name had promised manumission.29

Brazils slave system was different but not necessarily milder than elsewhere in the Americas. Although brotherhoods did provide slaves some hope and consolation, manumission was highly exceptional and did not imply social equality. In a deeply race-conscious society, even manumitted slaves contin-ued to bear the stigma of their slave heritage, aggravated by their dark skin color. The system did not prevent slave uprisings, nor did it withhold slaves to attempt to flee from the plantations in order to join maroon societies.30



see Raymond K. Kent, Palmares: An African State in Brazil, in Journal of African History 6, no. 2 (1965), 16175; Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, pp. 26870.

31 Schwartz, A Commonwealth Within Itself, pp. 1668.32 Mello, Nederlanders in Brazili, pp. 40, 87, 139, 184; C.R. Boxer, The Dutch in Brazil, 1624

1654 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), p. 143; Jadin, LAncien Congo et lAngola 16391655, 1:48, 53; Pedro Puntoni, A misria sorte. A escravido Africana no Brasil Holands e as guer-ras do trfico no Atlntico Sul, 16211648 (So Paulo: Editora Hucitec, 1999), p. 82; Evaldo Cabral de Mello (trans. and ed.), O Brasil holands, 16301654 (So Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2010), pp. 1012, 1701, 2914.

33 Mello, Nederlanders in Brazili, pp. 1907; Puntoni, A misria sorte, pp. 845; Mello, O Brasil holands, pp. 24151.

Slavery in Dutch Brazil

The brief Dutch conquest of Salvador da Bahia, from May 1624 until April 1625, followed by the successful occupation of Pernambuco, initiated in 1630, had created excessively high expectations in the Dutch Republic. Some perceived it as a crucial first step in the realization of the Groot Desseyn (Grand Design), the seizure of all Portuguese-controlled territories in Africa and the Americas in order to dominate the lucrative sugar trade.

The reality was very different. Supplying Dutch Brazil with provisions proved to be extremely costly and the expectation that these costs could easily be recuperated with the profits from sugar exports turned out to be a miscalcu-lation. Since the West India Company lacked the necessary know-how to culti-vate sugar cane and to operate sugar mills, it had to depend on the collaboration of local plantation owners.31 In retrospect, the Companys aggressive approach in the early months, which included the destruction of Pernambucos capital Olinda in November 1631, turned out to be a major tactical mistake since it had caused an exodus of the local population. Not only had the owners of about half of the plantations in Pernambuco abandoned their properties, but thou-sands of slaves had also taken advantage of the chaos to run away.32

Considering this deplorable situation, the Company had no other choice but to try to keep the few remaining plantation landowners satisfied. Despite the dire financial situation, Governor General Johan Maurits, who ruled Dutch Brazil between 1637 and 1644, provided tax reductions and credit to those Portuguese landowners willing to restore their damaged sugar mills and spent large amounts of money on urban development, arts, and science to promote the young colony.33 Johan Maurits also favored a policy of religious tolerance, upholding the Pact of Paraba, agreed upon in 1634, which promised freedom of conscience to the Catholic population, guaranteed that churches would

14 Dewulf


34 Johannes de Laet, Historie ofte Iaerlijck verhael van de verrichtinghen der Geoctroyeerde West-Indische Compagnie (Leiden, 1644), pp. 336, 4546.

35 Van Baerle, The History of Brazil under the Governorship of Count Johan Maurits of Nassau, pp. 51, 285; Mello, Nederlanders in Brazili, pp. 2478; Boxer, The Dutch in Brazil, pp. 11322; Mello, O Brasil holands, pp. 217, 2235.

36 ofte anders souden [de heeren] peryckel loopen dat haere partidos niet en souden beplant worden, in Generale Missiven Recife aan de Raad der Heren XIX (24 September 1642), quoted in Mello, Nederlanders in Brazili, p. 248.

37 Het ommedragen van dafgodinne Rosario goede christenen sulx siende en weygeren te eeren, niet alleen quaalijcken bejegent, maar oock nu en dan geslaagen wierden, in Classicale Acta van Brazili (17 October 1641), in Kroniek van het Historisch Genootschap 6:4 (Utrecht, 1874), p. 402.

38 Paulo D. Siepierski, Calvinismo holands e liberdade religiosa, in Manuel Correia de Andrade, Eliane Moury Fernandes, and Sandra Melo Cavalcanti (eds.), Tempos dos fla-mengos & outros tempos. Brasil sculo XVII (Recife: Editora Massangana, 1999), pp. 14766.

39 Jonathan Israel and Stuart B. Schwartz, The Expansion of Tolerance: Religion in Dutch Brazil, 16241654 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007), pp. 2831.

40 A Brief Report on the State That is Composed of the Four Conquered Captaincies, Pernambuco, Itamarac, Paraba, and Rio Grande, Situated in the North of Brazil (14

remain untouched, and assured that Catholics could worship freely.34 This implied that anti-Catholic measures were not or only sporadically enforced.35 Dutch plantation owners in Pernambuco even allowed their workers to build new Catholic chapels because otherwise they would run the risk that their lands would not be cultivated.36

Although Catholic rituals were in theory only allowed inside the church, brotherhood processions continued to take place under Dutch rule. As a docu-ment from 1641 reveals, the classis of Recife (i.e. the governing body of the Dutch Reformed Church in Dutch Brazil) was shocked when it heard that members of the (traditionally black) brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary had held a procession of the idol Rosrio in Sirinham and that good Christians who witnessed it and refused to honor [the Virgin] were not only treated disrespectfully but now and then even beaten up.37 According to Paulo Siepierski, the Dutch authorities only tolerated such Catholic traditions because they depended on Portuguese collaboration.38 The famous religious tolerance in Dutch Brazil was, in fact, not a matter of principle but essentially a matter of circumstance.39

Another precondition to the cooperation of Portuguese plantation owners was the provision of slaves. Johan Maurits was, therefore, very clear about the reality that it was impossible to achieve anything in Brazil without slaves and that all moral concerns over slavery had to be brushed aside.40 In the early



January 1638), in Stuart B. Schwartz (ed.), Early Brazil: A Documentary Collection to 1700, Clive Willis and Stuart B. Schwartz (trans.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 23463.

41 Vos, Eltis and Richardson recorded only ten Dutch voyages carrying slaves to the Americas before 1637, Jelmer Vos, David Eltis and David Richardson, The Dutch in the Atlantic World: New Perspectives from the Slave Trade with Particular Reference to the African Origins of the Traffic, in David Eltis and David Richardson (eds.), Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 22849.

42 Klaas Ratelband, De Nederlanders in West-Afrika 16001650: Angola, Kongo en So Tom (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2000), pp. 91120.

