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In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Brazil, still under the rule of the Portuguese crown, became the target of foreign interests due to its strategic and economic importance.

The Bay of All Saints, in particular, emerged as a vital point on the trade routes, attracting the attention of powers such as the Netherlands, which was at war with Spain during the Iberian Union (1580-1640). In this context, the Dutch, wishing to secure their control over the lucrative sugar trade, began a series of attempts to invade the capital of Brazil, Salvador.

The first of these incursions took place in 1599, under the command of admirals such as van Leynssen, followed by further attempts in 1604 and then a full-scale invasion in 1624.

These attempts, although initially unsuccessful, demonstrated the growing Dutch ambition over the Iberian possessions in the New World and the growing tension in the Atlantic.

Video about the Dutch invasion of Salvador in 1624

The Dutch invasion of Salvador in 1624

History of the Dutch Invasion of Salvador in 1624

The first attempted Dutch invasion of Salvador took place in December 1599, when Admiral van Leynssen sent seven ships to Brazil, commanded by Captains Hartman and Broer.

At the beginning of the 17th century, Salvador was one of the most important cities in America, the capital of Brazil, a Portuguese state controlled by the Spanish during the Iberian Union (1580-1640).

The attacks in the Bay of All Saints lasted almost two months.

The Dutch sank several Portuguese ships and plundered mills in the Recôncavo. But they failed to conquer the city.

In the following years, Dutch pirates continued to attack Spanish and Portuguese ships on the high seas, both in the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean.

In 1604, they tried again to conquer Salvador, this time with a squadron of six ships commanded by Paulus van Caerden.

The attack was similar to the first and the result was the same.

In the following years, dozens of ships carrying cargo from Brazil were attacked by the Dutch.

In 1621, the Dutch founded theWest Indies Company (West-Indische Compagnie), a company sponsored by the Dutch government, with the participation of private investors and which mainly sought the commercial exploitation of America.

The city dawns under the domination and effects of the bombardment of a Dutch squadron made up of 26 ships, under the command of Jacob Willekens.

The Dutch invasion of Salvador took place on 9 May 1624.

The day before, even under crossfire from the Fort of Santo Antônio, the Dutch managed to hit the cannons at Ponta do Padrão and landed at the Port of Barra.

The vanguard followed the Ladeira da Barra and the cliffs until they reached the Porta de São Bento.

The Dutch spend the early hours of the morning in the Monastery ‘savouring the wines and confectionery’ they find there.

There, they wait for daybreak and take over the city centre.

According to Ricardo Behrens, in the book ‘Salvador and the Dutch Invasion of 1624-1625’, ‘Portuguese and Dutch accounts tell us that the confrontation began the previous day when the city’s inhabitants fired on a barge with a peace flag sent by the fleet, before they even heard the embassy.

In response, the invaders unloaded their cannons on the side of the city, on the forts and on the ships in the harbour.’

The sight of the armada alone caused most of the inhabitants to panic and run.

Even though they were aware of the likelihood of attacks, the city had no special strategy. D’El Rey had not established any resources for armaments.

On the other hand, the Dutch – whose fleet left Texel harbour in December and whose voyage had lasted almost six months – were intent on invading the capital of the Kingdom of Brazil and had plenty of ammunition.

The devastating cannon fire during the Dutch invasion of Salvador, and then the vandalism of the invaders, caused countless damages to the city, including the City Hall building where the Historical Archive was housed, whose documents were completely destroyed by fire.

According to the historian Affonso Rui, in his book ‘História política e administrativa da cidade de Salvador’ (Political and administrative history of the city of Salvador), ‘the officials in charge of documentation, like a large part of the population, fled to Abrantes’.

The 3,400 men, including adventurers and mercenaries who made up the invading Dutch squadron, did not encounter any major resistance in surrendering the governor-general of the colony, D. Diogo Mendonça Furtado, and imprisoning him in the so-called House of Governors (in what would become the Rio Branco Palace, in today’s Praça Tomé de Souza), in the heart of the city, one of the most important cities in America, then the capital of Brazil.

