The Expansion of tolerance

Frans Post, Engenho real (ca. 1645?). The painter here depicts one of the largest engenhos
in Dutch Brazil, the Engenho Real. The church in the background demonstrates the
omnipresence of the Portuguese religious infrastructure in Brazil at the time of Dutch rule.
Portuguese cane suppliers. 22 Whether the mill owners were Portuguese or
Dutch, a mixed group of cane suppliers could be found on many of the
sugar estates. We know little of their relations with each other, but they
certainly shared the same interests and must have seen and interacted with
each other on a regular basis. Sugar created its own logic of identity and
interest between the Dutch and the Portuguese.
We get some inkling of what that contact and possible collaboration
and perhaps tolerance might have looked like from a Portuguese episcopal
investigation that was carried out from 1635 to 1637 by Dom Pedro da Silva,
Bishop of Salvador. Rumours of a certain degree of collaboration with the
Dutch by members of the Catholic clergy in Paraíba had moved the bishop
to conduct this inquiry, and as a result some eighty individuals were
denounced: eight of them clergymen, twenty-four New Christians, and
forty-eight Old Christians. The New Christians, of course, were no surprise
and some of them took the opportunity offered by the Dutch invasion and
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