Recife is the 5th largest city in Brazil with a population of approximately 1.5 million people. It is located on the Northeast coast of Brazil and its multitude of small rivers earned it the nickname of “Brazilian Venice.” The King of Portugal, John III, settled in Recife in 1533, making it one of the earliest cities to be settled in all of South America.
On this day January 26th, in 1654, the last Dutch base on Recife is conquered by the Portuguese. The Dutch had been a nuisance to the Portuguese for over twenty years prior to this final victory. Portugal had little economic gain from its colonies until it discovered Recife’s incredibly lucrative sugarcane industry. The Dutch were the number one distributor of sugar in Europe, but since Spain and Portugal were allied against them, Dutch ships were prohibited from entering Brazil where the sugar was bountiful.
At first the Portuguese had wanted to enslave the indigenous people of Brazil to have them work on the cane fields, but upon the natives’ resistance, the Portuguese found a very easy solution. They had already become involved with the slave trade from Africa and decided instead to use the easily controlled African slaves to do their work – this is why African roots can be seen so vividly in Brazil: music, dance & food. The Dutch decided to invade a number of these sugar cities in Brazil including Recife, and they managed to control some of them for a few decades. Unlike Portugal and Spain, the Dutch were not anti-Semitic (in 1492 Spain had expelled and murdered many Jews), and the first synagogue in the Americas was built sometime between 1630 and 1654 when the Dutch had control.