Dutch-American History Series

When Was New York Founded? History, Commemorations & Moral Measures of the Past

May 25, 2024 by Jaap Jacobs 1 Comment

It seems a simple enough question: when was New York founded? So when and how should we celebrate or commemorate it? As we come to the end of this essay series, Jaap Jacobs takes a look at previous commemorations of Dutch-American friendship. An exploration of the early history of New York that shaped these events leads to the question of how to commemorate New York’s Dutch history and Dutch-American friendship in 2024 and beyond.

On November 16, 1776, the brig Andrew Doria, flying an American flag, arrived at the roadsteads of the Dutch-held island St. Eustatius. The ship fired the customary gun salute and the guns of Fort Orange replied in like fashion. [Read more…] about When Was New York Founded? History, Commemorations & Moral Measures of the Past

Recollections and Reconnections: War History as Family History

May 6, 2024 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

During the Second World War, a Dutch-Jewish family had to go into hiding to avoid deportation to Germany. When the war was over, they emigrated to the United States. Almost eighty years later, they remain in contact with the Dutch families that helped them survive. Eline Hopperus Buma reveals how the war created a tale of intertwined family histories spanning three generations.

“I have no recollection of those years in Diepenveen,” Otto Verdoner tells me when we first meet in Spring 2010 at Denver International Airport. He is seventy-one, but I recognize him straightaway from the photographs. [Read more…] about Recollections and Reconnections: War History as Family History

Africans in Dutch New Netherland: A Sensory & Culinary History

March 27, 2024 by Guest Contributor 1 Comment

In early New Netherland and New Amsterdam new arrivals, Black and white, tried to recreate the world they had left. As historical sources are scarce and incomplete, historical interpreter and culinary historian Lavada Nahon uses deep empathy and imagination to depict the sensory world of the enslaved.

It is easy to put the Africans on the same playing field as the Europeans in their sensory experience of New Netherland. To imagine that they, like the Dutch, could immediately begin recreating, reconstructing their home world in the New World, bringing forth those deep sensual parts of human experience that they had left behind in Africa. But believing that they could do so in a timely manner means negating their everyday reality. [Read more…] about Africans in Dutch New Netherland: A Sensory & Culinary History

Nieuw Dorp, Now & Then: Dutch History in Ulster County

February 24, 2024 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

Traveling from Washington D.C. to Milwaukee, Dutch journalist Bas Blokker makes a stop-over in Hurley, Ulster County, NY, and discovers its Dutch history. His curiosity is piqued and he dives into the past to find the nineteenth-century views of the Dutch colonizers very different from modern ones.

During the last five years, I always crossed the Susquehanna River just north of Baltimore when driving from my house in Washington DC to New York. Once on the bridge the same scene unfolded again and again in my mind’s eye: a sailing ship changing course from the Chesapeake Bay to enter the river’s mouth and drop anchor at what is now Havre de Grace or Garret Island. [Read more…] about Nieuw Dorp, Now & Then: Dutch History in Ulster County

The Dutch Republic Through American Eyes in 1704 & 1716

January 23, 2024 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

In the first quarter of the eighteenth century, two young travelers from Boston made trips to the Dutch Republic. One was from Boston stock, the other a Dutch New Yorker, born in Albany. They visited the same sites and wrote about their experiences, but their views are quite different.

In the eighteenth century, countless young British men went on Grand Tours to Europe as part of their cultural education. In elite circles, traveling was seen as an excellent way to become a more polished and gallant gentleman. As traveler Jonathan Belcher aptly put it, “a man without traveling is not altogether unlike a rough diamond, which is unpolished and without beauty.” [Read more…] about The Dutch Republic Through American Eyes in 1704 & 1716

Eisenhower’s Sabre, The Netherlands & The Marshall Plan

December 18, 2023 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

On October 14th, 1947, a crisp and sunny autumn day, General Dwight D. Eisenhower celebrated his 57th birthday in style. At the Dutch embassy, in the heart of Washington, DC, ambassador Eelco van Kleffens presented the legendary leader of the Second World War with an “honorary sabre.”

