Brazil, Maranhão, Phillip III and the Dutch

Abstract

The incorporation into the Portuguese and Spanish crowns of Asian and American territories in the seventeenth century initiated a number of planetary connections that transformed societies of the Early Modern times. Spanish and Portuguese America were a piece in this “huge chessboard” where the different parties were united in a precarious way, by political, economic, and cultural links. It is rather in this way that we should look at the “Philippine” period in Brazil (1580-1640). In the last years a number of important studies by Brazilian, Portuguese, French and Spanish scholars have changed the traditional view of the period, characterized by nationalist feelings in the countries affected by the process.