Personal Homepage:	www.hum.leiden.edu/​history/​staff/​miranda.html

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Spreekuur / Office Hours

Na afspraak / By appointment

Fields of Interest

Brazil, Portugal and Dutch colonial history; Military History; Military Architecture and West India Company.

Advisors: Prof. Dr. Gert J. Oostindie (Leiden University) and Dr. Marianne L. Wiesebron (Leiden University).

Curriculum vitae

Miranda finished his History graduation in 2003 at Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil, and received his Masters degree in History in 2006, at the same university. Most recently, he was a teacher of Brazilian History for the Secretaria de Educação do Estado de Pernambuco (2006-2007) and his main areas of research have been Brazil, Portugal and Dutch colonial history. His Masters thesis dealt with the changes in the military policies of Portugal in Pernambuco (Brazil) in the first decades after the war against the West India Company, or WIC.

Current project

“The military daily life in New Holland (1630-1654): The life’s conditions of soldiers of the West India Company”.

Miranda’s project focuses on the conditions of daily life for soldiers of the West India Company in Dutch-Brazil between 1630 and 1654. Miranda intends to study the following aspects of soldiers’ daily lives: The structures of military life: recruitment, contracts, training, hierarchy (rank), rules of conduct, punishments, payments, uniforms, troop distribution (demographics data); The structures of everyday life: accommodations, food supply, working conditions, health system, and the soldiers’ private lives; Social histories: the background of soldiers, rise in rank and rate of involvement in local society. Miranda’s work also seeks to investigate the soldiers’ strategies for facing their daily difficulties, and to analyze material about desertions and mutinies and to elaborate a study about the military situation and strategy of the WIC in Brazil during three different periods of the occupation: conquest (1630-1637), expansion (1637-1644) and Luso-Brazilian insurrection (1644-1654).

Publications and conferences

Miranda, B.R.F., ‘ Para a defesa da Capitania de Pernambuco. A estratégia das fortificações no pós-guerra (1654-1681)’, in Portuguese Studies Review(Trent University/Ontario: 14.1, 2006) 157-185.

Miranda, B. R. F., ‘Reforma militar na Capitania de Pernambuco – O caso das “Aulas de Fortificação” (1654-1701)’, in Revista Cabanos (Maceió:  Ano 1, Volume 2, 2006) 15-28.

Miranda, B.R.F., ‘Aulas de fortificação do Recife – 1701’, in Perg@minho – Revista Eletrônica de História- UFPB (João Pessoa: Vol. 1, 2005) 99-108.

Miranda, B.R.F., ‘O medo ronda Pernambuco: ameaças estrangeiras no post bellum’, in Oficina de História Pesquisas Ensaios e Depoimento Cadernos de História (Recife: Vol. 3, 2004) 42-55.

Miranda, B.R.F., ‘O sistema de defesa da barra e do porto do Recife no século XVII’, in CLIO - Série Arqueológica (UFPE) (Recife: Vol. 1, n. 16, 2003) 87-101.