43 According to da Silva and Eltis, the Dutch sent 26,687 slaves to Dutch Brazil. The annual average of 1,160 was far below that of the preceding Portuguese period. See Daniel Barros Domingues da Silva and David Eltis, The Slave Trade to Pernambuco, 15611851, in David Eltis and David Richardson (eds.), Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 98.

44 Onder de Duitschen was er niemant van eenigh vermogen, die niet eenige slaven hield, in Johan Nieuhof, Gedenkweerdige Brasiliaense zee- en lant-reize (Amsterdam, 1682), p. 215.

seventeenth century, Portuguese slave traders had been shipping some five thousand slaves per year from Africa to satisfy demand in Brazil. While Dutch traders had occasionally participated in the slave trade since the late sixteenth century, their numbers were insignificant compared to those of their Lusitanian rivals.41 The conquest of Pernambuco thus required a substantial Dutch invest-ment in the transatlantic slave trade. The Company first seized forts at Arguin and Mouree on the African West Coast and in 1637 also captured Elmina, the main Portuguese stronghold on the Gold Coast. Even more important were the conquests of So Tom and Luanda in 1641.42

In Luanda, the Dutch faced the same problem as in Pernambuco: in order to make the conquest profitable, they required Portuguese collaboration. Since Portuguese forces in the interior of Angola were blocking existing supply routes, it was impossible for the Company to realize its ambitious plans to ship tens of thousands of slaves from Luanda to the Americas. Only after a peace agreement had been achieved between the Dutch Director Cornelis Nieulant and his Portuguese counterpart Pedro de Meneses in 1643 could the flow of slaves from Luanda to Pernambuco be reinitiated.43

Upon arrival in Recife, most of these slaves were sold to Portuguese planta-tion owners in the interior who treated them according to their custom. The Dutch themselves also owned many slaves. According to Johan Nieuhof, every person of some wealth in the Dutch community had a few slaves.44 Dutch slaveholders were required to develop their own slave regime in order to ensure that their slaves worked hard and did not attempt to run away. The logical

16 Dewulf


45 Mello, Nederlanders in Brazili, p. 190; Puntoni, A misria sorte, p. 163.46 Ferner weil viel Slaven und gepressete Morianen zu uns kamen, wurden sommige zum

Wercken, sommige mit Pfeilen, Bogen, alten Hispanischen spada, Rundtartschen, Spie und Cappmessern armiret, und eine compagni Moren angerichtet, unter welcher zum Capitn erwehlet ein Mor gennennet Francisco, Johann Gregor Aldenburgk, Reise nach Brasilien 16231626, in S.P. LHonor Naber (ed.), Reisebeschreibungen von deutschen Beamten und Kriegsleuten im Dienst der niederlndishen West- und Ost-Indischen Kompagnien 16021797, 10 vols. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1930 [1627]), 1:32.

47 Den 7. ist ein Comp. Morianen auffgerichtet worden, denen man Pfeyl und Bogen, Schildt und Schwerdt, grosse Knttel von hartem Holtz wie die Bhmischen Ohrlffel, und dergleichen Gewehr gegeben, Ambrosius Richshoffer, Reise nach Brasilien 16291632, in Naber, Reisebeschreibungen von deutschen Beamten und Kriegsleuten, 1:59.

48 Mello, Nederlanders in Brazili, pp. 184, 197; Van Baerle, The History of Brazil under the Governorship of Count Johan Maurits of Nassau, p. 51; Leendert Jan Joosse, Geloof in de Nieuwe Wereld. Ontmoeting met Afrikanen en Indianen 16001700 (Kampen: Kok, 2008), p. 505.

choice given the circumstances in Pernambuco was to follow the existing Portuguese model. Jos Antnio Gonsalves de Mello has, in fact, argued that in their treatment of slaves, the Dutch followed a Brazilian and Portuguese model. In a more recent study, Pedro Puntoni came to similar conclusions and confirmed that the Dutch in Brazil treated their slaves like the Portuguese used to do.45

Black Militias

A Portuguese custom that the Dutch adopted in Brazil and which they later introduced in other Dutch settlements in the Americas was the employment of slaves for military and semi-military operations. This practice existed in Dutch Brazil long before it was introduced in New Netherland. The first refer-ence to a black soldiers fighting with the Dutch in Brazil dates to 1624. Following the brief occupation of Salvador de Bahia, the Company established a Portuguese-style company of blacks, of which some were armed with bows and arrows, old Hispanic swords, rondaches, spears, and chopping-knives and who chose among themselves a black man called Francisco as their captain.46 In 1630, Dutch authorities in Recife also founded a company of blacks, who were supplied with bows and arrows, shields and swords, big clubs of hard wood, and Bohemian Earspoons [polearms].47 One of the black militias in Recife was led by a black captain called Antnio Mendes. Another one, founded in 1648, was directed by Captain Joo de Andrade. In order to be able to employ them as soldiers, the Dutch authorities had to negotiate with slaves who subsequently seized the opportunity to petition for manumission.48 In 1637,



49 Dese negers van hare meesters tot ons gekomen sijnde, hebben sommige 4, 5, 6, jae 7 jaren gedient ende trouwelijck tegen ons gequeten; sij hebben ooc veele de wapenen onder ons gedragen; Souden wij dan nu die negers weder in handen van hare verbit-terde meesters leveren, soo waren wij wel dapper ondanckbaer, in Dagelijkse Notulen, Recife (25 May 1637), quoted in Mello, Nederlanders in Brazili, p. 198.

50 Cynthia J. van Zandt, Brothers among Nations: The Pursuit of Intercultural Alliances in Early America, 15801660 (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 221.

51 ende dat den directeur daer toe soo veelen negros sal emploijeren vande sterckste ende beloopenste als gevoechelijck sal connen missen, ende haer versien van een hantbijl ende half pijcke (NA, SG, inv. nr. 12564.25), The Commonality of New Netherland assembled by the Directors order, to answer three Articles proposed by Him (29 August 1641), DRCHNY, 1:415.

52 NYCM vol. 2, doc. 93, p. 4; Protest by Director & Council against the Fiscal for Neglect of Duty (5 January 1644), in Arnold J.F. van Laer (trans. and ed.), Register of the Provincial Secretary, 16421647. New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, vol. 2. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1974), p. 188.

