In late March 1645, after travelling several miles, 134 Potiguara from different areas of north-eastern Brazil gathered in the aldeamento of Tapesserica, Itamaracá. The objective of these Potiguara leaders and officers from sixteen aldeias (Indigenous settlements) and aldeamentos (Indigenous settlements under colonial control or supervision)Footnote 1 of Rio Grande, Paraíba, Itamaracá and Pernambuco was to elect representatives who would negotiate with the Dutch West India Company the establishment of a semi-autonomous government for the Potiguara, who were now allied with the Dutch. The Potiguara expressed dissatisfaction with how the alliance was functioning. Following discussions at the assembly, their leaders drafted a document detailing their complaints and decisions. The Potiguara personally delivered their signed remonstrantie (remonstrance) to the Company government in Recife and the latter examined their demands. The original text of the remonstrance has not been found, but a Dutch transcription survives in the minutes of the West India Company government in Brazil, dated 11 April 1645.Footnote 2
Notwithstanding the assembly’s significance for the Potiguara people and their European allies in Brazil, it has attracted only limited scholarly attention.Footnote 3 By contrast, a good deal of recent scholarship on political assemblies and representation in the colonial territories controlled by Portugal has discussed the interactions between local authorities in Brazil and their royal counterparts in Portugal through representative assemblies and courts. Comparative studies have extended their scope to encompass other territories on the continent.Footnote 4 What though of the Dutch experience in Brazil? The Brazilian Diet (also called General Assembly) of 1640 is among the topics frequently considered in Brazilian and Dutch historiography in relation to political assemblies or forms of local government representation.Footnote 5 Governor Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen convened this assembly in August 1640. It spanned nine days in Recife, the colonial capital of the Dutch Brazil. Comprising fifty-six members of the local elite from Pernambuco, Itamaracá and Paraíba, either councillors or delegates from their respective communities, representing the people of the colony, the assembly addressed the Dutch government’s proposal for military cooperation with Portuguese settlers to alleviate violence in the interior. In addition, religious, legal and governmental proposals were presented to the assembly.
This article redresses the balance of attention given to the respective assemblies by providing an analysis of the Tapesserica Assembly, exploring the reasons why it was convened, as well as its connections with Indigenous political culture prior to the arrival of the Europeans in Brazil. It also explores the Indigenous perspective on the Dutch–Portuguese wars and demonstrates the role of the Potiguara as historical agents.
The Potiguara and their political organisation
The Potiguara, part of the Tupi linguistic family, lived along the coastal areas from Maranhão to Itamaracá. Describing the political culture of coastal Indigenous peoples in Brazil is challenging. Historians, anthropologists and archaeologists seeking to reconstruct these peoples’ political organisation prior to the arrival of the Europeans have come up against a lack of written sources – a central problem and an obstacle to accurate analyses. Moreover, the European records produced in the first decades by travellers, cosmographers and missionaries from Portugal, Spain, Italy, France and many other countries must be read carefully because of their tendency to generalise and their ethnocentrism. Nevertheless, scholars have been able to discern several patterns in the various European accounts that allow us to be more precise.Footnote 6
Like many Tupi people, the Potiguara organised themselves in different aldeias with estimated populations ranging from 500 to 2,000 people.Footnote 7 Distinct aldeias could maintain peaceful or hostile relations with each other. The residents of individual aldeias would frequently forge alliances against common enemies to defend their territory. No aldeia took a leading role, although some had a higher concentration of military forces and greater influence than others. There was no central political authority. Power was fragmented, and a single aldeia could have more than one leader. This pattern was observed among most Tupi-speaking peoples. Furthermore, they had the capacity to organise themselves politically and set aside their differences for the sake of the group.Footnote 8 Leadership within an aldeia was typically vested in experienced elders, distinguished warriors and skilful orators. In times of war, leaders of neighbouring aldeias might meet to convene war councils and coordinate strategies. Certain leaders tended to emerge during periods of conflict, assuming positions of greater authority than typically held in peacetime. However, this was a temporary phenomenon. Tupi-speaking peoples often fractured when leaders disagreed, and the dissenting group would form a new aldeia.Footnote 9
Early European accounts reveal that the Potiguara had a troubled history with the Portuguese. Initially they received the Portuguese well and formed alliances with them. But Portuguese exploitation led to war against European colonisers: the Potiguara would become a serious threat to settlers in Pernambuco, Itamaracá and Paraíba. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, some Potiguara aldeias were also actively allied with the French in territorial disputes with the Portuguese. When the French were expelled from Paraíba between 1570 and 1610, the Potiguara resistance was broken and some groups of Potiguara, formerly allied with the French, were brought back to the Portuguese side.Footnote 10
Aldeamentos became a common destination for those who accepted Portuguese rule. The Benedictine, Franciscan and Jesuit missions established in north-eastern Brazil operated in the aldeamentos to educate, convert and organise the Indigenous populations for work.Footnote 11 In the aldeamentos, the Potiguara became familiar with the European institutions and found a way to petition the central powers using an important skill they had learned: writing. Indigenous writing was a reality for certain groups, especially the leaders, who were the main mediators between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous.Footnote 12 This is an important aspect to which we shall return when discussing the Tapesserica Assembly.
