Unesco bid for historic Brazilian sugar mill linked to Antwerp merchant family
A bid is set to be launched to have the ruins of a 16th-century Brazilian sugar mill owned by an Antwerp merchant family recognised as Unesco World Heritage.
The Engenho dos Erasmos in São Vicente, near the port city of Santos, is considered one of the oldest remnants of the Portuguese presence in Brazil, says professor Eric Van Hooydonk of Ghent University. The former sugar mill was owned by the Schetz family, one of the most important entrepreneurial families in the Southern Netherlands of the time.
According to the professor, the ruins have “exceptional universal value”, the most important criterion for inclusion on the World Heritage List. Van Hooydonk highlights the site’s significance for the early history of colonial Brazil, the development of the Brazilian sugar industry and the historical ties with Antwerp.
He says the site is “an exceptionally rare, and probably entirely unique, remnant of a transoceanic colonial enterprise led from 16th-century Antwerp, at the time the most important port city in Europe”. In addition, the site was “a unique point of contact of global significance between indigenous peoples, Portuguese, Spaniards, Africans, Southern Dutch, Northern Dutch, Germans, English and many others”.
The ruins of the Engenho dos Erasmos have been protected as a Brazilian national monument since 1963 and are now owned by the University of São Paulo. Van Hooydonk is calling on both the Belgian and Flemish governments to support a Unesco application.
#FlandersNewsService | The Engenho dos Erasmos © PHOTO CAIO LANDI REIMÃO / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
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