It was not a conventional blade. Weighing nearly five pounds, the gold-encrusted sabre was embedded with hundreds of gemstones and had been meticulously handcrafted by one of the most skillful goldsmiths in The Netherlands: Brom’s Edelsmederij in Utrecht. [Read more…] about Eisenhower’s Sabre, The Netherlands & The Marshall Plan

The Hawleys, Opposition to the War of 1812 and the Church of the Presidents

November 27, 2023 by Guest Contributor 2 Comments

The American artist Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley (Perth Amboy, NJ 1860 – Rijsoord, Netherlands 1958), my great-grandmother, lived a long and interesting life. Her artistic career and family history has fascinated me since I was a young girl.

Wilhelmina’s ancestors were English and Scottish migrants, who moved to the east coast of the United States and Canada in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. [Read more…] about The Hawleys, Opposition to the War of 1812 and the Church of the Presidents

Thomas Jefferson, The American Republic & The Dutch Republic

October 23, 2023 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

The American Revolution had a significant impact on the Dutch Republic. The end of the eighteenth century was marked by a spirited exchange of ideas on liberty, political rights and state-building between the two Republics. But it was not merely ideas which traveled freely.

People from both sides of the Atlantic sailed across the ocean for professional, political, and personal reasons, and testified to the great revolutionary events that were unfolding at the time. This led to numerous exchanges between American and Dutch politicians. In this essay Lauren Lauret focuses on Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp and Thomas Jefferson. [Read more…] about Thomas Jefferson, The American Republic & The Dutch Republic

American Culture and 1920s Netherlands

September 22, 2023 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

During the 1920s, the Netherlands excelled in dullness, it is said. But Kees Wouters shows how the cobwebs of pillarized society were blown away by a new musical wind from the West: Jazz! Exalted by many, vilified by others, Dutch musicians playing American jazz conquered music halls and radio waves alike and even made the Dutch dance.

According to Dutch historian Hermann von der Dunk, writing in the early 1980s, life in the Netherlands after World War I was as exciting as in a girls’ boarding school. Nothing much happened. Despite the presence of about a million destitute Belgian refugees, the horrors of the war had largely passed the Netherlands by. [Read more…] about American Culture and 1920s Netherlands

Lady Liberty as Muse: A Dutch Writer’s Love for the United States

August 25, 2023 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

My love for America started at an early age, when I pinched a book from my older brother: Pietje Bell in Amerika. I still remember the cover: a jolly Dutch newspaper boy with the skyline of New York City in the background. It pointed to the idea the book conveyed: the land of limitless opportunities, from paperboy to billionaire, a new start, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. [Read more…] about Lady Liberty as Muse: A Dutch Writer’s Love for the United States

Dutch Prince Bernhard, His American Jeep and Two Women Passengers

July 17, 2023 by Guest Contributor 1 Comment

During the Second World War, the English secret service did not trust the German-born Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld, son-in-law of Queen Wilhelmina of The Netherlands. Yet he was wildly popular among the Dutch population suffering under the Nazi yoke. So much so that he could get away with a few missteps.

In the fall of 1944, the immediate future of many people in The Netherlands looked distinctly grim. Following the Allied invasion in Normandy in June, France, as well as Belgium and southern parts of The Netherlands, had been liberated quickly. [Read more…] about Dutch Prince Bernhard, His American Jeep and Two Women Passengers

Pilgrim Edward Winslow: Separatist, Governor and International Diplomat

June 20, 2023 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

The early history of the Dutch in America is not confined to the Hudson River and the surrounding areas, but extends deep into New England. In 1620 a group of settlers from Leiden journeyed across the Atlantic to settle in North America. They are often overlooked in surveys of Dutch-American relations, because their history does not fit neatly into the nineteenth-century nationalist framework that still pervades the historiography.

Yet the Pilgrims of Plymouth — English, but honorary Dutchmen by hindsight — are worthy of our attention. One of the Pilgrims was Edward Winslow, Separatist, Governor, and International Diplomat. His story is told by Jeremy D. Bangs, the expert par excellence of Pilgrim history. [Read more…] about Pilgrim Edward Winslow: Separatist, Governor and International Diplomat

Dutch-American History: The Phoenix Tragedy, 1847

May 17, 2023 by Guest Contributor 2 Comments

I love to make evening walks in the town of Winterswijk, where I was born. The Dutch habit of keeping curtains open makes strolls resemble visits to a museum, with the windows framing paintings that offer ever-changing views. I like to discover routes to find new, unfamiliar places.