The Portuguese ruler had already expressed his concern about Brazil’s military unpreparedness and even clashed with the Church, which saw no need for military concerns.

Thus, the Dutch had little trouble taking the city and Diogo Mendonça Furtado signed his surrender a day later.

He was taken prisoner to Amsterdam with 12 other people, including auxiliaries and Jesuits, from where they were only released in 1626.

According to Behrens in his Master’s dissertation, which has now been turned into a book, ‘there is a series of lectures published in the Revista do Instituto Geográfico e Histórico da Bahia, No. 66, in 1940.

It was published to commemorate the defeat of Maurício de Nassau when he tried to invade Bahia in 1638.

In addition to the lectures, the suggestions made by members of the Institute to commemorate the date were published, among which the idea of making a series of commemorative plaques, like the one that still exists at the entrance to the Monastery of São Bento, stands out’.

The Dutch remained in Bahia for almost a year.

It was up to Bishop Marcos Teixeira, later called the Warrior Bishop, to promote resistance.

Through the tactic of ambushes, he prevented the invaders from leaving the city.

On 27 March 1625, the Portuguese-Spanish reinforcement squadron, commanded by the Spaniard Fradique de Toledo Osório, arrived in Bahia.

The battle lasted more than 40 days and on 1st May the first surrender was obtained.

Colônia era controlada pelos espanhóis durante a União Ibérica

The colony was then controlled by the Spanish, during the so-called Iberian Union (1580-1640), which brought the two crowns together after the disappearance of Dom Sebastião de Avis at the Battle of Alcácer Quibir in Morocco, in the war against the Moors in 1578, when he sought victory over the Muslims for the glory of Christianity.

It’s worth understanding more: The ‘death’ of Dom Sebastião caused a succession crisis in Portugal, as the king had left no heirs. His disappearance gave rise to ‘Sebastianism’, a kind of messianic belief that stipulated his return to the kingdom and that would last for three centuries as a symbol of Portuguese nationalism.

The solution found for the throne was his great-uncle, Cardinal D.Henrique(Henrique I, of Portugal), who, already very old, died in 1580, marking the end of the Avis dynasty.

As a result, the Portuguese throne began to be contested by other European dynasties, who claimed to be related to Dom Sebastião.

The then king of Spain, Felipe II, one of the most powerful monarchs of the time, was the grandson of Dom Manuel, O Venturoso, who in turn was Dom Sebastião‘s uncle.

This parental connection was claimed by Felipe II and used to legitimise the Spanish invasion of Portugal in 1580, establishing the dual monarchy: two crowns under one monarch.

Portugal only regained its independence 60 years later during the reign of King João IV, founder of the Bragança dynasty.

It was during the period of the Iberian Union that the French invasions also took place.

Holland and France, which had previously maintained friendly relations with Portugal, clashed directly with Spain.

Iberian supremacy began to be questioned by those European nations that also wanted to profit from the colonisation process.

And this involved both economic reasons, in terms of controlling the sugar trade and metal extraction, and religious ones, in that Spain was Catholic while Holland and part of the French had adhered to Protestantism.

The period known as ‘Dutch Brazil’, in which a sophisticated Dutch administration prevailed on part of the north-eastern coast of Brazil, occurred precisely in this context.

There are no records of Dutch legacies in Bahia, unlike those in Pernambuco, and the French in Rio de Janeiro and Maranhão.

Thefirst attempted invasion took place in 1599.

Other attempts by the Dutch to invade Bahia had already been recorded, but were unsuccessful.

Unable to dominate the capital of Brazil, they managed to settle in Pernambuco and spread their domains over a large part of the Northeast until they were definitively expelled from the colony in 1654.

The first Dutch attempt to conquer Salvador took place in December 1599, when Admiral van Leynssen sent seven ships to Brazil, commanded by Captains Hartman and Broer.

The attacks in the Bay of All Saints lasted almost two months. The Dutch sink several Portuguese ships and plunder mills in the Recôncavo. But they failed to conquer the city.

In the following years, Dutch pirates continued to attack Spanish and Portuguese ships in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In 1604, they tried again to conquer Salvador, this time with a squadron of six ships commanded by Paulus van Caerden.

