Dutch immigrants

SIGNIFICANCE: Commercial enterprises constituted the first organized wave of immigration from the Netherlands to North America during the early seventeenth century and led to the founding of Fort Nassauonly the second permanent European settlement in North America. Continuing Dutch immigration waves produced both complete assimilation of the immigrants from the Netherlands into North American culture and also continuing pockets of a persistent hyphenated “Dutch-American” culture.

Three major immigration waves brought Dutch-speaking people from the Netherlands to North America. During the first third of the seventeenth century, the Dutch West Indies Company sponsored exploring and colonizing voyages to the New World. The second waveknown as the “Great Migration”began during the 1840s, triggered by religious tensions in the homeland. The final wave of Dutch immigration followed the end of World War II, encouraged by the government of the Netherlands to help relieve pressing economic problems in the homeland.

Early Dutch Immigration

The Dutch maritime empire of the early seventeenth century was a global onewith colonies stretching from Asia to Brazil. The explorations of Henry Hudsonwho sailed up the river named after him in 1609was one major participant in this vast commercial expansion. In 1614, the Netherlands States-General granted a charter to found Fort Nassauonly the second European settlement in what would become British North America after British Jamestown. In 1721, the Dutch West Indies Company stock company was founded to promote trade between Europe and North America. During this earliest period, immigrants to North America included the nationals of many countries. Although Henry Hudson himself was an Englishman, he claimed lands in what was to become the United States in the name of his Dutch sponsors. The Pilgrims, tooalthough they sailed to America from the Netherlandswere English.

Immigrants spread outward from the first trading posts, founding New Amsterdamlater New York Cityin 1625. New Amsterdam served as a defensive bulwark that helped keep immigrants from other European countries from settling in the region and as a center for both trade and warfare with local Native American communities.

It soon became clear that a flow of additional immigrants would be needed to support continued commercial growth. Therefore, beginning in 1629, the Dutch West Indies Company encouraged immigration by offering land purchases along major rivers to investors who were willing to sponsor sizable numbers of immigrants. This so-called patroon system (similar to later padrone systems) of settlement was not successful. Other efforts to attract immigrants followed, such as shipping children from Dutch orphanages across the Atlantic to serve as contract workers in New Netherland. Despite all such efforts, the settlement’s population remained low, which was one reason the British were able to seize the region from the Dutch with relative ease in 1664. The British takeover halted further immigration from the Netherlands. Nevertheless, the Dutch language and culture continued to be commonplace in the Hudson and Mohawk River valleys decades later.

Nineteenth Century Immigration

Economic hardshipsincluding potato and rye crop failures in the Netherlands during the 1840swere among the motivations for the second wave of Dutch immigration to the New World. However, religious tensions in the Netherlands constituted its most significant motive force and resulted in its longest-lasting effects. Immigration was significantly encouraged by a “seceder” movement within the official Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands. Starting fairly early during the nineteenth century, some congregations and individuals rejected what they perceived as a liberalization of the Dutch churcha departure from its deep commitment to Calvinism. The Dutch government responded by attempting to repress the seceder movement by breaking up the movement’s meetings, billeting soldiers in the homes of separatist families, and imposing fines on its pastors. Official state hostility continued until 1848.

In 1834, the Dutch seceders officially broke from the Netherlands state religion. Some of their congregations, led by their pastors, emigrated as groups to the United States during the 1840s and 1850s. Many, perhaps most, settled in the Midwest, founding such towns as Oostburg and Hollandnow Cedar Grovein Wisconsin. In Michigan, they settled in the western part of the Lower Peninsula, founding the communities of Holland and Zeeland. Pella, Iowa, is a final example of what became a host of new Dutch immigrant-founded communities. These communities continued many of the traditions of their homeland for generations. Indeed, all the communities discussed here continued to retain traces of their Dutch origins into the twenty-first century. As late as 1990, more than one-third of the citizens of Holland, Michigan, were of Dutch descent. As farmland in the United States grew both less plentiful and more expensive near the end of the nineteenth century, newly arrived Dutch immigrants began to settle in such American cities as Chicago and Grand Rapids.

Church Schisms

During their first two waves of immigration, the Dutch brought with them to the New World a strong loyalty to the Dutch Reformed Church, which had its roots in the Reformation of the sixteenth century. In colonial times, some of their New World congregations favored keeping close ties with the church in the Netherlands, but others sought greater independence from their homeland. The latter eventually prevailed. In 1792, the Dutch Reformed Church in the United States became an independent denomination, the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church. Subsequent doctrinal and procedural differences within the newly independent church in North America continued to influence the speed and degree of Dutch assimilation into mainstream American culture.