53 NYCM, vol. 4, p. 183184; Van Laer, Council Minutes, 16381649, pp. 21213.54 Commission Appointing Secretary van Tienhoven and Burgomaster Cregier to go as

Envoys to the Governor of New Haven (8 April 1654), in DRCHNY, 14:254.

manumission was indeed granted to slaves who had rendered military service to the Dutch: These blacks came to us from their masters, some served us for four, five, six, even seven years faithfully, many of them carried arms in support of our case If we would now return them to the hands of their embittered masters, we would be very ungrateful.49

A similar situation later occurred in New Netherland, where the Company regularly used (or considered using) slaves for military and semi-military oper-ations. As Cynthia van Zandt has argued, WIC officials in New Netherland actively considered using enslaved Africans as militia to help defend the col-ony.50 During the war against the Native Americans under Director Kieft, the colonists advised the director to arm the strongest and fleetest Negroes in the slave population with hand axes and half-pikes.51

A group of blacks also assisted the fiscaal (chief prosecuting officer) in maintaining order in the colony.52 This practice required negotiations with a group of enslaved men, who later petitioned the Company for liberty for them-selves and their families. Eventually, a deal was reached in the form of half-freedom, which meant that the children of those who had been granted freedom continued to belong to the Company as slaves and that the manumit-ted men were compelled to pay an annual financial compensation.53 Under the rule of Director General Petrus Stuyvesant, blacks were employed to hunt down runaway slaves.54 When requesting additional slaves in 1660, Stuyvesant wrote that [t]he negroes, whom the Lords-Directors ordered to send hither,

18 Dewulf


55 Aengaende de negros soo de Heeren Bewinthebberen geordenneert hebben, herwaerts aen te senden dienen heel cloecke ende starcke negros te sijn [illegible] enden arbijt, soo aendese fortresse als andere wercken geemploijeert te connen werden, oock indien daar-toe bequaem: tot den oorlooge, tegens de wilde Naebuuren tsij om haar int lopen te achterhaelen ofte anders eenige Bagagie de soldaten [illegible] nae te dragen (NYSA, NYCM, vol. 13, doc. 70), Extract from a letter of Director Stuyvesant to the Vice Director at Curaao (17 February 1660), in DRCHNY, 13:1423.

56 Original no longer legible (NYCM, vol. 9, p. 1312); Letter from Petrus Stuyvesant to Secretary Van Ruyven (18 March 1660), DRCHNY 13:152.

57 NYCM, vol. 15, doc. 40; Letter from Captain Cregier to Director Stuyvesant (5 July 1663), in DRCHNY 13:273.

58 Thomas G. Evans (ed.), Doop-boek (DB) of the Reformed Church of New Netherland, New York Genealogical and Biographical Society Record, vol. 2 (1890): 17/261 and 18/263; Charles T. Gehring (trans. and ed.), Land Papers, New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, vols. GG, HH & II (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1980), p. 56; Frijhoff, Wegen van Evert Willemsz., p. 769; Heywood and Thornton, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, p. 264.

must be clever and strong men so that they can immediately be put to work here at the Fort or at other places, also if they are fit for it, in the war against the wild neighbors either to pursue them, when they run away or else to carry the soldiers baggage.55 While he was on a military campaign in the Esopus area in 1660, Stuyvesant wrote the Secretary and Council in New Amsterdam with the order to let the free and the Companys Negroes keep good watch on my Bouwery.56 Black soldiers were also included in the military force Stuyvesant sent out against the Esopus Munsees in 1663.57

Similar to what occurred in Brazilian militias, the black community in New Netherland was represented by a leader, who according to Portuguese tradi-tion called himself captain. Several documents in New Netherland make ref-erence to a slave called Bastyaen or Bastiaen (Sebastio) as the Capt. van de Swarten and Captyn van de Negers (captain of the blacks) in the house where the Company slaves lived since the 1640s.58

Slavery and Christianity

Following Willem Frijhoff, it is generally assumed that the Reformed Church in New Netherland underwent a process of confessionalization similar to what occurred in the Dutch Republic. What began as a church accessible to all Christians at a time when the focus was on community building, gradually transformed in the 1650s into a church that placed greater emphasis on ortho-doxy when the focus had shifted towards the struggle for a religious and orderly



59 Willem Frijhoff, Seventeenth-Century Religion as a Cultural Practice: Reassessing New Netherlands Religious History, in Margriet Bruijn Lacy, Charles Gehring and Jenneke Oosterhoff (eds.), From De Halve Maen to KLM: 400 Years of Dutch-American Exchange (Mnster: Nodus, 2008), pp. 15974; Evan Haefeli, New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty (Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), pp. 186253.

60 Boxer, The Dutch in Brazil, pp. 3266; Postma, The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade, pp. 1425; Henk den Heijer and Ben Teensma, Nederlands-Brazili in kaart. Nederlanders in het Atlantisch gebied, 16001650 (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2011), pp. 1927; Joosse, Geloof in de Nieuwe Wereld, pp. 4256; Haefeli, New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty, p. 100; Michiel van Groesen, A Week to Remember: Dutch Publishers and the Competition for News from Brazil, 26 August-2 September 1624, Quarendo 40, no. 1 (2010), 2649.

society.59 However, in the case of in North America and the Caribbean, this change in the Reformed Church may also have been influenced by the loss of Dutch Brazil in 1654. The conquest of Pernambuco in 1630 had been perceived by militant Dutch Calvinists as a crucial step in the fulfillment of the divine task of the Dutch people to make America into a truly Christian (meaning Reformed) continent.60 The illusion that Calvinism was bound to succeed Catholicism in the Americas fostered the adoption of a flexible attitude in guiding to Gods true Church those whofrom a Calvinist point of viewhad been misguided by Catholic missionaries. The ambition to prove that Calvinists were the better Christians implied a strong dedication to commu-nity-building by opening the Reformed Church to all those who had knowl-edge of Jesus Christ but had not yet encountered His true Church. Yet the loss of Brazil 24 years later forced the Dutch Reformed Church to rethink its American destiny in accordance with the new strategy adopted by the WIC. From the mid-1650s on, the Church began to limit access to those who had proven to possess true knowledge of Jesus Christ only. It evolved, thus, from a Church with an all-embracing spirit characterized by a degree of flexibility that at times acquired almost Catholic dimensions into a Church of the elected that excelled in orthodoxy.

Initially, the Reformed Church had the intention to build on the founda-tions established by the Catholic Church in the Americas: Catholic churches were not to be destroyed but rather to be transformed into truly Christian churches and people who had acquired knowledge of Jesus Christ through a Catholic baptism were not to be re-baptized but rather to be guided to a Church where they would acquire a true understanding of His message. This welcoming attitude was not limited to people of European origin but included the indigenous populations in the Americas as well as those who had been

20 Dewulf


61 God heeft ons volck in dat land geroepen tot bekering van heidenen (De Zeeusche Verre-Kyker, 1649), quoted in Joosse, Geloof in de Nieuwe Wereld, p. 78.

62 dat deselve swarten op sondagen ende feestdagen, wanneer de godsdienst wert geoef-fent, ruste ende respijt mach werden gegeven om in de christelijcke religie onderwesen te werden opdat dese haer jock met lust ende patintie onder ons draghen, in Brief van de Raad der Heren XIX aan de Politieke Raad van Pernambuco (19 August 1635), quoted in Mello, Nederlanders in Brazili, p. 192.