Some of the Potiguara did not want to submit to Portuguese hegemony and found refuge in the interior of Paraíba and Ceará.Footnote 13 But those who sided with the Portuguese joined them in an expedition that defeated the French, who had settled in Maranhão in 1612. Potiguara were the core of the force, together with another Indigenous nation, the Tabajara, who undertook the reconquest of Maranhão in 1615.Footnote 14 Thus, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Potiguara were divided between those who followed the Portuguese and those who took a different path. Their internal conflicts and their struggles with the Portuguese continued throughout the seventeenth century.Footnote 15
The Dutch and the Potiguara
From 1624 to 1654, the Dutch West India Company seized part of north-eastern Brazil. This private company was created in opposition to the Habsburg monarchy as the Dutch Republic sought to sustain competition with and resistance to Iberian colonial projects. Over the course of the Eighty Years War (1568–1648), the Dutch worked to weaken the Iberian transatlantic trade that was essential to the Spanish and Portuguese economy, endeavouring to open Spanish and Portuguese colonial seaports to their shipping. Their interest in Brazil was primarily focused on sugar, but they were also concerned with tobacco and brazilwood. Previously, the Dutch had imported sugar and brazilwood via Portugal.Footnote 16
Brazil, integrated into the Spanish crown after the 1580 Spanish takeover of Portugal, became a major target of Dutch military operations when commerce between it and the Dutch Republic faced restrictions imposed by the Habsburg crown. The initial Dutch assault on Brazil resulted in the invasion and occupation of Salvador, the capital, in 1624. But the Dutch could not hold the position and, after a siege in 1625, they were expelled. Two fleets under the command of Boudewijn Hendrikszoon and Andries Veron, sent to reinforce the besieged Dutch forces, arrived in Brazil too late.Footnote 17 After abandoning the attack on Salvador, the Dutch sailed north in search of a safe harbour to care for their sick after a long Atlantic voyage. They anchored in Paraíba. It was there that the Potiguara first encountered the Dutch.Footnote 18
The Potiguara perceived the arrival of the Dutch vessels in Paraíba as an opportunity to challenge the hegemony of the Portuguese colonists. They helped the Dutch with provisions and, together with them, attacked Portuguese settlers. Soon, however, they found that the Dutch did not intend to prosecute further attacks in Brazil at this time. While the fleet under Hendrikszoon set out to seize Puerto Rico and establish a position to attack the Silver Fleet, which periodically sailed between Spain and her colonial territories, the group commanded by Veron sailed to Elmina, in West Africa, with the intention of capturing strategic ports for the transatlantic slave trade. A number of the Potiguara joined the Dutch expedition to the Caribbean and eventually made their way to the Netherlands. A few of them are mentioned in Dutch sources: André Francisco, Antônio Francisco, Antônio Paraupaba, Gaspar Paraupaba, Luís Gaspar and Pieter Poty.Footnote 19
After the defeat at Salvador in 1625, the Dutch devised a new plan to conquer Brazil. Now Pernambuco was the target, but its fall in 1630 did not lead to a Dutch advance into the interior of the colony. To strengthen their still vulnerable position and acquire access to the hinterlands, the Dutch tried to dominate territories further north, in Paraíba and Rio Grande. To do so, they counted on Antônio Paraupaba, Gaspar Paraupaba and Pieter Poty, all of whom returned to Brazil in 1631 and acted as guides, interpreters and mediators with other nations, such as the Tarairiú in the backlands of the Rio Grande and the Ceará, a Tapuia-language people.Footnote 20
Initially, native groups in Pernambuco and Paraíba hesitated to form alliances with the Dutch, whether out of loyalty to the Luso-Spanish colonists or apprehension in light of the wars of the past and their brutal consequences.Footnote 21 The reluctance of these natives to support the Dutch, fostered by Indigenous supporters of the Iberian Monarchy and missionary activity, delayed the Dutch advance. Their qualms could also be related, first, to their reading of the conflict among the Europeans and, second, to the inability of the Dutch to expand their presence in the territory. It was only after the initial years of the war that the Dutch finally began to gain dominance throughout the region. By 1635, some native groups felt more confident in changing their alliances to the Dutch, having less cause to fear Spanish-Portuguese repression, because it was clear that the Dutch colony was now sufficiently stable.
