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John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen
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| Biography: John Maurice of Nassau |
John Maurice of Nassau (1604-1679) was a Dutch military officer whose rise to power paralleled Dutch ascendancy in the Atlantic; his years as governor general of Netherlands Brazil marked the apogee of Dutch authority in South America.
John Maurice, who bore the title Count of Nassau-Siegen, was born on June 17, 1604, in the family castle at Dillenberg, Germany, scion of a famous European family. He received a thorough Calvinist education at Herborn, Basel, and Geneva. As early as 1620 he took up arms with the Protestants in the Thirty Years War; by 1626 he reached the rank of captain, and 3 years later he was promoted to colonel. Meanwhile, Dutch power was spreading through the North and South Atlantic. In 1630 Dutch arms triumphed in Recife, and the Dutch West India Company seized northeastern Brazil. From that powerful company, John Maurice accepted the post of governor general of Netherlands Brazil in 1636 and disembarked in Recife, its capital, on Jan. 23, 1637.
John Maurice presided over the most fruitful years of Dutch occupation, 1637-1644. He successfully expanded Dutch occupation from Maranhão to the São Francisco River, to govern nearly half of the effective territory of Brazil at that time. Captivated by the beauty of Brazil, the governor general put to work some 46 scholars, scientists, and artists to study and to depict the land. He was representative of a curiosity the Dutch displayed toward the tropics, a curiosity which the Iberians hitherto had lacked. That curiosity prompted the Dutch to make the first and for a long time the only scientific study of the tropics. Albert Eckhout and Frans Post painted magnificent canvases portraying the Dutch colony. Willem Piso studied tropical diseases and their remedies. Georg Marcgraf made collections of fauna, flora, and rocks. The Dutch maintained an aviary as well as zoological and botanical gardens. The first European astronomical observatory and meteorological station in the New World were built by the Dutch in Brazil.
Economic matters quite naturally commanded much of John Maurice's attention as well. In an endeavor to avoid monoculture, he tried to make the colony self-supporting in foodstuffs. By reducing taxes and providing liberal credit terms to planters to rebuild ruined sugar mills and to buy slaves, he rehabilitated the sugar industry, which was well on its way to recovery from the ravages of fighting when he left. The Dutch profited from the most productive sugar-producing region in the world during the first half of the 16th century.
With genuine sadness John Maurice returned to Europe in 1644. He fought again in the Thirty Years War. In 1647 the elector of Brandenburg named Maurice governor of Cleves. He died in Cleves on Nov. 20, 1679.
Further Reading
Information on the life of John Maurice is in Pieter Geyl, The Netherlands Divided, 1609-1648 (trans. 1936) and Orange and Stuart (1939; trans. 1969), and in Nina Brown Baker, William the Silent (1947).
| Columbia Encyclopedia: John Maurice of Nassau |
John Maurice of Nassau, 1604-79, Dutch general and colonial administrator, a prince of the house of Nassau-Siegen; grandnephew of William the Silent. The Dutch West India Company appointed him (1636) governor-general of its newly acquired possessions in Brazil. He conquered NE Brazil from the Portuguese and, in order to insure the supply of slave labor, seized several Portuguese strongholds on the Guinea coast of Africa. An able administrator, John Maurice consolidated Dutch rule in Brazil. He built up the state of Pernambuco and rebuilt the city of Recife. He supported science and arts in the colony: pioneering studies on the botany, zoology, and diseases of Brazil were published by his court physician and a German naturalist, while artists including Frans Post painted Brazilian scenes. Rising Portuguese hostility and Dutch criticism of his expenses led him to request he be recalled in 1643. He subsequently held commands in Europe in the Thirty Years War, governed, after 1647, Cleves, Mark, and Ravensberg for the elector of Brandenburg, and in 1652 was made a prince of the Holy Roman Empire. Despite his advanced age, he won new distinction in the Dutch Wars. After his retirement in 1675 he lived at Cleves. He was known for his patronage of the arts and his residence at The Hague is the celebrated Mauritshuis.
| Wikipedia: John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen |
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John Maurice of Nassau (Dutch: Johan Maurits, German: Johann Moritz, 17 June 1604 – 20 December 1679) was count and (from 1674) prince of Nassau-Siegen.
