From Description to Classification of Lands and Peoples, 1624–1654
Series: European Expansion and Indigenous Response, Volume: 50
Author: Britt Dams
Between 1624 and 1654 Dutch authors shifted from marvellous travel tales to methodical inventories that aimed at deeper comprehension of Brazil. This book traces that evolution through four cornerstone texts—Nieuwe Wereldt, Iaerlijck Verhael, Rerum per Octennium, and Historia naturalis Brasiliae—read alongside maps, West India Company papers, and incisive illustrations. Planters, soldiers, and Indigenous go-betweens supplied the field notes that allowed for ethnography and natural history to take empirical form. By tracking how writers labelled landscapes, plants, animals, and peoples, the study shows how description itself became a tool of Dutch colonial power.
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