114 Dutch in Latin America known as the Chinese War and resulted in 10,000 Chinese deaths By the end of the 18th century, the Dutch state had become exhausted by the effects of prololnged warfare in Europe, especially the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War of 1780–81 The VOC was also facing stiff competition from the British It was dissolved in 1799 by the Dutch government, which decided to assume direct responsibility for overseas possessions Java and other VOC holdings in the East Indies were transferred to the Dutch government See also French East India Company; voyages of discovery Further reading: Brown, Colin A Short History of Indonesia: The Unlikely Nation? Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2003; Gaastra, Femme The Dutch East India Company: Expansion and Decline Zutphen, Netherlands: Walburg, 2003; Irwin, Douglas A “Mercantilism as Strategic Trade Policy: The AngloDutch Rivalry for the East India Trade.” The Journal of Political Economy v 99, December 1991; Reid, Anthony Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450–1680, Vol 2, Expansion and Crisis New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993 John Walsh Dutch in Latin America The Dutch presence in the Americas was integral to the worldwide competition for empire among European powers in the early modern era Among the most important national actors in the newly discovered lands of the New World in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Dutch rapidly lost influence and power to the French, English, and Portuguese in the mid-1600s, though their impact on the history of the Americas was profound and long-lasting The Dutch influence in Latin America was greatest in Brazil, where they began to challenge Portuguese dominance in the 1620s Dominated by Calvinists and fierce enemies of Catholic Spain in the great power rivalries of Europe, the Dutch began challenging Portuguese claims to Brazil soon after the union of the Portuguese and Spanish Crowns in 1580 Their first assaults on Portuguese and Spanish commercial interests began in West Africa in the 1590s, culminating in their 1606 attack on the Portuguese trading station of São Jorge de Mina, which after several attempts they captured in 1637, opening up the African trade to Dutch merchants In Asia, too, the Dutch challenged Spanish and Portuguese dominance, seizing several key ports in India, Ceylon, and elsewhere and becoming a major commercial power in the seas and ports of the Middle and Far East The upshot of these far-flung conflicts in the jockeying for power in Latin America was to make Brazil Portugual’s most important overseas possession, thus intensifying the Portuguese Crown’s efforts to solidify their hold on the colony Eager to participate in the lucrative sugar trade, the Dutch formed their West India Company (WIC) in 1621, modeled after the Dutch East India Company, founded in 1602 The WIC’s goal was to weaken and plunder the Spanish and, where possible, to displace the Portuguese Three years after the WIC was created, in May 1624, under the leadership of Piet Heyn, a massive Dutch force launched a military assault on the Portuguese Brazilian capital port city of Salvador (Bahia) Holding the town for nearly a year, the Dutch were expelled by a joint Spanish-Portuguese counterassault in April 1625 After failing to retake the port, the Dutch turned their attention north, to the port of Recife, at the heart of the sugar trade in the rapidly growing province of Pernambuco With some 67 ships and 7,000 men, the Dutch attacked and took Recife and Olinda in 1630 They held the town and its outlying districts for the next 24 years, extending their influence along some 1,800 kilometers of coastline in Brazil’s burgeoning northeast In keeping with the Netherlands’s mercantile orientation, Dutch rule in Brazil was characterized by an emphasis on trade; increased production of sugar, tobacco, hides, dyewood, and other tropical export commodities; and an overall policy of generalized tolerance toward Roman Catholicism despite a strong undercurrent of tension between Dutch Calvinists and Spanish and Portuguese Catholic monasteries and nunneries The Dutch hold on the Brazilian northeast prompted the Portuguese Crown to redouble its efforts to strengthen its hold on the colony Two years before taking Recife, in 1628, a fleet of 30 Dutch ships captured the Spanish silver fleet off the coast of Cuba—the only instance in which an entire Spanish flota (convoy) was captured by enemy forces The Dutch victory stunned Europe, prompting Italian bankers to withdraw their credit from Spain, causing the Spanish Crown to intensify its efforts to find new sources of credit for their overseas enterprises, and ultimately leading to revolt by the Portuguese and Catalans For the Dutch, the costs of defending their Brazilian holdings against Portuguese counterattacks, by land and by sea, proved very high, while the revenues gained by commerce in sugar, tobacco, and African slaves proved disappointingly low In the 1630s, despite their