The collaboration of Potiguara and Tarairiú allies allowed the Dutch, after some time, to move more safely through the territory, especially in the northernmost part. Between 1635 and 1641, through the mediation of Potiguara and Tarairiú, some of the Indigenous groups from Maranhão, Ceará, Rio Grande, Paraíba, Itamaracá and Pernambuco also made agreements with the Dutch and joined their troops, playing an important military role against the Luso-Spanish forces in Brazil. Antônio Paraupaba, initially an interpreter and mediator, rose to prominence and became a key Indigenous agent of the West India Company in Brazil, alongside fellow-Potiguara Pieter Poty.Footnote 22
Native involvement in the Dutch projects in Brazil proved vital to the success of the war against Portugal and Spain, and to the Dutch colonial enterprise. These Indigenous peoples sought to make deals that seemed most convenient for their groups. They took decisions and negotiated according to their agendas whenever possible. This led to many confrontations between the Company’s authorities and their native allies. Leaders such as Paraupaba and Poty seem to have been following distinct plans that sometimes diverged from Dutch demands, resulting in conflicts, revolts and the renegotiation of agreements.Footnote 23
The Tapesserica assembly in context
The Potiguara assembly that convened in Tapesserica in 1645 had its origin in the Potiguara demands for self-governance, improvement of their conditions and the desire of the Dutch to pacify their native allies. There were numerous tensions between the Potiguara and the Dutch. One of them arose from the efforts of the Dutch to convert the Potiguara to Calvinism. This process involved congregating natives in aldeamentos controlled by Calvinist ministers and European commanders (commandeurs). In early 1635, the Dutch also appointed a director to ‘supervise and centrally administer’ all the Indigenous aldeamentos.Footnote 24
Many cases of mistreatment arose from the interactions between European commandeurs and natives. Living in an aldeamento implied the Potiguara were turned into a labour force for the Europeans. Abuse, exploitation and enslavement of natives were key grievances against commandeurs and colonists, particularly in areas remote from Dutch government offices. Continuous military campaigns in Brazil, and also in West Africa,Footnote 25 further burdened the natives, since the Potiguara from the aldeamentos were regularly summoned and mobilised to wage wars in the Portuguese-Spanish occupied areas. Some groups allied with the Dutch defected and fled to the interior. Outbreaks of severe illness depopulated the aldeias and aldeamentos. Some natives revolted, killing the men of the West India Company garrisons in Ceará and Maranhão.Footnote 26
Aware of increasing tensions with the local government, native leaders, including Antônio Paraupaba, organised themselves to negotiate directly with the head of the West India Company in the Netherlands. Once in Amsterdam, the Potiguara conferred with the Company’s board of directors and in November 1644 received a letter from them emphasising their right to freedom and self-government, albeit still under Dutch supervision. These were not the only points addressed in the ‘Letter of Freedom for the Brazilians’ (den brief der vrijheden voor de Braziliaenen), and it is possible to see in this manuscript all the main points of discussion of the Tapesserica Assembly of 1645.Footnote 27 It is evident that the Tapesserica gathering is inextricably linked to the Potiguara negotiations with the Dutch in November 1644. But this was not the first time that Dutch representatives had met with Indigenous leaders of various groups to discuss their alliances. Previous such meetings were held in July 1639 and again in the mid-1640s. This is the context in which the Tapesserica Assembly occurred in 1645.Footnote 28
After the gathering, on 11 April 1645, the Potiguara presented Dutch officials with a written remonstrance of their demands (Figure 1). It is noteworthy that in the initial lines of the written remonstrance, the Potiguara emphasised their letter of freedom and other rights granted by the Company directors in 1644.Footnote 29 They called upon the Dutch in Brazil to comply with the law of native freedom and underlined that the natives were not to be exploited or oppressed. The Potiguara demanded that the Dutch set free any peoples held as slaves in the territories governed by the Company.