63 Mello, Nederlanders in Brazili, p. 190.64 De Predicanten behoort ter harten te gaen de bekeringe der Brasiliaenen, Portugesen en

Negers, in Classicale Acta van Brazili (3 March 1637), in Kroniek van het Historisch Genootschap 6:4, p. 304; Meuwese, Brothers in Arms, Partners in Trade, p. 165; Joosse, Geloof in de Nieuwe Wereld, pp. 4601.

65 To Andr Rivet in The Hague (2 April 1639), in B.N. Teensma (trans. and ed.), Seventeen Letters by Vincent Joachim Soler, Protestant Minister in the Service of the West Indies Company, Written in Recife, Brazil, Between 1636 and 1643, Niels Erik Hyldgaard Nielsen (trans.) (Rio de Janeiro: Index, 1999), p. 58.

brought there from Africa as slaves. Significantly, the pamphlet De Zeeusche Verre-Kyker, published in Vlissingen, wrote on Dutch Brazil in 1649: God has called our people into that country in order to convert heathens.61

There are also indications that the WIC saw a practical advantage in the Reformed Churchs welcoming approach to the slave community. Inspired by the Portuguese model it had encountered in Brazil, the WIC initially believed that that Christianity could be a useful tool to foster slave loyalty. Significantly, the Lords XIX ordered the Political Council in Recife in 1635 that on Sundays and Holidays, when religion is practiced, blacks should be given rest and pro-vided opportunities to be taught in the Christian faith so that they would carry their yoke with pleasure and patience.62

Unlike what has been suggested by Gonsalves de Mello, the Reformed Church in Brazil did not implement a policy of racial segregation that deliber-ately excluded the slave population.63 On the contrary, the classis in Recife made it very clear that clergymen should take the conversion of [indigenous] Brazilians, Portuguese and blacks to heart.64 However, in its ambition to usurp Catholicism in the Americas, the Dutch Reformed Church faced considerable obstacles. A recurrent problem was the shortage of ministers. Although some fifty-four ministers were active in Brazil between 1625 and 1654 (compared to only twelve in New Netherland between 1628 and 1674), they could hardly cope with the challenges they were facing. According to the Reverend Vincent Joachim Soler, the shortage of ministers in Dutch Brazil was such that some Dutchmen living in rural areas had their children baptized and their marriages consecrated by Portuguese, i.e. Catholic, priests.65 Moreover, a large



66 To Andr Rivet in The Hague (16 July 1636), ibid., p. 23.67 dolicxte bordeelhuysen van de werlt, Generale Missiven aan de Raad der Heren XIX

(20 September 1641), quoted in Mello, Nederlanders in Brazili, p. 97.68 Caio Boschi, Padroado portugus e missionao no tempo dos flamengos, in Manuel

Correia de Andrade, Eliane Moury Fernandes and Sandra Melo Cavalcanti (eds.), Tempos dos flamengos & outros tempos. Brasil sculo XVII (Recife: Editora Massangana, 1999), p. 116.

69 Marina de Mello e Souza, Reis do Congo no Brasil. Sculos XVIII e XIX, in Revista de Histria 152, no. 1 (2005), p. 83.

70 Annexe-Relation de Pieter Moortamer la Chambre de Zlande (29 June 1643) and Les directeurs C. Nieulant et Hans Mols aux XIX (10 June 1643), in Jadin, LAncien Congo et lAngola 16391655, 1:355, 42931.

71 Albert Gray and H.C.P. Bell, eds. and trans., The Voyage of Franois Pyrard of Laval to the East Indies, the Maldives, the Moluccas and Brazil, 2 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1890), vol. 2, part 2:31920.

percentage of the Dutch population in the Brazilian colony consisted of sailors and soldiers, who cared little about Christian morals.66 Not without reason, the colonys capital Recife was nicknamed one of the merriest brothels of the world.67 Considering the amount of energy they had to invest in upholding minimal moral standards, Dutch ministers in Pernambuco had little choice but to give priority to their own Christian flock. Plans to reach out to the indig-enous and enslaved African populations had to be postponed.68

Since a large percentage of the predominantly West-Central African slaves who arrived in Pernambuco had already received a Catholic baptism in Africa, the Catholic Church in the Americas had the advantage that it allowed slaves to continue traditions with which they were familiar. As Marina de Mello e Souza has argued in regard to West-Central African slaves in Brazil: Catholicism represented a link to their native Africa.69 The Reformed Church never succeeded in building a similar transatlantic con-nection as Dutch attempts to imitate the Portuguese by introducing their own religion among their African allies failed time and again. The Catholic Kongolese King Garcia II went as far as to publicly burn a stack of Calvinist books in 1642.70

The Reformed Church also had the disadvantage that its stricter moral codes ended up putting more pressure on slaves to abandon their traditional perfor-mance culture than the Catholic Church. Catholic slaves could stage dancing performances on Sundays and hold processions on holidays. During his stay in Salvador da Bahia in 1610, Franois Pyrard observed that it is a great pleasure on feast-days and Sundays to see all the slaves, men and women, assembled, dancing, and enjoying themselves in the public places and streets.71 Conversion

22 Dewulf


72 Classicale Acta van Brazili (20 April 1640), in Kroniek van het Historisch Genootschap 6:4, p. 362; Joosse, Geloof in de Nieuwe Wereld, p. 507.

73 Classicale Acta van Brazili (21 November 1640), in ibid., p. 383.74 Generale Missive aan de Raad der heren XIX (24 September 1642), in Mello, Nederlanders

in Brazili, p. 194. See also Joosse, Geloof in de Nieuwe Wereld, p. 85.

to the Reformed Church implied, however, the acceptance of the Sabbath as a day of rest and an absolute taboo on dancing.72

In addition, Reformed ministers in Brazil faced linguistic difficulties when trying to reach out to the slave population. Along the West-African coastline, Portuguese had become a lingua franca, which facilitated communication between newly arrived slaves in the Americas and the Portuguese or Spanish priests who awaited them. As only a handful of Reformed ministers were fluent in an Iberian language, communication with slaves was much more difficult.73 Not by accident, the Dutch authorities in Pernambuco primarily blamed the linguistic obstacles when trying to explain the lack of progress in missionary work among the slaves.74

While their Catholic rivals provided anyone immediate access to baptism, the Calvinist emphasis on knowledge made proselytizing among slaves a much more arduous process. Moreover, Calvinist baptismal practice was rooted in the concept of the Thousand-Generation Covenant, meaning that any child who had an ancestor within the last thousand generations who was a believer in Christ was granted access to baptism. This included children with a Catholic forefather but excluded Jews, Muslims and pagans. The Synod of Dordtthe 1618 council of Reformed theologians from the Dutch Republic, the German states, Scotland and Geneva that established the tenets of Calvinist ortho-doxyhad, however, introduced a specification regarding slave children. In De Ethnicorum Pueris Baptizandis (1618), the Synod presented a reasoning based on Genesis 17:1113: Gods command to Abraham to circumcise all males in his household, including those who had been bought with money. As circumci-sion was considered to be the equivalent of baptism, it was assumed that members of the Reformed Church were morally obliged to grant all children in their household access to baptism, regardless of skin color, ethnicity, parents religion, or social status. It also implied, however, that the head of the house-hold had to guarantee a truly Christian education for the baptized child.