The attack, similar to the first, resulted in the same failure.

In the following years, dozens of ships carrying cargo from Brazil were attacked by the Dutch.

In 1621, they founded the Companhia das Índias Ocidentais, a company sponsored by the Dutch government with the participation of private investors, whose main aim was the commercial exploitation of America.

In the 16th century, Portugal maintained good trade relations with the Dutch, but this changed with the advent of the Iberian Union in 1580.

A year earlier, in 1579, the northern provinces of the Netherlands had formed the Union of Utrecht, a document signed by several states in the Netherlands that were struggling to gain independence from Spain.

In 1581, they formally declared their independence.

Spain, however, would only recognise it in 1648, 24 years after the West India Company decided to invade Salvador on the grounds that it felt its business in the Atlantic had been damaged by Spanish domination of Portugal.

The expulsion of the invaders in the international context

February 1630. Dutch ships and cannons once again enter Brazilian waters.

This time they invaded Pernambuco, the world’s largest sugar producer at the time. They land on the Pernambuco coast and conquer Olinda and Recife with relative ease.

The then governor Matias de Albuquerque retreated inland with men and weapons and founded the Arraial do Bom Jesus, a fortification from where the attacks on the invaders began.

As in the invasion of Bahia, the Portuguese-Brazilians adopted a war of ambushes in an attempt to prevent the Dutch from penetrating the lands where most of the mills were located.

The resistance, however, did not stop the Dutch advance, and they even received support from local residents, such as Antônio Fernandes Calabar. The collaboration, much more than treason, was aimed at getting rid of Portuguese rule.

Defeated, Matias Albuquerque set fire to the cane fields around him and retreated to Alagoas. Before he did, however, he managed to arrest Calabar and had him executed.

Seven years later, in 1637, the West India Company decided to rebuild the mills with the aim of making a profit from Brazilian sugar again. To lead this project, it sent Count João Maurício de Nassau-Siegen to Brazil with the title of governor-general.

The accumulation of wealth by the West India Company was reflected in the administration and reconstruction of Recife, the capital of Dutch Brazil. Nassau had the ability to invite some plantation owners to take part in the administration.

He didn’t offer them important positions, but he didn’t ignore their demands. He maintained religious tolerance, without forcing the Portuguese-Brazilian settlers to convert to the Protestantism of the Dutch.

In his eagerness to better understand Brazil, Maurício de Nassau sent 46 scholars, painters and scientists from Holland to study and record the characteristics of the land, given the curiosity aroused by the region’s rich fauna and natural beauty.

The Dutch were pioneers in this type of study of Brazil.

The painters Frans Post and Albert Eckhout left beautiful paintings of the Dutch colony in the northeast. Scientists studied tropical diseases and their possible cure.

The first astronomical observatory in the Americas was built in Recife. Maurício de Nassau also tried to give the colony greater economic autonomy so that it wouldn’t depend too much on foreign markets.

In 1640, Portugal gained independence from Spain.

In August 1645, the Portuguese-Brazilian settlers won an important victory at Monte das Tabocas.

The government of Bahia sent aid and Recife was besieged. The victory, however, failed to dislodge the Dutch, who were very well garrisoned by sea. The fighting continued for three years.

At the end of 1648, the Dutch suffered a major defeat in the Battle of Guararapes. Even so, Recife remained in the hands of the West India Company.

The international situation, however, helped to end the impasse in the conflict between the Dutch and the settlers in Brazil.

England declared war on Holland in the dispute over the hegemony of the seas.

The English even helped the anti-Dutch rebels in Brazil.

The Portuguese rulers took advantage of the weakening of the invaders and sent a large reinforcement to the settlers in Brazil at the end of 1653. Finally, in January 1654, the Dutch surrendered.

That was the end of Dutch rule in Brazil. But it wasn’t until 1661 that the Dutch government recognised that it no longer had rights over Brazil.

The Dutch invasion of Salvador in 1624

Bahia.ws – Tourist Guide to Salvador, Bahia and the Northeast