Heaven's Wrath: The Protestant Reformation and the Dutch West India Company in the Atlantic World by D. L. Noorlander

Abstract

Reviewed by: Heaven's Wrath: The Protestant Reformation and the Dutch West India Company in the Atlantic World by D. L. Noorlander Timo McGregor (bio) Heaven's Wrath: The Protestant Reformation and the Dutch West India Company in the Atlantic World By D. L. Noorlander. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019. New Netherland Institute Studies. 289 pages, 20 halftones, 5 maps, 6" x 9". $48.95 cloth, $29.99 ebook. Recent scholarship has fundamentally transformed our understanding of seventeenth-century Dutch colonizing. Where previous historiography cast the Dutch as commercial, maritime, and apolitical, the growing consensus is now that Dutch expansion was at least as violent and territorial as that of other European empires. In Heaven's Wrath, D. L. Noorlander makes an important contribution to this revised picture of Dutch empire by exploring its religious foundations. Using religion as a lens into the administration of Dutch Atlantic colonies, Noorlander challenges [End Page 435] the "infatuation with the 'commercial character' of Dutch expansion" (7). Taking on persistent tropes of Dutch indifference, neglect, incompetence, and tolerance in matters of colonial religion, Noorlander identifies a "deep religious sensibility and social, institutional commitment to the Dutch Reformed Church" that shaped West India Company (WIC) policy (218). In this light, the Dutch Atlantic empire looks less exceptional or precociously capitalist and more like its European competitors: a "marriage of religion, trade, and expansion" (8). Noorlander marshals an impressive amount of material from the archives of the WIC and the Dutch Reformed Church into eight carefully argued and engaging chapters. The initial chapters introduce the complex religious politics of the Dutch Republic. As the public church of the Dutch state, holding a monopoly on public worship, the Reformed Church naturally assumed a similar position within the "company state" of the WIC. Dutch merchants and investors saw little problem serving God and Mammon, sitting on both church and company councils while Calvinist theologians wrote about commerce and the WIC as spiritual endeavors. Emphasizing the importance of laypeople's contributions to the church and religious life, subsequent chapters explore how religious language and rituals shaped everyday life in the Dutch Atlantic. Among other things, such rituals emphasized that Calvinism was compatible with warfare as well as commerce, associating piety with manliness and martial success. Faced with a severe shortage of ordained clergy, the Reformed Church leaned heavily on loosely trained ziekentroosters (comforters of the sick) to represent the church abroad. But these efforts were often undermined by overly controlling church authorities concerned about the quality and conformity of the lay clergy. While Heaven's Wrath touches on west Africa and the Caribbean, the bulk of the material and the most intriguing case studies are on Dutch Brazil and New Netherland. Chapter 5 argues that the church in Brazil proved unable to move beyond its role as a conquering "military church" (119). By steering WIC policy toward aggressive overexpansion and exacerbating tensions with Catholic Portuguese inhabitants, the church contributed to the Portuguese revolt in 1645 and the ultimate loss of the Dutch colony. In New Netherland, religious politics played a critical role in the construction of settler communities, both driving the regulation of households and families and serving as a conduit for critiques of the WIC government. Missionary efforts among Indigenous and African populations proved largely unsuccessful but not for lack of Dutch endeavor or interest. Resource constraints and the church's overbearing concern for conformity hampered mission work, while heavy involvement in the Atlantic slave trade induced Dutch Calvinists to increasingly view "slavery and subjection as the best possible tools" in their efforts to spread the Reformed Church (166). Heaven's Wrath adds a layer of motive to a largely familiar narrative of rapid Dutch expansion, overextension, and collapse. Noorlander suggests that directors' religious beliefs and the institutional influence of the Reformed Church explain, at least in part, why the WIC expanded so aggressively, failed to successfully integrate formerly Portuguese subjects in Brazil, struggled to gain converts, and hemorrhaged so much money. Each argument is [End Page 436] well made and convincing, though the relative significance of religious factors in determining these outcomes sometimes remains hard to gauge. Several other key themes emerge across Noorlander's case...