Figure 1. The Potiguara Assembly in Tapesserica 1645.
The Potiguara also requested permission to merge certain aldeamentos, namely those of Rio Grande, Paraíba, Itamaracá and Pernambuco. The need to do so was probably the result of severe depopulation in the 1640s caused by war and disease. Additionally, they asked for more ministers for their churches and schoolmasters in the aldeamentos so they could bolster the Protestant cause among the natives. This demand for ministers could be seen as a gesture of goodwill on the part of the Potiguara towards their Dutch allies. It should not be seen as submissive, since the acceptance of Calvinist ministers in their aldeamentos also provided the natives with more interlocutors with the Dutch government and more opportunities to receive the benefits of this relationship – tools, clothing, weapons, salaries for those attached to the army, and, above all, the right to secure the lands adjacent to the aldeamentos.
Lastly, during the gathering, the Potiguara also voted for the establishment of three native câmaras (municipal councils) in Itamaracá (with the aldeamento Tapesserica as capital), Paraíba (with the aldeamento Mauritia as capital) and the Rio Grande (with the aldeia Orange as capital). These would have jurisdiction over some other aldeias and aldeamentos in those areas. Moreover, the Potiguara voted and elected hoofden (heads or principals) for these câmaras, namely Domingos Fernandes Carapeba for the câmara of Itamaracá, Pieter Poty for the câmara of Paraíba, and Antônio Paraupaba for the câmara of Rio Grande. Additionally, the assembly chose schepenen (magistrates) for all those câmaras, specifying every name chosen and demanding that the Dutch approve and endorse those selected, as can be seen in their remonstrance.Footnote 30
Dealing with serious financial problems and reducing their garrison numbers in Brazil, the Dutch government in Brazil was ever more reliant on their Potiguara allies to defend their colony. For that reason, they agreed to all the native demands.Footnote 31 Carapeba, Paraupaba and Poty were sworn in as heads of the câmaras on 12 April.Footnote 32
The câmaras created by the Potiguara may have been based on the structure of câmaras in the Portuguese world, with which the Potiguara were familiar. Other Portuguese câmaras in colonial Brazil served as central institutions linking local powers and colonial administrative institutions. In Brazil, they survived virtually intact until the beginning of the nineteenth century.Footnote 33 The members of the Portuguese câmaras, the vereadores (temporary magistrates), were elected every three years. In addition to the vereadores, who were chosen from among the most prominent settlers, a procurator, a clerk and a treasurer were elected. These vereadores met weekly to discuss the day-to-day affairs of their region. The almotacé judge, responsible for overseeing the city, its supplies and its security, was elected from among the vereadores. Even the setting of taxes could be part of the vereadores’ prerogatives. All decisions were taken by vote, and the presidency was held by the oldest member of the council. At the end of the seventeenth century, following its secession from Spain, the Kingdom of Portugal introduced the figure of an external judge (juiz de fora) to preside over the work of the council. This was an attempt to limit local power and autonomy.Footnote 34
The paucity of sources prevents us from saying much about the Potiguara câmaras. But there are similarities between the câmaras organised by the Potiguara and the Portuguese colonial câmaras in the way their representatives were elected. A head or principal and some magistrates were elected by the main leaders and officials of each aldeia and aldeamento. We can assume that part of the role of the head and the magistrates was to negotiate with the colonial powers. Moreover, it was an institution with limited power and autonomy, dependent on the approval of the Dutch government in Brazil. It was, however, a body capable of articulating local interests and framing collective remonstrances. In their remonstrance, the Potiguara use the terms hooft and schepenen to refer to the head and the magistrates elected to their câmaras. The Dutch government, when commenting on the Potiguara câmaras and the election of their members, refers to the heads as regenten. These Potiguara regenten seem to have played a military role. The functions of administration, justice and mediation were perhaps combined with the need for these elected heads or regents to lead their people in war. But this is a topic for further investigation. The terminology used by the Dutch shows that they understood the câmaras in terms of their own structure of provincial and city councils, with magistrates (regenten) that elected mayors (burgemeesters) and other temporary magistrates (schepenen) for city administration. The Dutch adopted and adapted the câmaras as part of their structure for the government of European settler communities in Brazil.Footnote 35 As in the Portuguese colonial world, a local