The Expansion of tolerance

Jonathan Israel
Religious Toleration in Dutch Brazil
(1624-1654)
Given that ‘toleration’ more than any other single aspect is what gives Dutch
history its European, wider western, and general world significance, Dutch
Brazil between 1624 and 1654 arguably has a special place in the history of
the Old and New Worlds and in the history of modern secular society.
But while it is legitimate to emphasize – and celebrate – the remarkable
degree of religious toleration established under Dutch rule in north-eastern
Brazil between the taking of Recife and Olinda, in 1630, and the final
surrender of the remaining Dutch enclaves to the Portuguese crown, towards
the end of the First Anglo-Dutch War in 1654, it is also important, for the
sake of historical accuracy, and our awareness of the making of ‘modernity’,
to avoid the tendency to oversimplification and an overoptimistic assessment
which often attends public discussion of exceptional historical phenomena
of this sort.
Although the comparative toleration instituted by the Dutch West India
Company (WIC) in its South American colony did diverge dramatically from
the main lines of Spanish and Portuguese social governance and regulation
as practiced throughout the rest of Ibero-America both before and after the
brief ‘Dutch’ interlude in Brazil, it is necessary to bear in mind that this
never amounted to a comprehensive, principled freedom of religion and
expression based on any conception of individual freedom in matters of
conscience and lifestyle. In fact, what the story of Dutch Brazil, and the
limitations and weaknesses of its toleration, really teaches, it might fairly
be said, is the impossibility of basing a stable and lasting toleration on the
kind of purely pragmatic premises and considerations which applied in
the Atlantic world during the era of the Thirty Years’ War; and also the
relevance, for the historian and students of history, of acquiring a firm and
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