Admirals of Dutch Brazil in the Rise of Dutch National Consciousness

Chapter 11 Heroic Memories: Admirals of Dutch Brazil in the Rise of Dutch National Consciousness

In 1769, the Frisian nobleman, playwright, and lyricist Onno Zwier van Haren professed his love of the fatherland with a long poem entitled De Geusen (“The Beggars”), a tribute to the most glorious chapters of Dutch history. The verses began by reflecting on the triumph of a handful of rebels over the mighty Span- ish troops of King Philip ii at Den Briel in 1572, and went on to summarize all the achievements of the Dutch people during the so-called Golden Age, which now, after decades of steady decline, had become a distant memory. The poem’s eleventh canto focused on the country’s colonial past, and the opening words of one of its couplets would later come to stand for the entire history of a missed opportunity in the Atlantic world:

Neglected Brazil, O fertile grounds, whose nature is diamonds and gold; I hear them proclaim your surrender, now that Banckert can no longer save you! In vain has Post destroyed the churches of Olinda for our new accomplishments. With Nassau the frivolous fortune disappeared; The places, the names, that were chosen by the victorious have been lost in today’s Pernambuco.1

If the German historian Hermann Wätjen is to be believed, Zwier van Haren’s regret for a “Neglected Brazil” – or, in the poet’s native Dutch, Verzuimd Brasil – still resonated in the nation’s collective consciousness when his study of the colony first appeared in 1921, and later generations of scholars too have habitually

1 Onno Zwier van Haren, De Geusen: Proeve van een vaderlands gedicht (Zwolle, 1776), p. 69: “Verzuimd Brasil; ô ryke gronden, / Wier aard’ is Diamant en goud; / Ik hoor uw overgaaf verkonden, / Nu Bankert u niet meer behoud! / Vergeefs heeft Post Olinda’s kerken / Ver- woest, voor onse nieuwe Werken. / Met Nassau wykt het wuft geluk; / De Plaats, de naamen, zyn verlooren, / Die d’Overwinnaar had verkooren / In ‘t heedendaagse Fernaambuk”. See Pieter van der Vliet, Onno Zwier van Haren (1713–1779): staatsman en dichter (Hilversum: Ver- loren, 1996), pp. 319–40 for an extensive discussion of De Geusen.

232 Chapter 11 employed the phrase to describe the loss of Dutch Brazil in the wake of Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen’s return to Europe.2 It is no surprise to see that nos- talgia for Brazil in the Netherlands was connected to the memory of success under Johan Maurits, and to the famous paintings of demolished convents and churches in Pernambuco made by Frans Post. But unlike these two men, Ad- miral Joost Banckert – to whom Zwier van Haren gave pride of place over the others – can hardly be considered a key figure in the colony’s history, nor in its historiography. Charles Boxer, in The Dutch in Brazil, mentions Banckert’s name only twice, while José Antônio Gonsalves de Mello, in Tempo dos Flamen- gos, does so on only one occasion.3 How can it be explained, then, that a late eighteenth-century poet, when contemplating the Dutch past in Brazil, came up with the name of this admiral? In this chapter, I will focus on Banckert and on three other naval heroes of Dutch Brazil to establish the role admirals played in the construction of a collective memory of the colony in the Netherlands.4 In chronological order, the story begins with the accomplishments of the legendary Piet Heyn, still well- known today for his capture of a Spanish treasure fleet at Matanzas in 1628. It continues by describing the feats of Hendrick Lonck, Jan Lichthart, and Joost Banckert – men whose names are virtually meaningless to the majority of the population of the Netherlands in the twenty-first century. It is not my aim to reconsider their credentials for entry into the pantheon of national history. Instead I want to concentrate on how and why these men lived on in the nation’s memory after the painful loss of Dutch Brazil. How can it be explained that some reputations suffered whereas others remained intact? What was the influence of the media on strengthening and lengthening certain reputations? And, more broadly, to what extent did these naval heroes help to sustain and shape the legacy of Dutch Brazil? In my search for answers, I will focus on the crucial period between the fall of Recife and the emergence of the nation-state in the late eighteenth century. Heroes from the Dutch Golden Age whose fame

2 Hermann Wätjen, Das Holländische Kolonialreich in Brasilien (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1921), p. 8; Charles R. Boxer, The Dutch in Brazil, 1624–1654 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), p. 243; Henk den Heijer, De geschiedenis van de wic (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1994), pp. 49–54. 3 Boxer, The Dutch in Brazil, pp. 185, 189; Jose Antonio Gonsalves de Mello, Tempo dos Flamen- gos: Influencia da ocupaçao holandesa na vida e na cultura do norte do Brasil (Recife: Governo do Estado de Pernambuco, 1947), p. 35. 4 The focus on admirals has the additional benefit of putting at least a slice of the ocean back into Atlantic history, see: Nick Rodger, “Atlantic Seafaring”, in: Nicholas Canny and Philip Morgan, eds., The Oxford Handbook of The Atlantic World 1450–1850 (Oxford: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 2011), p. 71, and Alison Games, “Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities”, The American Historical Review 111.3 (2006), p. 745.