Brazil Imagined: 1500 to the Present

Chapter 2. Paradise (Re)Gained: Dutch Representations of Brazil and Nativist Imagery

Paradise (Re)Gained Dutch Representations of Brazil and Nativist Imagery eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee c h a p t e r 2 Although images of anthropophagy continued to appear on maps and in other texts about Brazil in the early seventeenth century, it was during the Dutch occupation of the country that a discernible return to images defining Brazil as a paradise or locus amoenus can be found. This shift can be explained by a variety of factors: unlike the Portuguese, the Dutch established friendly relations with the indigenous populations in the Northeast, including the Tapuias, who were greatly feared by the Portuguese; enslaved Africans had largely replaced Indian labor in the fields, and indigenous peoples either assimilated or fled into the interior; and perhaps most importantly , the Calvinist military leader of the Dutch expedition to Brazil, Prince Johan Maurits von Nassau-Siegen, went to great lengths to forge and market a seductively bucolic image of Brazil that would not only attract other Dutch settlers to Brazil but also celebrate his accomplishments as a colonial administrator. The iconography on five maps of Brazil produced by the Dutch between 1585 and 1640, a period when Portugal and its colonies were under Spanish rule,shedsfurtherlightontheimageofBrazilconstructedbycartographers from abroad. Scenes of dismemberment, execution, and anthropophagy hold prominence in Dutch representations of the country on maps by Jan Van Doet (1585), Arnold Florentin Van Langeren (1630), and Clemendt de Jonghe (1640). Josse Hond’s map (1598) rivals most previous cartographic representation thus far mentioned with its bizarre image of a headless man with eyes set in his shoulders and a bow and arrow in his hand. Standing alongside this man-monster is an Amazon warrior who, in comparison, looks more real than mythic and various animals, including a deer, a dog, and a boar. In stark contrast to this illustration is Harmen Janss and Marten Janss’ map (1610), in which we see an imagery of trees and animals that harks back to the earliest cartographic iconographies of Brazil. Although a scene of dismemberment appears on Jonghe’s map, it is subordinate to 64 | brazil imagined a much larger engraving of a king being carried on a litter by indigenous inhabitants. The scene is unusual because instead of portraying Indians as cannibals, it depicts two large groups of comely and attentive natives gathered at each side of the litter, somewhat like Roman senators united around their Caesar. A palace appears in the far background of the engraving, apparently the home and destination of the traveling regal figure.1 Much like early Portuguese explorers and writers, the Dutch were excited by the bounties of Brazil, in particular by the vast sugarcane regions in the Northeast. Following the union of Spain and Portugal under the Bourbon Crown in 1580 and especially following the Twelve Years’ Truce, a treaty between former enemies Spain and Holland and other “Low Countries” that lasted from 1609 to 1621, Holland’s relationship with Portugal changed dramatically from a mutually beneficial trading partnership to one of territorial aggression in both Africa and Brazil. The emergence of the Dutch West India Company in 1621 spurred the invasion and occupation first of Bahia (1624–1625), then more successfully of Pernambuco and areas to the north, 2.1 Headless man and Amazon, on Josse Hond’s map of Brazil (1598). Courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago. Paradise (Re)Gained | 65 where the Dutch ruled from 1630 until they were ousted in 1654.2 During this period, Brazil was the focus of numerous Dutch cartographic studies as well as histories, travel literature, and the first paintings of the country by Dutch artists Frans Post and Albert Eckhout. The maps described above are important to consider for what they do and do not represent pictorially. For example, although brazilwood was still 2.2 Pastoral Brazil, Harmen and Marten Janss’s map of Brazil (1610). Courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago. 66 | brazil imagined in abundance and exported to Europe in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, sugar had become a more valuable and desirable commodity . As historian Boris Fausto notes, in the sixteenth century, sugar was a luxury item in Europe and was becoming increasingly popular in haute cuisine (1999, 34). Portugal was eager to take advantage of the rising market demand by encouraging sugar production in the environmentally conducive area of the Brazilian Northeast, where the country’s first capital, Salvador, was established in 1549. A labor-intensive...