An analysis of food resources of the civil population and the occupation army that the Dutch West Indies Company brought to the Northeast of Brazil from 1630 to 1654 demonstrated the hard situation of subsistence of the Brazilian colony and the precariousness of the political dominion established. Under the governorship of count Moritz van Nassau-Siegen, however, the Dutch, enchanted with the flavors of the local fauna and flora that Portuguese colonists were used to eating, soon adopted such delicacies at their tables and used them to develop convincing images of their political power over the land. The description of the food habits and the problems of sully found in the analyzed documents allowed the determination of the sociocultural parameters that governed that society, favoring a well documented focus on the eating habits of that time.
Colonial alimentary diet; Alimentary anthropology; History of food; Dutch Brazil