After a brief introductory survey of Hispano-Dutch rivalries, this slim monograph draws on manuscript sources in the Mexican national archives to narrate eight stories of Netherlanders in the Viceroyalty of New Spain. They include Issack Terwelberg, who deserted the Nassau Fleet at Acapulco in 1624; Gaspar Pérez, an armorer living in New Mexico in the early 1630s; the engineer Adrian Boot; the freebooters Reyning and De Lecat, in the service of Spain in the Bay of Campeche in 1672; and other sailors shipwrecked or captured in the Gulf of Mexico.
Overall, the stories illustrate the bitterness of religious antagonism, notably the Inquisition’s fanatical pursuit of heretics; Spanish fears of foreign intervention in the Caribbean; and European rivalries for control of commerce and land. To claim that this volume consists of firsthand accounts, however, would be misleading. Only in some instances does the reader sense the presence of a first-person narrator.
For example, Boot’s engineering activities are subordinated to interesting but extraneous accounts, from other sources, of corruption, fraud, and church-state rivalry. Similarly, Terwelberg’s earnest protestations of his Catholic background and brief mention of the exploits of the Dutch fleet are eclipsed by the more fascinating personal reminiscences of the Valencian Pedro Corbín, who vividly narrates how he tried to blow up the Dutch fleet at Callao. The most enlightening personal statements by Dutchmen are those of Willem Ent on English attitudes toward buccaneering and logging enterprises, and Samuel Stefan on his varied travels and long tussle with the Inquisition.
Ultimately, one wonders how extensively the original manuscript sources were utilized, and particularly whether any of the informants disclosed details about Dutch aims in the region, the fitting out and financing of overseas ventures, or the conditions in which the enterprises took place. The informants in Mexico reveal less than their counterparts in Peru, such as Dirck Gerritsz, the spy Adrián Rodríquez, or the deserters from the Nassau Fleet at Callao. In part these doubts may stem from the way the sources are presented: rather than indicating the origin of specific text references or quotations, the author merely lists the bibliographical sources for each chapter.
Nevertheless, read simply as tales of individual encounters between Netherlanders and Spaniards, these accounts are well written, with occasional touches of descriptive color to dramatize the story. They are factual evidence of the prevailing preoccupations of each side, of the nature of the Dutch presence in the New World, and the degree to which foreigners, both invited and unwelcome, infiltrated Spanish America in the seventeenth century.
