Second Battle of Guararapes

Dutch forces recaptured Negombo from Portuguese control. The shifting possession of the fort reflects a wider war in which local communities and Kandy were not passive spectators, while the Dutch...

Portuguese-Brazilian forces defeated Dutch troops at Mount Tabocas, an early turning point in the Pernambuco uprising. The resistance joined local interests against Dutch rule, whose plantation...

Pieter Stuyvesant arrived to govern New Netherland. Dutch rule was layered over Lenape and other Indigenous homelands and relied on unequal trade, land pressure, and military power. The colony also...

Portuguese-Brazilian forces defeated the Dutch in a major battle near Recife. The coalition included people of African and Indigenous descent alongside Portuguese settlers. Their victory challenged...

A Portuguese fleet from Brazil forced the Dutch to surrender Luanda. The Dutch occupation had been tied to the Atlantic slave trade and the supply of enslaved Africans to Brazil. African polities...

Jan van Riebeeck came ashore at Table Bay to establish a refreshment station for VOC ships. The Cape was not empty: Khoikhoi and San communities had their own economies, territories, and political...

Dutch officials established Beverwijck beside Fort Orange, consolidating a settlement in an Indigenous region shaped by Haudenosaunee diplomacy and trade. The village’s growth depended on colonial...

The WIC granted New Amsterdam a city charter. The legal change formalized Dutch municipal authority on Lenape land and served colonial settlement and commerce. African residents, including enslaved...

Cape records state that an enslaved man named Abraham, described as a stowaway from Batavia, was given to Van Riebeeck. This dated entry makes visible the coercive labor system developing at the...

Cape records report that Autsumao (Herry) killed a cattle herder and took livestock. In a decolonial reading, this action belongs to a wider contest over grazing, livestock, and land as Dutch settlers...