One evening, in December 2020, I passede the old graveyard of Winterswijk, a place that usually gives me the creeps. For some reason — I still don’t know why, — I decide to walk across the graveyard this time. I immediately spotted a brightly lit memorial: two bollards holding up a colorful plaque. The sign reads: “The Phoenix Tragedy, 1847.” [Read more…] about Dutch-American History: The Phoenix Tragedy, 1847

Jane Addams, Alice Hamilton & The Hague Women’s Congress

April 26, 2023 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

Berlin, May 1915. Three feminists on an historical mission — Jane Addams and New York native Alice Hamilton from the United States, and Aletta Jacobs from the Netherlands — meet Wilbur H. Durborough. The American photographer and filmmaker had traveled to Berlin with his cameraman, Irving G. Ries, to shoot footage for his war documentary On the Firing Line with the Germans (1915). [Read more…] about Jane Addams, Alice Hamilton & The Hague Women’s Congress

Sojourner Truth: How An Enslaved Dutch Speaker Became A Black Liberation Icon

March 20, 2023 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

On March 31st, 1817 the New York State Legislature decided that enslavement within its borders had to come to an end. Final emancipation would occur on July 4th, 1827. Coincidentally, the date of choice was almost exactly two centuries after the Dutch West India Company’s yacht Bruynvisch arrived at Manhattan on August 29th, 1627. [Read more…] about Sojourner Truth: How An Enslaved Dutch Speaker Became A Black Liberation Icon

Dutch-American Stories: Growing Up Dutch

February 20, 2023 by Guest Contributor 1 Comment

What does it mean to be of Dutch extraction in the United States? Pella, situated on the Iowa plains, was the destination of choice for hundreds of Dutch families, led by Hendrick Pieter Scholte, after the Afscheiding (Secession) of 1834 split the Dutch Reformed Church. What is still Dutch and what has changed over time? Valerie Van Kooten, Executive Director of the Pella Historical Society and Museums, tells us about her childhood. [Read more…] about Dutch-American Stories: Growing Up Dutch

Russell Shorto: The Dutch-American Perspective

January 29, 2023 by Guest Contributor 1 Comment

The work that historians do influences their lives, especially if they spend a considerable time in a foreign land that they write about. Slowly, their topic of choice becomes an essential part of their identity. Russell Shorto, a renowned writer of narrative history, writes about his own evolution at the intersection of Dutch-American history.

This essay concerns itself with the intersection of Dutch and American history. Previous posts have explored slavery in New Amsterdam, the naming – and renaming – of that city, and John Adams’ role as unofficial ambassador to the Netherlands during the American war of independence. As I pondered the task of contributing to that lineup, and scrolled through a mental list of possible topics, it occurred to me that, as I have lived at the intersection of Dutch and American history for more than twenty years, my own identity, and its evolution over that time, might be a relevant topic. [Read more…] about Russell Shorto: The Dutch-American Perspective

When Two Dutchmen Tried To Create A Maple Sugar Industry

December 16, 2022 by Jaap Jacobs Leave a Comment

The Holland Land Company is known for its role in settling the western part of upstate New York by acquiring land grants and selling off lots to prospective settlers in the early nineteenth century. Yet its activities in the last decade of the eighteenth century were of a different nature, as the stories of Gerrit Boon and Jan Lincklaen show.

In the last decade of the eighteenth century, two young Dutchmen, Gerrit Boon and Jan Lincklaen, traveled through the densely forested lands of Upstate New York. They eventually identified locations fit for the founding of the new villages of Oldenbarneveld (now Barneveld in Oneida County) and DeRuyter (in Madison County). [Read more…] about When Two Dutchmen Tried To Create A Maple Sugar Industry

The First Dutch Translation of the U.S. Constitution

November 25, 2022 by Guest Contributor 1 Comment

There are a few topics that guarantee a historian an audience. Write a decent biography of Abraham Lincoln or James Madison, for example, and you are bound to have readers. Or, write something new and interesting about the Constitution and you might attract some attention. [Read more…] about The First Dutch Translation of the U.S. Constitution

John Quincy Adams’ Dutch Education

October 18, 2022 by Jaap Jacobs Leave a Comment

When John Adams arrived in the Dutch Republic as the American envoy, he was accompanied by his two sons.

They were both expected to attend school so as to further their education, but finding the right place turned out to be a bit of a problem. [Read more…] about John Quincy Adams’ Dutch Education

Dutch-American History Series

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