In the colonies this rule caused confusion. It was, for instance, unclear what had to be done with mulatto children who had an unidentified Dutch sailor as father. While there could be no doubt that those children had to be bap-tized, there was no reliable head of the household who could guarantee their Christian education. Eventually, a Christian school was considered an



75 Joosse, Geloof in the Nieuwe Wereld, p. 166; Frijhoff, Wegen van Evert Willemsz., p. 529.76 Frijhoff, Wegen van Evert Willemsz., pp. 5301.77 gedoopt sijn en J. Christus belijden dat men dan haare kinderen mach en behoort tot den

doop toe te laaten in Classicale Acta van Brazili (3 March 1637), in Kroniek van het Historisch Genootschap 6:4, p. 314. The Amsterdam classis also gave a negative response to Jacobus Beth van der Burghs question on the baptism of heidenkinderen in Luanda. See Joosse, Geloof in de Nieuwe Wereld, p. 169.

78 The debate on baptism of slave children with Catholic parents has also been recorded in the Dutch Cape Colony. Under Jan van Riebeecks rule (165262), the VOC had brought many West-Central Africans as slaves to the Cape Colony. On 23 November 1674, the Political Council of the Cape Colony decided that children of African Catholics could be accepted for baptism on the condition that they were sent to school in order to guarantee a truly Christian education, Robert C.-H. Shell, Children of Bondage: A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 16521838 (Hanover, N.H. and London: Wesleyan

acceptable alternative to ensure that such children would grow up with knowl-edge of the principles of the Reformed Church after their baptism. Establishing schools and finding qualified teachers was, however, an expensive and cum-bersome endeavor. A reflection of this can be found at the African Gold Coast. In 1626, Reverend Jonas Michalius accepted some mulatto children with Dutch fathers for baptism after the WIC director in Mouree had reassured him that he would include the children in his household in order to guarantee a Christian education. Michalius also founded a school in Mouree and planned to send two baptized mulatto children to the Dutch Republic where they would be prepared to become missionaries among their own people. However, a year later he returned to Europe and subsequently traveled to New Netherland to become the minister of New Amsterdam.75 He was succeeded on the Gold Coast by Laurentius Benderius, who complained that Michalius school bore no fruit since the teacher did not speak the local language(s).76

The implementation of De Ethnicorum Pueris Baptizandis in the colonies also presented the Reformed Church with the difficult question of how to approach slave children with two African parents. In accordance with the Thousand-Generation Covenant, the Brazilian classis made a distinction in this respect between baptized and unbaptized slave parents. In 1637, it decided that slave children whose parents had been baptized and profess Jesus Christ may and should be allowed for baptism, whereas heidenkinderen (children whose parents were pagans) had to wait until their parents had been baptized first.77

Since the large majority of slaves in Dutch Brazil had already been baptized by a Catholic priest, the Reformed Church accepted many slave children for baptism.78 One of the first references dates to 1635, when the Dutch Reformed minister (of German origin) Jodocus A. Stetten mentions in his Jurnael der

24 Dewulf


University Press, 1994), p. 337; Ad Biewenga, De Kaap de Goede Hoop: Een Nederlandse vestigingskolonie, 16801730 (Amsterdam: Prometheus-Bert Bakker, 1999), p. 188.

79 Ao. 1635 den 20t. 8ber Js voor ons comparert Antoni Roderigo met zijn huijsvrau Catelina Beijde negers versoeckten als vader ende moeders den H. Christ. Doop tot haren jongen erfgenam soo haer Godt in hare bijwoning gegeven hadt, dese sijndt niet alleijn onder-soeckt wat sij van Godt ende der Christelicken religie houden ende gloofen, maer ooc van mij in de fondamenten onderricht tot goeden contentement. ende darob haer kindt gedo-opt, een sodanige order houde ic int kinder doope van de Negers want ic de eerste in Brasilien gedoopt. NB soo ic met haer niet sprecken can als wat de noot vereijschet soo gebruicke ic eenen dolck (20 October 1635), Jurnael der Kercken in Paraiba, 16351636, NA, Verspreide West-Indische Stukken (Miscellaneous West Indian Documents), inv.nr. 1408, copy in the University of California, Berkeley Bancroft Library, Engel Sluiter Historical Documents Collection, 98/79z, ctn. 55, Dutch (WIC) in Brazil, 1635.

80 Frans Leonard Schalkwijk, The Reformed Church in Dutch Brazil, 16301654 (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1998), p. 151; Joosse, Geloof in de Nieuwe Wereld, pp. 5078.

81 Rapport de Pieter Mortamer au Conseil du Brsil (14 October 1642), in Jadin, LAncien Congo et lAngola 16391655, 1:348.

82 A Brief Report on the State that is Composed of the Four Conquered Captaincies, Pernambuco, Itamarac, Paraba, and Rio Grande, Situated in the North of Brazil (14 January 1638), in Schwartz, Early Brazil, p. 239.

Kercken in Paraiba (Journal of the Churches in Paraba) the case of a certain Antoni Roderigo and his wife Catelina, both of them blacks, whose child he had accepted for baptism after he had investigated what they think and believe of God and the Christian religion and had been instructed in the foundations [of Calvinistic thought] in a satisfactory way. Stetten also pointed out that as I cannot speak with them in a way that would be necessary I use an interpreter, which raises questions about the thoroughness of his investiga-tion and instruction.79

The Spanish minister Vincent Soler, a former Augustinian friar who had converted to Calvinism in France, was also known for his dedication to the black population in Recife. It was primarily thanks to his efforts that blacks constituted seven percent of all documented Calvinist baptisms in Dutch Brazil.80 By accepting these children for baptism, the Reformed Church dis-played a flexible attitude regarding the Christian identity of their parents. This flexibility is surprising since Calvinists tended to be highly skeptical about the degree of knowledge of Christianity among Catholic Africans. For instance, Pieter Mortamer reported from Luanda to the Council of Dutch Brazil that the religion of the local population consisted of superstitions they had learned from the Portuguese.81 Johan Maurits was also skeptical about the depth of the Christian identity of slaves and claimed that their knowledge of Christianity hardly went beyond the muttering of Ave Marias while counting rosary beads.82



83 To the Directors of the Zeeland Chamber of the West India Company (8 June 1636), in B.N. Teensma, Seventeen Letters by Vincent Joachim Soler, pp. 1112.

