ABSTRACT
This chapter intends to redress the oversight with the aim of, firstly, investigating whether Johan Maurits's positions demanded commensurate or conflicting models of masculine behaviour, and secondly, examining how such conflicts might illuminate the multiplicity within early modern constructions of governing masculinities. Indeed, the author argues that the modes of masculine behaviour which Johan Maurits exhibited in Brazil were more often in conformity with the expectations placed upon a Nassau elite in Europe than the demands made of a colonial governor abroad. For the purposes of the present study, it might be concluded that Johan Maurits's corporate and familial roles were at their most congruous when it came to his military leadership. In seventeenth-century Dutch overseas possessions, new models of masculinity and governance were being developed that were increasingly at odds with the ideals that were pursued in Europe, a disparity that would only continue to widen over successive centuries.