He was born in Dillenburg. His father was John VII of Nassau; his grandfather John VI of Nassau, the younger brother of Dutch stadtholder William the Silent of Orange.
John Maurice joined the Dutch army in 1621, at a very early age. He distinguished himself in the campaigns of his cousin, the stadtholder Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange. In 1626 he became captain. He was involved in 1629 in the capture of Den Bosch. In 1636, he conquered a fortress at Schenkenschans.
Career as governor of the Dutch possessions in Brazil
He was appointed as the governor of the Dutch possessions in Brazil in 1636 by the Dutch West India Company on recommendation of Frederick Henry. He landed at Recife, the port of Pernambuco and the chief stronghold of the Dutch, in January 1637.
By a series of successful expeditions, he gradually extended the Dutch possessions from Sergipe on the south to São Luís de Maranhão in the north. He likewise conquered the Portuguese possessions of Elmina Castle, Saint Thomas, and Luanda, Angola, on the west coast of Africa. With the assistance of the famous architect, Pieter Post of Haarlem, he transformed Recife by building a new town adorned with splendid public edifices and gardens, which was called after his name, Mauritsstad.
By his statesmanlike policy he brought the colony into a most flourishing condition and succeeded even in reconciling the Portuguese settlers to submit quietly to Dutch rule. His leadership in Brazil inspired two Latin epics from 1647: Caspar Barlaeus' Rerum per octennium in Brasilia et alibi nuper gestarum sub praefectura and Franciscus Plante's Mauritias. The painter Abraham Willaerts served as a member of John Maurice's entourage.
He also established a city council in which Catholics, Protestants, and Jews participated together. Besides this tolerance, he also encouraged Recife's growth and imposed a kind of social housing project. His large schemes and lavish expenditure alarmed however the parsimonious directors of the West India company, but John Maurice refused to retain his post unless he was given a free hand, and he returned to Europe in July 1644.
Return to Europe
He was shortly afterwards appointed by Frederick Henry to the command of the cavalry in the Dutch army, and he took part in the campaigns of 1645 and 1646. When the war was ended by the Peace of Münster in January 1648, he accepted from the elector of Brandenburg the post of governor of Cleves, Mark and Ravensberg, and later also of Minden. His success in the Rhineland was as great as it had been in Brazil, and he proved himself a most able and wise ruler.
At the end of 1652 he was appointed head of the Order of St. John and made a prince of the Empire. In 1664 he came back to Holland; when the war broke out with England supported by an invasion from the bishop of Münster, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Dutch forces on land. Though hampered in his command by the restrictions of the states-general, he repelled the invasion, and the bishop, Christoph von Galen, was forced to conclude peace. His campaigning was not yet at an end, for in 1673 he was appointed by the stadtholder William III to command the forces in Friesland and Groningen, and to defend the eastern frontier of the Provinces.
In 1675 his health compelled him to give up active military service, and he spent his last years in his beloved Cleves, where he died in December 1679.
The residence he built in The Hague is now called the Mauritshuis, and is now a museum of Dutch paintings.
Brazilian author Paulo Setúbal wrote a historic novel about John Maurice and the Dutch settlement in Brazil, O Príncipe de Nassau ("The Prince of Nassau", translated into Dutch by R. Schreuder and J. Slauerhoff in 1933 as Johan Maurits van Nassau).
| Preceded by Sigismund van Schoppe |
Governor of brazilian capitany of Pernambuco 1637–1644 |
Succeeded by Hendrik Hamel |
References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- The Dutch in Brazil
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