History of Recife

Recife began as a collection of fishing shacks, inns and warehouses on the delta between the Capibaribe and Beberibe Rivers in the captaincy of Pernambuco, sometime between 1535 and 1537 in the earliest days of Portuguese colonization of Terra de Santa Cruz, later called Brazil, on the northeast coast of South America. It was a settlement of colonial fishermen and way station for Portuguese sailors. The first documented reference to the settlement with its "arrecife dos navios" (ships of the reef) was in the royal Charter Act of March 12, 1537, establishing Olinda, 6 km to the north, as a village, with its port where the Beberibe River meets the sea. Olinda (and Igarassu before it) had been settled in 1536 by captain General Duarte Coelho, a Portuguese nobleman, proprietor and administrator of the captaincy of Pernambuco.

The city is named for the long reef recife running parallel to the shoreline which encloses its harbor. The reef is not as sometimes stated, a coral reef, but a consolidated ancient beach, now as firm and hard as stone.

In 1541, Coelho returned from Portugal with the machinery for an engenho (sugarmill), and with it, his brother-in-law established the first mill named Nossa Senhora da Ajuda (Our Lady of Help), in the floodplain of the Beberibe River at Recife. At that time the banks of the Capibaribe River were covered by sugarcane.

Recife was capital of the 17th century Dutch Brazil.

The Mascate War of 1710-1711 pitted merchants of Recife against those of nearby