administrative power structure was formed. This comprised members of the local elite and settlers of European descent, including both Portuguese and Dutch individuals. They shared seats in these camers – as the Dutch called them – and acted as arbiters in matters of local life. Initially, the schepenen were more involved in judicial matters, their main function being to hear civil and criminal cases in the first instance. They later became advisers to the Dutch government in Brazil. In addition to minor legal issues, they deliberated on the supply of trade goods and urban problems, and they created and collected taxes. At times, they performed duties similar to those of the mayors (burgemeesters) of the Netherlands.Footnote 36 But not only in Brazil. The Dutch also replicated and adjusted their forms of political representation elsewhere abroad, as can be seen in Jim van der Meulen’s discussions of assemblies in North America and Formosa elsewhere in this volume.Footnote 37
The organisation of the assembly
How then was the Tapesserica Assembly organised? And who should be credited with authoring the remonstrance delivered by the Potiguara to the Dutch government in Brazil? Although the Potiguara remonstrance contains a very detailed register of the decisions taken at Tapesserica, the list of participants, their rank, and the names of the aldeias and aldeamentos that sent representatives, there is no information on the coordination and procedure of the gathering. It is not known who conducted the meeting or who gave speeches at the assembly. The proceedings may have been led by the most prominent Potiguara leaders, warriors and elders, as is customary in the Tupi tradition.Footnote 38
Johannes Listry, director of the brasilianen, as the Dutch called the natives of the coast, may have played a prominent role in the assembly, since according to the remonstrance he was possibly the only Dutch representative to attend the meeting. The captain of the aldeamento of Tapesserica, Domingos Fernandes Carapeba, may have opened the proceedings and welcomed those who travelled from far away to participate in the discussion. It is also safe to assume that Antônio Paraupaba and Pieter Poty, the main mediators between the Potiguara and the Dutch, played key roles in the assembly and led the meeting alongside Listry and Carapeba. The Tupi language must have dominated in Tapesserica, but Dutch, Portuguese and other languages were also used for translation and communication.
Since all we have is a copy made by the Dutch of the written remonstrance of the Potiguara, we cannot be sure whether this is a full transcription or just a summary of the original. Nevertheless, there are indications that this copy may reflect the original language of the remonstrance and in some ways preserve the voice of the Potiguara. Part of it is a description of the meeting written in the third person, but when reporting on the Potiguara demands, the secretary of the Dutch government in Brazil, who recounts in the Daily Register of the Dutch Government what happened in Tapesserica, repeatedly uses the expression ‘our nation’ or ‘onse natie’ (first, sixth and seventh remonstrances) instead of ‘their nation’. There are other traces of the Indigenous original as well, among others: ‘we request’ or ‘wij versoecken’; ‘as the … promised to us’ or ‘gelijck ons … beloft’ (fifth remonstrance); ‘we have chosen these people’ or ‘wij hebben dese persoonen … gekosen’; ‘our gathering and council deliberations’ or ‘onse vergaderinge ende raetslagen’; ‘we ask’ or ‘wij versocht’; ‘Therefore done and decided in our gathering’ or ‘Aldus gedaen ende beslooten in onse vergaederinge’ (seventh remonstrance).Footnote 39
In addition to the personal and possessive pronominal forms used, the remonstrance submitted by the Potiguara contained the names of the signatories, as the Dutch secretary had transcribed their names on the copy. He even copied the name of an Indigenous writer who also signed the remonstrance, Clement da Silva. Silva seems to have been the one responsible for recording all the decisions of the assembly and preparing the written remonstrance. As mentioned earlier, many Potiguara from the aldeamentos were literate and learned how to address the European institutions through writing.
With this information, and with the evidence obtained from the transcript of the remonstrance, it is safe to affirm that we have a hitherto unrecognised piece of Indigenous writing in the Daily Register of the Dutch Government. What was the language used in the original manuscript? Given that the secretary of the Dutch government transcribed the remonstrance, it is fair to assume that it was written by the Potiguara in Dutch, since their intention was to present it to the Dutch government for approval. Paraupaba and Poty, both of whom had Dutch, might be seen as co-authors. Yet given that among the Potiguara decision-making was vested in the collective, and that the remonstrance had been discussed and agreed by all those present at Tapesserica, this document too should be seen as the work of a collective.