84 Classicale Acta van Brazili (17 October 1641), in Kroniek van het Historisch Genootschap 6:4, p. 394.

85 Classicale Acta van Brazili (1826 July 1644), in ibid., p. 414.86 Frijhoff, Wegen van Evert Willemsz., pp. 52739, 76592.87 Voorder heeft dom. E. Bogardus predicant alhier seer ernstlel. aen ons versocht om een

schoolmeester die de jonckheijt soo wel duijtschen als swarthe inde kennis Jesu Christo soude mogen onderwijsen en optrecken (NA, Archives of the West India Company, inv. nr. 51, doc. 28); Arnold J.F. van Laer (trans. and ed.), Letters of Wouter van Twiller and the Director General and Council of New Netherland to the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch West India Company (14 August 1636), in Quarterly Journal of the New York State Historical Association 1 (October 1919), 4450; Jacobs, New Netherland, p. 313.

88 Joosse, Geloof in the Nieuwe Wereld, p. 242.

The fact that the Reformed Church would nevertheless accept the children of Catholic Africans for baptism can only be explained by its ambition to overtake the position of the Catholic Church in the Americas. It is notorious, however, that the same ministers who excelled in the baptism of slave children also insisted on the importance of a school, which reflected their concern that parents with a Catholic baptism might be inclined to give their children a wrong Christian education after they had been baptized in the Reformed Church. In June 1636, Soler announced his plans to build an annex to the church in order to cater to the Christian education of baptized slave children.83 In 1641, the classis in Recife expressed the urgent need for a teacher to ensure that all baptized slave children would receive a Christian education.84 This demand was repeated in 1644.85

Solers work in Brazil corresponds to that of Everardus Bogardus in New Netherland. Since virtually all slaves there had already received a Catholic bap-tism in Africa, he did not hesitate to accept their children for baptism in the Reformed Church. Bogardus, who as ziekentrooster (comforter of the sick) had assisted Benderius on the Gold Coast where he familiarized himself with Michalius school, was also responsible for establishing the first school in New Netherland where baptized slave children would learn the Dutch language and the principles of Calvinist doctrine.86 In 1636, he asked the West India Company to send a schoolmaster to New Amsterdam in order to teach and train the youth of both Dutch and blacks in the knowledge of Jesus Christ and eventu-ally made it possible that Adam Roelantsz van Dokkum was appointed for this task in 1638.87 Bogardus eagerness to reach out to the slave population as well as his insistence on a schoolmaster for the baptized slave children corresponds to Leendert Jan Joosses argument that the main objective of this Dutch minis-ter was the extermination of Popish influences in America.88

26 Dewulf


89 Acta Synodi Nationalis (Dordrechti, 1620), quoted in Shell, Children of Bondage, p. 335.90 Acta der classis (711 May 1648), in Mello, Nederlanders in Brazili, p. 195.

Once slave children were baptized, however, further difficult questions arose. The most important were 1) who had to assume the role of the head of the household in rural areas where there was no Christian school and, more importantly, 2) whether slave children could still be considered slaves after receiving baptism. Concerning the first question, it was decided that the slave-holder had to assume the role of the head of the household in places where there was no school. On the second question the Synod of Dordt had not pro-vided a clear answer. There were different opinions, one of which was put for-ward by the Genevan theologian Giovanni Deodatus. Basing himself on Leviticus 25:3940, which stipulated that no Israelite could hold another Israelite in perpetual bondage, Deodatus argued that those baptized should enjoy equal right of liberty with all other Christians and that, concerning the danger of apostasy, they be safeguarded, as far as it can be done, by the prohib-iting for the future of all selling and transferring of them to another ....89 The ellipsis at the end was crucial. If another meant another pagan, it implied that these children could still be sold as long as their new owner was also Christian. If another meant another person, it implied that the baptized child could no longer be considered a slave in the sense of saleable property. None of these concerns existed for Catholic slaveholders.

These increasingly complex questions about the consequences of slave bap-tism were no longer a concern to the Dutch Reformed classis in Recife either, albeit for a totally different reason. After the Dutch had suffered major military defeats in 1648 and the end of Dutch Brazil became likely, the Reformed minis-ters acknowledged their failure and began to prepare their return to the Dutch Republic. Ironically, they even sought the reason for the imminent loss of Brazil in the lack of progress made in the conversion of slaves, which had evoked Gods wrath.90

The Loss of Brazil

In 1641, Portugal recoveredwith Dutch assistanceits sovereignty from Spain. Following the 1641 Peace Treaty of The Hague between the Dutch Republic and Portugal, most of the Dutch troops stationed in Brazil returned to patria. Three years later, Governor General Johan Maurits was also recalled. In 1645, the remaining Dutch troops faced a Portuguese insurrection and were eventually pushed back to the coastal area around Recife. As a result, it became



91 John K. Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 16841706 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 6978, 197; John K. Thornton, Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 15001800 (London: UCL Press, 1999), pp. 99104; Richard Gray, Black Christians & White Missionaries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 38.

92 Joyce D. Goodfriend, Burghers and Blacks: The Evolution of a Slave Society at New Amsterdam, in New York History 59, no. 2 (April 1978), 12544; Postma, The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade, pp. 2655.

93 Han Jordaan, The Curaao Slave Market: From Asiento Trade to Free Trade, 17001730, in Johannes Postma and Victor Enthoven (eds.), Riches from Atlantic Commerce: Dutch Transatlantic Trade and Shipping, 15851817 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 21934; Linda M.

increasingly difficult for the WIC to find buyers for the slaves who continued to arrive from Africa. The definitive loss of Brazil in 1654 left the Company no other choice but to completely rethink its slave policy.

