Abstract
The directors of the Dutch West India Company gambled their reputations and capital in a decades-long scheme to conquer and pacify Brazil, and in the end, they lost. This essay explores the various religious elements of that scheme or “mission,” as it was also called: establishing the Dutch Reformed Church as the colony’s public church, spreading the message of the “true religion,” attacking sin and reforming sinners. Coupled with a general, widespread sense of anti-Catholicism and anti-clericalism among the Dutch in Europe and America, these reform efforts exacerbated differences between the conquerors and conquered and contributed to Portuguese discontent in the years before the 1645 revolt.
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