The years 1654–6 were generally prosperous ones for Holland's Portuguese Jews. The economic growth that had begun after the end of the war with Spain and was now fueled by a temporary truce with England continued, and they took great advantage of the opportunities that peacetime offered. Still, there were new pressures on the community. The end of Dutch colonial rule in Brazil in 1654, when the Portuguese recaptured all of their most important (and lucrative) New World possessions, was a devastating blow to Amsterdam's Jews. Not only did it mean the final collapse of the sugar trade and, with the deterioration of the Dutch–Portuguese rapprochement, the suspension of mercantile relations with Portugal, but the Talmud Torah congregation had also placed great hopes in the growing Jewish community in Pernambuco, or Recife (where their own Rabbi Aboab was serving). There, beyond the reach of the Inquisition, was an opportunity for emigrating New Christians to return to Judaism. In 1644, there were slightly more than fourteen hundred Jews in Netherlands Brazil; by 1654, there were five thousand in Recife alone, living in conditions of extraordinary freedom, privilege, and protection. Many of them owned plantations in outlying areas, and there were a number of Sephardic congregations in small villages within the Dutch zone. By 1654, however, Recife was the last surviving outpost of Brazilian Jewry. When it fell to the Portuguese early that year there was an exhaustive migration.