Although a Brazilian-Portuguese expedition force under Salvador Correia de S had managed to drive the Dutch from Angola in 1648, the WIC retained control over Elmina and other strongholds in West Africa. Moreover, the Portuguese ambition to recapture in West-Central Africa their monopoly in the transatlantic slave trade failed. Boosted by their successive victories over the Dutch, the Portuguese declared war on the Kingdom of Kongo. Portuguese forces defeated the Kongolese army in the Battle of Mbwila (or Ambuila) in 1665 and decapitated King Antnio I. The ruler of Soyo seized the opportunity to attack and ransack the Kongolese capital So Salvador and place his protg on the Kongolese throne. In 1670, Portuguese forces from Luanda attacked Soyo but, aided with Dutch military supplies, the Soyo army managed to defeat the Portuguese in the Battle of Kitombo. Due to this defeat, the Portuguese failed to take control over the entire Kongo region and thus had to contend with Dutch (as well as increasing French and English) competition in the transatlantic slave trade from West-Central Africa.91

Faced with a reshuffled deck of cards in the Atlantic World, the West India Company adjusted its slave policy. While in past times the Dutch slave trade infrastructure in Africa had almost exclusively served to supply plan-tation owners in Brazil, the Company now had to venture into new mar-kets.92 In order to keep the Company profitable, all moral and religious concerns were brushed aside. Ironically, the WIC that had once been cre-ated to fight the Spanish enemy became in 1662 a subcontractor in the asiento slave trade and was until 1713 the main slave supplier to Spanish pos-sessions in the Americas. The Antillean island of Curaao acquired strategic importance in this Dutch transatlantic network that shipped tens of thou-sands of Africans to Spanish America.93 The small, arid island was

28 Dewulf


Rupert, Creolization and Contraband: Curaao and the Early Modern Atlantic World (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 2012), pp. 7685; Vos, Eltis and Richardson, The Dutch in the Atlantic World, p. 235.

94 Jordaan, The Curaao Slave Market, p. 237; Brief van Matthias Beck, vice-direkteur van Curacao aan Petrus Stuyvesant, direkteur-generaal van Nieuw-Nederland (23 August 1659), in Charles T. Gehring and J.A. Schiltkamp (trans. and eds.), Curacao Papers 16401665. New Netherland Documents, volume XVII (Interlaken, NY: Heart of the Lakes Publishing, 1987), p. 1247; Resoluties WIC Kamer van Amsterdam (13 June 1669), in J.H.J. Hamelberg (ed.), Documenten behoorende bij De Nederlanders op de West-Indische eilanden (190103; Amsterdam: Emmering, 1979), p. 83.

95 een civiele, en vaste prijs te stellen op de negros soo UEA: onderdaenen van herwaerts is voor vivres, houtwerck ende andersints mochten trachten te handelen t soude buijten twijffel de negotie en de correspondentie op Curaao doen wackeren, ende van herwaerts versorgen met genoechsaeme vivres (NYCM, vol.13, doc. 60, p. 11). Extract from a Letter from Stuyvesant to the Directors in Holland (26 December 1659), DRCHNY, 14:455.

96 Letter from the Directors to Stuyvesant (9 March 1660), in DRCHNY, 14:4589; Elizabeth Donnan (ed.), Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade, 4 vols. (Washington, D.C., 193035), 3:406.

97 L. Knappert, De eerste honderd jaren der Protestantische gemeente op Curaao, Gedenkboek Nederland-Curaao 16341934 (Amsterdam, 1934), pp. 3456.

overwhelmed with the arrival of so many slaves and could not supply suffi-cient foodstuffs from local resources, eventually forcing the WIC to ship pro-visions from Amsterdam to Curaao.94 Curaaos incapability to sustain itself triggered Stuyvesant to envision a strategic role of New Netherland in this new slave trading network and suggested that the Company Board of Directors place a fair and fixed price upon negroes, whom your subjects might desire to import here for provisions, lumber, or otherwise, which would undoubtedly increase the trade to Curaao and provide the island from here with plenty of commodities.95 Encouraged by the profitable sale of two slave cargoes in New Amsterdam in 1660, the Amsterdam directors planned not only to ship slaves to New Amsterdam for the local Dutch mar-ket but also for the surrounding English colonies.96

In light of this new policy that primarily targeted foreign markets, the WIC no longer concerned itself with the Christianization of slaves. As the bulk of slaves brought to Curaao would subsequently be sold to Catholic plantation owners anyway, the WIC considered further attempts to stimulate the baptism of slave children a waste of time and resources. The Company even allowed Catholic priests from the South American mainland to come to Curaao in order to baptize slaves.97 As early as 1660, Curaao minister Michiel Zyperius informed the Amsterdam classis that Papists who sometimes arrive there



98 den papen daer somtijts overcoomen (Stadsarchief Amsterdam, Archief Classis Amsterdam, 379, inv. nr. 157, p. 415); Classis of Amsterdam. Act of the Deputies (25 October 1660); Edward Tanjore Corwin (trans. and eds.), Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York, 7 vols. (Albany, NY, 190116), 1:493.

99 twaelff bejaerde persoonen, sijnde alle swarten ofte negros, nadat de selve in de Christelijcke Leere reedelijcken wel waeren onderweesen (Stadsarchief Amsterdam, Archief Classis Amsterdam, inv. nr. 157, pp. 24950); Classis of Amsterdam. Act of the Deputies (12 September 1650), in Corwin, Ecclesiastical Records, vol. 1, pp. 2801.

100 daer niemant die volwassen is tot den den doop wert toegelaten sonder voorgaende con-fessie sijns geloofs: dienvolgend de volwassen Negros en Jndianen oock moeten te voren onderwesen zijn, ende belijdenisse haeres gelooffs doen, eer den heyligen doop aen haer mach bedient worden. Belangende de kinderen van de soodanige, antwoort de Classe; dat soo lange de ouders heidenen zijn inderdaet (:schoon sij waren van de papen int gross gedoopt geweest:) de kinderen oock niet mogen gedoopt worden (Stadsarchief Amsterdam, Archief Classis Amsterdam, inv. nr. 157, fol. 425), Act of the Deputies. Letter to Rev. Van Beaumont (9 July 1661), in Corwin, Ecclesiastical Records, 1:508.

were baptizing natives and slaves on the island.98 Earlier on, when Pernambuco was still in Dutch hands, such news would have provoked a fierce reaction. But now that Brazil had been lost and the WIC had adopted a new slave policy, the Reformed Church no longer seemed to care. It refrained from taking any action in response to the situation on Curaao.

The Reformed Churchs recognition of its failure to supplant Catholicism in the Americas was accompanied by a tightening of Calvinist orthodoxy. In 1650, the Amsterdam classis had still welcomed schoolmaster Johannes Walravens report that Reverend Charles de Rochefort, a French Reformed minister, had baptized twelve elderly persons, all blacks on Curaao after they had been reasonably well instructed in the Christian doctrine.99 Only ten years later, however, the same classis reacted angrily to the news that Reverend Adrianus van Beaumont had baptized fifteen indigenous children on the island. The classis rebuked the minister and reminded him that no one, who is an adult, is [to be] admitted to baptism without previous confession of his faith. Accordingly, the adult Negroes and Indians must also be previously instructed and make confession of their faith before Holy Baptism may be administered to them. The precondition for baptism had, thus, switched from a reasonably well instruction to confession of faith, which implied proof of a good compre-hension of the beliefs of the church, including the ability to answer all one hun-dred twenty-nine questions in the Heidelberg catechism. Moreover, it added that as long as the parents are actually heathens, although they were baptized in the gross (by wholesale, by Papists), the children may not be baptized.100 With this stipulation the classis indicated that even Catholic slavesthose

30 Dewulf


101 Beaumont to the Amsterdam Classis (5 December 1662), Archief Classis Amsterdam, Stadsarchief Amsterdam, inv.nr. 224, fol. 1721; Daniel Noorlander, Serving God and Mammon: The Reformed Church and the Dutch West India Company in the Atlantic World, 16211674 (Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 2011), p. 277; Joosse, Geloof in de Nieuwe Wereld, pp. 3445.