The Potiguara remonstrance is one of a kind, but it contains formal elements observed in other writings of the period. The appropriate mode of address to the Dutch government, the lucid account of the Assembly’s debates, and the eschatocol (the final section of a document) compatible with the style of other formal texts of the time demonstrate masterful command of the Dutch language. There are other examples to show that some Potiguara were capable of writing in Dutch, such as Pieter Poty’s letter to the government of the West India Company in Recife, dated 1631. In it, Poty tells the Dutch that he has approached other Indigenous peoples who might be brought over to the Dutch side. Poty mentions meeting a man called Maraca Patira from Rio Grande, who told him that ‘the Tapuia and Pepetama Indians [from Rio Grande] had made a truce and agreed to wage war upon the Portuguese and their allies’.Footnote 40 The most extensively studied examples of Potiguara writing are the series of Tupi letters exchanged between the Potiguara Antônio Felipe Camarão, Diego da Costa, Diogo Pinheiro Camarão, Pieter Poty and Simão da Costa which recount the dramatic events of the Potiguara involvement in the Dutch–Portuguese wars. The letters illuminate Indigenous relations, divisions, perceptions of the wars fought and the spread of writing among some of the Indigenous peoples of north-eastern Brazil.Footnote 41
Conclusion
The aftermath of the Tapesserica Assembly brought both achievements and challenges for the Potiguara people. Portuguese settler revolts, just two months later, disrupted the missions in the aldeamentos and affected the plan to merge aldeias and aldeamentos. The Dutch faced not only opposition from Portuguese rebels but also the potential defection of their native allies.Footnote 42 Even so, the Potiguara aspirations for self-governance found some success. For instance, the leadership positions of Carapeba, Paraupaba and Poty were recognised by the Dutch West India Company. Paraupaba remained regent of Rio Grande until assuming the post of ‘Regent of the Brazilian Nation’ (Regidoor van de Brasiliaensche natie) when a vacancy appeared in 1649.Footnote 43 The Portuguese captured Pieter Poty in the second Battle of Guararapes (1649), and he died in captivity. Carapeba lost his position and was banished from the colony for committing a crime in 1649.Footnote 44 The outcomes underscore the complex challenges faced by Indigenous leaders in navigating colonial power dynamics.
Often considered a mere footnote in the history of the Dutch–Portuguese wars in Brazil, the Tapesserica Assembly illuminates the native perspective in the South Atlantic conflict. It reveals to us elements of native governance and the role of the Potiguara as historical agents, deciding their destiny in a world continuously changing. Historians see the gathering as summoned by the Dutch government in Brazil and a by-product of the European agenda. There is some truth to this, but when reading some of the resolutions recorded in the Daily Register of the Dutch Government in Brazil, it is possible to discern the native project. The Dutch may have conceived the governance system, but the Potiguara undeniably played a crucial role in shaping it, choosing representatives, and maintaining a decentralised power structure. Despite the rise of leaders such as Paraupaba, Poty and Carapeba during the war, the Potiguara retained their tradition of no centralised power.
Coming to grips with the pre-European context is essential to understand the dynamics of both the Tapesserica Assembly and the subsequent native câmaras, and to recover forms of collective governance and decision-making among Indigenous peoples in Brazil. As well as being evidence of the transformative effect Europeans had on native lives, this gathering demonstrates the Potiguara capacity to negotiate with their allies, and adapt, transform and survive in times of war and devastation.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the following scholars for their participation and support at various stages of the writing process: Paulina Kewes, Paul Seaward, Jim van der Meulen, Larissa Menezes, Erick Morris and Lucas Silva.
Financial support
The research for this article was partially supported by the Royal Historical Society, Jesus College (Oxford University), History of Parliament Trust, and Programa de Pós-Graduação em História da Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco. These institutions supported the author attendance to the workshop ‘Parliamentary Culture in Colonial Contexts, c. 1500–c. 1700’, held at Jesus College, Oxford University, in 2023. The discussions held at this workshop led the author to some of the findings presented in this article.
Dr Bruno Romero Ferreira Miranda (1981) is an Associate Professor at the Department of History at the Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco (Brazil).
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