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In 1621, as the Twelve Years’ Truce drew to a close, the Dutch West India Company was founded with the explicit brief to open a second front in the war with the Habsburg monarchy and to attack Span...

Launched in 2013, Delpher has developed into arguably the most successful digitization project in the humanities in the Netherlands. However, success comes at a price. Because of the seemingly exemplary methodology of making historical newspapers openly accessible, Delpher has inadvertently encouraged several important misconceptions by scholars and general users alike. Few users realize that the database is not exhaustive, and that some of the choices underlying Delpher distort our current understanding of the role of printed newspapers. Common misconceptions are not actively discouraged by Delpher, and this should change. Based on the digitization of two seventeenth-century newspapers – both “pioneers of the Dutch press” – this essay argues that Delpher is a database that should be used with care. Although it opens new avenues of research, it obscures potentially more fruitful strategies of gaining a better understanding of the emergence of the printed newspaper in the Netherlands.

In 1601, Olivier van Noort was the first Dutch explorer to successfully complete the circumnavigation of the world, in the wake of such illustrious adventurers as Magellan, Drake and Cavendish.1 Hi...

The De Bry collection of voyages, published in Frankfurt and Oppenheim between 1590 and 1634, has traditionally been regarded as dispensing a Protestant iconography of the New World. But for the analysis of the translated travel accounts in the collection, too long considered of secondary importance to the monumental copper engravings, a fundamentally different interpretation of the editors' objectives is in order. This article studies the Latin and German versions of the narratives, which offer a mosaic of variations disclosing a careful editorial strategy. While the German volumes were aimed at a predominantly Protestant readership, their Latin counterparts were adjusted to meet the demands of Catholic customers and humanists wary of religious polemic. Hence the first comprehensive set of images of early America reached readers across the Old World, regardless of their confessional allegiance. Commercial motives rather than the desire to spread a Protestant iconography determined the collection's representations.

The monumental collection of voyages made by the De Bry family in Frankfurt (1590–1634) contained many well-known Dutch travel accounts. The De Brys, copper engravers and publishers, also copied many of the illustrations for which the Dutch narratives were rightly famous around 1600. In addition, they designed new engravings, often depicting spectacular episodes, pagan rituals and other strange habits, in order to enhance the appeal of their collection. Hence the representations of the overseas world in the De Bry collection were markedly different from those presented in the original accounts. The new Frankfurt plates were in turn imitated in the United Provinces, at the expense of more authoritative home-made designs. As a result, much of the iconography of the overseas world traditionally regarded as Dutch, was in fact constructed in a German workshop. With images travelling back and forth between Amsterdam and Frankfurt, this constituted not only an interchange of representations, but also a p...

Capitalism and cartography are the two main themes of Elizabeth Sutton’s new study with the same title. Her first book, published in 2012, explored Dutch imagery of West Africa in the travel accoun...

Introduction Michiel van Groesen Part I. The Geopolitical Legacy: 1. The geopolitical impact of Dutch Brazil on the Western Hemisphere Wim Klooster 2. Looking for a new Brazil: crisis and rebirth in the Atlantic world after the fall of Pernambuco Stuart B. Schwartz 3. From Dutch allies to Portuguese vassals: indigenous peoples in the aftermath of Dutch Brazil Mark Meuwese 4. From Brazil to West Africa: Dutch-Portuguese rivalry, gold smuggling, and African politics in the Bight of Benin Roquinaldo Ferreira Part II. The Cultural Legacy: 5. Global connections: Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen's collection of curiosities Mariana Francozo 6. A less Christian Atlantic: the legacy of Dutch tolerance in Brazil Evan Haefeli 7. How Dutch Brazil affects your emotions: the Antwerp Jesuit Cornelius Hazart on early colonial Brazil Johan Verberckmoes 8. Beyond Brazilian nature: the editorial itineraries of Marcgraf and Piso's Historia Naturalis Brasiliae Neil Safier 9. Dutch Brazil and the making of free-trade ideology Arthur Weststeijn Part III. The National Legacy: From Memory to Mythology: 10. Heroic memories: admirals of Dutch Brazil in the rise of Dutch national consciousness Michiel van Groesen 11. Who owns Frans Post?: Collecting Frans Post's Brazilian landscapes Rebecca Parker Brienen 12. Visual impact: the long legacy of the artists of Dutch Brazil Julie Berger Hochstrasser Epilogue: mythologies of Dutch Brazil Joan-Pau Rubies.

The travel collection (1590–1634) of the Frankfurt-based De Bry family brought together journals of exploration and discovery of America, Africa and Asia. In this collection, which was regarded as authoritative for nearly two hundred years, accounts of numerous navigators were translated into German and Latin, and subsequently combined with large copper-engravings. The famous ‘Itinerario’ (1596) of Jan Huygen van Linschoten formed one of the sources for this work. The character of the ‘Itinerario’ however was not fully respected by the De Brys. They firstly clarified Linschoten's sometimes rather specialised account. Secondly, they ‘popularised’ the ‘Itinerario’ by adding illustrations of a spectacular nature. These engravings and the accompanying prose were not always based on the original text and occasionally completely changed Linschoten's image of the natives. Both types of modification suggest the collection of the De Brys was aimed at a large and wide readership. The ‘emblematic format’ of ...

News from the Atlantic world was a key ingredient in early printed European newspapers. This article investigates the rhythm of Atlantic reporting in two weekly corantos from the Low Countries, one produced in Amsterdam, the other in Antwerp. It studies the serial production, dissemination, and reception of news from the "Western front" in the year 1630, when both the Dutch West India Company and the Habsburg monarchy experienced a blend of victories and disappointments. Partiality and different conceptions of credibility determined how events were covered on opposite sides of the border. Through careful analysis of two newspapers, and the assessment of their Atlantic bulletins by a well-informed reader, this article will argue that a culture of anticipation shaped the circulation of news from Brazil and the Caribbean. This explains why the press in the Netherlands produced regular bulletins even when there was no news, and why few stories were covered so extensively as those from the Atlantic world.

After a slow start in the early sixteenth century, the Portuguese Crown had gradually come to appreciate its possession of Brazil. Centered around the main sugar-producing areas of Bahia and Pernam...

The Dutch conquest of Salvador de Bahia in Brazil in May 1624 constituted the first major defeat for the Habsburg monarchy in the New World. When the good news reached the United Provinces in the final week of August, newspapermen and publishers did their level best to quickly provide the public with reliable information on events in America. This article discusses their activities until the early days of September, when the victory in Brazil had become common knowledge. It demonstrates that even publishers who had anticipated the good news struggled to keep pace with developments, and shows how the authorities attempted to take control of the flow of information. In subsequent weeks and months, other publishers also looked to cash in on the widespread enthusiasm over the triumph. Thus 1624 became a crucial year for Dutch Americana.

This book deals with the De Bry collection of voyages, one of the most monumental publications of Early Modern Europe. It analyzes the textual and iconographic changes the De Bry publishing family made to travel accounts describing Asia, Africa and the New World. It discusses this editorial strategy in the context of the publishing industry around 1600, investigating the biography of the De Brys, the publications of the Frankfurt firm, and the making of the collection, as well as its reception by Iberian inquisitors and seventeenth-century readers across the Old World. The book draws on a wide variety of primary sources, and is hence important for historians, book historians, and art historians interested in the development of Europe's overseas empires.