102 Rupert, Creolization and Contraband, pp. 8590.103 J.M. van der Linde, Surinaamse suikerheren en hun kerk. Plantagekolonie en handelskerk

ten tijde van Johannes Basseliers, predikant en planter in Suriname 16671689 (Wageningen: H. Veenman en Zonen, 1966), pp. 1823.

104 Van der Linde, Surinaamse suikerheren en hun kerk, p. 168; Joosse, Geloof in de Nieuwe Wereld, pp. 404407.

who had been baptized by Papists in Africawere now officially to be treated as pagans. By excluding African Catholics from the Thousand-Generation Covenant, the children of Catholic slaves could no longer be baptized until their parents had been baptized first in the Reformed Church, which required that they had to be instructed in preparation for their confession of faith. Van Beaumont, who had previously served in Pernambuco, apologized for his actions and referred to Dutch Brazil, where baptismal practices had been very liberal. He promised that he would henceforth adopt the stricter rules.101 In the decades to come, no further proselytizing efforts were made by Reformed min-isters and Curaaos entire slave population became Catholic.102

In Suriname, which unlike Curaao was essentially a Dutch plantation col-ony, attempts by French or Spanish Catholic priests to reach out to the slave population were not tolerated by the authorities.103 In the early years of the colony, ministers such as Johannes Basseliers still came with the intention to do proselytizing work. Soon after his arrival in Suriname in 1667, Basseliers established a school and accepted some indigenous and black children in his household in order to give them a Christian education in preparation for bap-tism in the Reformed Church. By 1669, however, he abandoned the plan, argu-ing that without a schoolteacher not enough progress could be made.104 Until the arrival of the Moravian Church in Suriname in 1735 there was hardly any missionary work (neither Dutch Reformed nor Catholic) among the slave population.

Also in New Netherland, Dutch Reformed proselytizing efforts among the slave population came to an almost complete standstill in the final years of the colony. Slaveholders had also become reluctant to welcome slaves in their church community. This reluctance is understandable considering that bap-tism implied that a Christian education for these children had to be guaran-teed. Due to a lack of clarity over the ultimate consequences of slave baptism, slaveholders also feared that they might not even be able to sell children that



105 Brief van Matthias Beck, vice-direkteur van Curacao aan Petrus Stuyvesant, direkteur-generaal van Nieuw-Nederland (15 November 1664), in Charles T. Gehring and J.A. Schiltkamp (trans. and eds.), Curacao Papers 16401665, New Netherland Documents, vol.17 (Interlaken, NY: Heart of the Lakes Publishing, 1987), p. 451.

106 See Graham Russell Hodges, Slavery, Freedom & Culture among Early American Workers (Armond, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), p. 52; Joyce D. Goodfriend, The Social Life and Cultural Life of Dutch Settlers, 16641776, in Hans Krabbendam, Cornelis A. van Minnen and Giles Scott-Smith (eds.), Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations 16092009 (Amsterdam: Boom Publishers, 2009), p. 1234; Dennis J. Maika, Encounters: Slavery and the Philipse Family, 16801751, in Roger Panetta (ed.), Dutch New York: The Roots of Hudson Valley Culture (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 2009), pp. 3572; Anne-Claire Merlin-Faucquez, Da le Nouvelle-Nerlande New York: la naissance dune socit esclavagiste (16241712) (Ph.D. diss., Universit Paris VIII, 2011), p. 459; Andrea C. Mosterman, Sharing Spaces in a New World Environment: African-Dutch Contributions to North American Culture, 16261826 (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 2012), pp. 1502, 1627.

107 Elias Neau to Secretary of S.P.G. (30 April 1706), S.P.G. Papers, Rhodes Library, Oxford University. See also Hodges, Slavery, Freedom & Culture among Early American Workers, p. 37.

had been baptized. Only some of the wealthy slaveholders, who had the means to provide education, still cared for the baptism of slave children. A well-known example is that of Stuyvesant, who took his role as head of the house-hold very seriously. When he learned in 1664 that a group of slaves from New Netherland, including children his wife Judith Bayard had presented for bap-tism, had accidentally been sent to Curaao and ended up in unidentified Spanish colonies, where they were to be raised as Catholics, he ordered Vice Director Matthias Beck to do everything possible to repurchase the slaves.105

This reluctance to reach out to the slave population did not change after the English takeover of New Netherland in 1664. Documents from the Dutch Reformed Church dating back to seventeenth-century New York only rarely men-tion slaves. These numbers leave no doubt that slave baptism remained highly exceptional.106 Long after the demise of New Netherland, most Dutch slavehold-ers in New York and New Jersey continued to resist slave baptism. Significantly, the Anglican missionary worker Elias Neau complained in 1708 that he had not been able to catechize in New Jersey because they are almost all Dutch there and are afraid that their slaves may demand their freedom after Baptism.107

African Christianity in New Netherland and New York

It is remarkable that slaves in New Netherland who had been baptized accord-ing to Catholic rites in Africa switched to Protestantism easily, whereas the

32 Dewulf


108 Thomas G. Evans (ed.), Doop-boek (DB) of the Reformed Church of New Netherland, New York Genealogical and Biographical Society Record 2 (1890), pp. 17/261, 18/263; Frijhoff, Wegen van Evert Willemsz., p. 772; Heywood and Thornton, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, p. 264.

109 Joyce D. Goodfriend, Black Families in New Netherland, in Nancy A.M. Zeller (ed.), A Beautiful and Fruitful Place: Selected Rensselaerswijck Seminar Papers (New York: New Netherland Publishing, 1991), 14756; John K. Thornton, A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 12501820 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 460.

110 Heywood and Thornton, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, p. 272.

111 Christoph, The Freedmen of New Amsterdam, p. 164.112 Frijhoff, Wegen van Evert Willemsz., p. 779.113 niet meerder gesocht hebben, als daer mede haer kinders te verlossen van lichaemlijcke

Slavernije, Sonder te trachten na Godtsalicheyt en Christelijcke Deugden (Seco