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The Thirty Years' War, while still regarded as primarily a European war, also has, as some historians recognize, an Atlantic dimension.1 That Atlantic dimension in turn is widely recognized as centering on the Dutch Republic's seizure of Bahia and then Pernambuco in Brazil, and on the other side of the Atlantic, the taking of the island colony of São Tomé, the Portuguese fort at Elmina, and the biggest African prize, the colony of Angola, a project that Dutch historians have labeled the "Groot Dessyn" (Great Design). What is more completely overlooked is that on the African side, the Kingdom of Kongo, hostile and independent northern neighbor of Portuguese Angola, played a crucial role in shaping the Dutch strategies on the African side of the Atlantic. It was Kongo's initiative, as I will demonstrate, that caused the Dutch to conceive of having an African dimension at all, and it was Kongo diplomacy that led the Dutch to attack Angola, first in 1624 and then successfully in 1641. Recognizing this African initiative helps us to understand the multilateral and even multicontinental nature of the Thirty Years' War.
While the Atlantic dimension of the war often continues to be seen as a sideshow to the larger conflict in central Europe, it is more visible if one considers the Thirty Years' War, as Dutch historians usually do, as the Eighty Years' War and accepts that for all the international competition in central Europe, the war was also a showdown between Spain and the Dutch Republic over control of the Lower Rhine River.2 Even if the Dutch did not enter the war formally as hostilities began in 1619, they did informally, through the subsidy the States General voted of 50,000 florins an month to support the Protestant side "for as long as the war lasts," enough to pay the expenses of 4,000 foot soldiers and 1,000 cavalry in the field.3
These subsidies, like others paid by one or another party in the war (and particularly by France in the later stages), point out the significance of financing in European wars, and here the Atlantic dimension stands out. Warfare was an expensive proposition, and the Thirty Years' War was fought with resources from the New World and Africa playing a significant...