"The history of tolerance in the early modern Dutch Republic is a topic that has fascinated generations of scholars, and continues to do so. Tolerance, in the long run, proved to be the best and most pragmatic solution to the problem of religious pluriformity, and, as the seventeenth century progressed, came to be regarded as a political virtue with clear social and, more importantly, economic benefits. Hence the Dutch West India Company exported this tradition of tolerance to its New World colonies, most notable to Dutch Brazil. This volume analyses the unprecedented degree of toleration in the colony known as New Holland between the arrival of the Dutch in 1624 and their surrender to the Portuguese in 1654. Special attention is devoted to the position of Sephardic Jews in Recife and Mauritsstad, and to Portuguese responses to religious tolerance."--BOOK JACKET.