Dutch Brazil in the Early Modern Imaginary

From Description to Classification of Lands and Peoples, 1624–1654

Series: 

Author:
Britt Dams
Between 1624 and 1654 Dutch authors shifted from marvellous travel tales to methodical inventories that aimed at deeper comprehension of Brazil. This book traces that evolution through four cornerstone texts—Nieuwe Wereldt, Iaerlijck Verhael, Rerum per Octennium, and Historia naturalis Brasiliae—read alongside maps, West India Company papers, and incisive illustrations. Planters, soldiers, and Indigenous go-betweens supplied the field notes that allowed for ethnography and natural history to take empirical form. By tracking how writers labelled landscapes, plants, animals, and peoples, the study shows how description itself became a tool of Dutch colonial power.
Copyright Year:
2026
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ISBN:
978-90-04-75439-3
Publication:
02 Mar 2026
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ISBN:
978-90-04-75438-6
Publication:
26 Mar 2026
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Britt Dams is a literary scholar specializing in early modern, colonial, and post-colonial writing with an emphasis on seventeenth-century Dutch Brazil. She earned her PhD in literature from Ghent University in 2015 with the dissertation Comprehending the New World in the Early Modern Period: Descriptions of Dutch Brazil (1624–1654). At Ghent she teaches Portuguese and French language courses, and she belongs to the Group for Early Modern Studies (GEMS). She also lectures on comparative—especially colonial and post-colonial—literature at Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, where she is a member of the Institut de Recherche Intersite d’Études Culturelles (IRIEC). She is the author of several journal articles and book chapters.
General Series Editor’s Foreword
List of Figures

Introduction
 1 Boi Voador
 2 The Desire to Describe
 3 First Writings about the New World
 4 Qua Patet Orbis – the Dutch Expansion
 5 Mauritiopolis
 6 Hybridity
 7 Natural History
 8 Evolution of the Paradigm in Four Works
 9 Methodology
 10 Curiositas
 11 An Absence

1 Nieuwe Wereldt
 1 Disenchantment
 2 Johannes De Laet
 3 Nieuwe Wereldt
 4 Venisti Tandem
 5 New Netherland: Het Derde Boeck Virginia
 6 The American Land
 7 The People of North America
 8 Controversy with Hugo De Groot
 9 Description of Brazil
  9.1 The Land, the Fauna and Flora
  9.2 The People of Brazil
 10 Mapping a Disenchanted New World

2 Iaerlijck Verhael
 1 Encounter with a Hybrid Reality
 2 Iaerlijck Verhael and the Hybridity of Colonial Brazil
 3 Hybridity Today
 4 Iaerlijck Verhael: a 13-Year Chronicle
 5 Eyes on Brazil and Africa
 6 Prelude
 7 Black Gold
 8 Further on the Way to Brazil
 9 Bahia
 10 Recife – a New Level of Comprehension
 11 Go-Betweens
 12 Christopher Arciszewski
 13 A Polish Commander in Brazil
 14 Arciszewski’s Memorie & Apologie
 15 Manoel De Moraes: Hybridity and the Meaning of Betrayal
 16 A Lost Amulet
 17 Iaerlijck Verhael: More Than a Simple Chronicle or a Compilation of Logbooks

3 Rerum Per Octennium
 1 ‘Oh Linda!’
 2 Johan Maurits Van Nassau-Siegen
 3 Rerum Per Octennium in Brasilia Et Alibi Nuper Gestarum,
  Sub Praefectura Illustrissimi Comitis I. Mauritii, Nassouviae, &
  C. Comitis …
 4 Re-Writing
 5 Evolution in the Descriptions of the Natives
 6 Human Patchwork
 7 Description of the Tapuya – Jacob Rabe’s Report
 8 Incomprehension of the Enslaved Africans?
 9 A Poet Adventurer Gazing at the Borders
 10 General Description of the Captaincy Paraíba
 11 Through the Looking Glass

4 Historia Naturalis Brasiliae
 1 Land of Parrots
 2 From Mapping to Classifying
 3 Rise of Natural History
 4 Comprehending through Collecting & Classification
 5 O Brasileiro
 6 Marcgrave’s Inquiries
 7 The Armadillo
 8 The Astronomer’s Gaze
 9 Piso – ‘The Medicine Man’
 10 De Medicina Brasiliensi
  Chapter 65: of Ipecacuanha and Its Properties
 11 Sugar
 12 Piso’s Descriptions of the Local People
 13 Capturing the Other – Book 8
 14 The Limits of Comprehension

Epilogue

Bibliography
Index
This book is of interest to scholars of early-modern literature and history, Atlantic studies, and the history of science.
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