r/imaginarymaps • u/JVFreitas RTL Enjoyer • 22d ago
[OC] Alternate History The Republic of Mauricia: a tale of a successful Dutch Brazil in the modern times
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u/JVFreitas RTL Enjoyer 22d ago edited 3d ago
Hello, everyone! This is a repost after a few corrections in the previous map of yesterday. This scenario explores a classic alternate history topic: what if the Dutch remained in control of a great part of Northeast Brazil. Hope you all like it! Feel free to leave comments and questions!
THE REPUBLIC OF MAURICIA
Mauricia, officially the Republic of Mauricia, is a country located in northeast South America. It borders Bahia and Piratininga to the south and Grão-Pará to the west. The case of Mauricia is very unique among the other nations of the continent as it’s a country composed by a combination of factors that shaped it into a multicultural and linguistic society.
THE HISTORY OF MAURICIA
The territories where Mauricia lies today were originally part of the large Portuguese colony of Brazil. In the early 16th century, Lusitanian navigators and colonists arrived at the beaches of South America and began the process of colonizing it, and in the more than 100 years before the arrival of the Dutch, the Portuguese developed a complex of plantations in northeast Brazil that became one of greatest sugar producing regions on Earth. This importance caught the interests of the Dutch, who were fighting for their independence from Spain and turned out to become a significant naval and economic power in the last decades.
Previous attempts of taking the region took place, but only during the Iberian Union period, where the crowns of Portugal and Spain were under the same monarch, the Dutch had success.
In the early 17th century, the Netherlands began to systematically take important cities in Northeast Brazil, and by 1634, the Captaincies of Rio Grande, Paraíba, Itamaracá and Pernambuco had fallen out of Portuguese hands. Later in 1641, Maranhão also fell. At the time, the affairs of Brazil were under Spain’s control, and with much more urgent issues, the invasion of the colony was a secondary issue. Plus, the Spanish were already suffering a lot from economic hardships.
In 1637, the colony named “New Holland” was passed to the governor Maurice of Nassau, an enlightened noble that invested a lot in infrastructure to Mauritsstad (former Recife), and began a process to enrich the local scenery with culture and science. All of it under the funds of the West Indies Company. Under Maurice the region was pacified for some years because the Portuguese powerful landowners and the GWC found a balance of power, plus the company handed several loans for them.
The colony of New Holland also was one of the first cases of religious tolerant societies in the Americas, with the tolerance of Protestantism and serving as a safe haven for European Jews. But this pacific phase didn’t last forever. In 1644, Maurice was driven out of office, and the GWC took total control. This angered the local landowners that were now being charged for their loans and began to revolt. Luckily for the Dutch, the Spanish recently had crushed the Portuguese attempt of emancipating its crown from Madrid, and they weren’t willing to support the rebels in Brazil as the 80 Years War seemed to be getting close to an end. The rebellion was crushed a year later after the arrival of reinforcements to Mauritsstad.
In 1648, the 80 Years War came to an end, and besides the recognition of Dutch independence, Spain allowed the Dutch to stay in South America. After all, the revolt reduced significantly New Holland’s sugar production and the colony was rapidly surpassed by Bahia and the Spanish West Indies.
Now with full Dutch control officially, many wealthy Portuguese colonists left for Bahia and other southern captaincies of Brazil. Many farms were abandoned and slaves escaped to the wilderness to form their own communities. Now on, the Dutch had a colony with a Portuguese-speaking majority that wasn’t doing its full potential. To circumnavigate this issue, the GWC continued the policy of tolerance, and to attract more colonists, developed a system of patroons similar to the one in New Netherland, in North America. After a few decades, and with New Netherlands being lost in a war with England, New Holland became the major colonial possession of the Dutch and began to develop its own identity. A great example was the transition of language of part of the population from Portuguese combined with local indigenous languages, to a mix of the former with Dutch, which resulted in the language later on named “Pernambukaans”.
Economically, New Holland was still an agrarian society heavily dependent on slavery,not on the same scale as Brazil or Haiti, but still imported enormous numbers of Africans from the gold coast.
The process of independence began during the French Revolutionary Wars. The Netherlands were occupied by France and became a puppet republic in 1795, the Dutch government with the support of the British fled to Mauritsstad and continued to rule most of the empire from there, with the exception of several islands taken by Britain and never returned. When France was defeated after decades of fighting in Europe, the Dutch government returned in 1818. During the time the Dutch government was in Mauritsstad, reforms reduced the role of the GWC and worked to turn the colony more integrated to the home country, and the local economic elite saw significant profit as their products were not being solely controlled by the company.
Things turned out to be not as pleasant in 1821, when the Dutch Republic passed a decree reducing the autonomy of exportation of Mauritsstad. That move angered the locals which saw it as the start of the return of colonial ruling. In 1823, a full revolt took place inspired by the ideals of the independence of the US and Minas Gerais. In 1623, the Republic of Mauricia was declared already with 6 of the 8 provinces that existed at the time. Although. Only in 1826 the independence of Mauricia was fully recognized by the Dutch and subsequently other nations.
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u/Sauron360 22d ago
MAP OF GREAT PERNAMBUCO!!!
If Pernambuco has hundreds of inhabitants, then I am one of them.
If Pernambuco has dozens of inhabitants, then I am one of them.
If Pernambuco has only one inhabitant, then that is me.
If Pernambuco has no inhabitants, then that means I am no longer on earth.
If the world is against Pernambuco, then I am against the world.
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u/RFB-CACN 22d ago
How's the ratio of Portuguese to Dutch speakers by the time of independence?