Throughout the mid-nineteenth century, some congregations in the Midwest broke from the newly established Reformed Protestant Dutch Church in America. Members of these congregations regarded themselves as remaining more loyal to the 1834 secession that had encouraged nineteenth-century Dutch immigration to Americathey saw themselves as more committed to continuing some of the traditions of Calvinism. These tensions led to yet another separation in 1857 that created the Christian Reformed Church. Parallel developments in the old country helped to account for the fact that the new Christian Reformed denomination would attract the majority of Dutch immigrants during the peak years of the second wave of immigration, from 1880 until 1920. The two branches of Dutch Calvinist-based New World church denominations were later joined by two more groupsthe Protestant Reformed Church and the Netherlands Reformed Congregations.

By the early twenty-first century, the Reformed Church in America adopted such typical American Protestant traits as membership in the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churchesthe Christian Reformed Church continued to emphasize its loyalty to somewhat more conservative practices. One of its distinguishing characteristics is its emphasis on Christian elementary and secondary schooling rather than public schooling. Its generally conservative position is also exemplified by the fact that well into the twentieth century, Dutch-owned stores in western Michigan closed on Sundays. Moreover, it was not until 2008 that purchasing beer and wine was legal in Ottawa County, Michiganthe home of Holland and Zeeland.

Twentieth Century

During the twentieth century, all immigration to the United States was limited by new federal national origin-based quota legislation. Nevertheless, World War II prompted a third wave of Dutch arrivals to the United States. Because the population of the Netherlands had suffered so greatly during the war, the Dutch government actively encouraged its own citizens to emigrate. In 1949, it even began offering travel subsidies. That same year, the former Dutch colony of Indonesia won its independence, forcing tens of thousands of Netherlanders who lived there to flee. Of these, about 80,000 refugees came to the United States with the assistance of the Refugee Relief Act (1953).

Dutch Immigrants to Canada

Dutch immigration to Canada was historically closely tied to Dutch immigration to the United States. A trickle of Dutch immigrants began arriving in Canada during the late eighteenth century. Some of the immigrants simply moved north across the US border because they had been Loyalists fighting on the side of the British during the American War of Independence. By the late nineteenth century, much of the farmland in the United States was either unavailable or expensive, while simultaneously, the Canadian government offered free or inexpensive land to new immigrants.

The volume of Dutch immigration to Canada rose after the end of World War II. The Dutch and Canadian governments cooperated to encourage postwar immigration. Canada was experiencing a labor shortagewhile there was surplus labor in the Netherlands. Many new arrivals landed in Canada in family groups sponsored by relatives who were already settled. Strong Dutch-Canadian communities grew around church membership.

Summary

Historically, the Dutch in North America focused on theological rather than political disputes, despite the paradoxical fact that three US presidents are direct descendants of the first wave of Dutch immigrantsMartin Van Buren, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The sole exception to this relative lack of political organizing was an effort of Dutch Americans to support the AfrikanerBoerrepublics against Great Britain during the South African (Boer) War of 1899–1902.

A cohesive subculture continued to exist among some geographically localized descendants of immigrants from the Netherlands. Although the majority of Americans of Dutch extraction have assimilated completely into mainstream Anglo-American culture, some residents of these local communities have preserved and built upon institutions thatto a greater or lesser extentrelate to the tenets and practices of their Calvinist-inspired religion. A variety of other kinds of ties to the Netherlands continue as well, especially in the form of communication tools such as newspapers and publishing houseseven television and radio programming. For example, a Western Michigan Public Broadcasting System television station aired a long-running series titled Thinking of Holland. Another kind of continuity was represented by the Dutch International Society, based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Familiarly known by its initials as “the DIS,” it operated charter flights to Amsterdam that were filled with Dutch Americans hoping to rediscover their roots or to visit relatives in the homelandhe society dissolved in March 2023.

The term “Hollander” brings to the foreground a rare example of the negative stereotyping of Dutch Americans. In some contexts, “Hollander” has the pejorative meaning of “cheapskate”as exemplified in a phrase such as “Dutch treat.” Far more frequently, stereotypes that refer to the Dutch heritage of some North Americans are positive in nature. This positive image manifests in the generalized “Dutchness” animating annual “tulip festivals” scattered across North America. Founded as a way to commemorate Dutch traditions, the festivals developed into tourist attractions. Pella, Iowa, has its Tulip Time, Baldwin, Wisconsin, has “Let’s Go Dutch Days,” and Woodburn, Oregon, has the “Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival.” Holland, Michigan’s annual Tulip Festival was even visited by the Netherlands’ Queen Juliana in 1952 and Queen Beatrix in 1982. The influence of the Dutch lingered in American society well into the twenty-first century.

As of 2021, the United States Census Bureau reported 3,083,041 Americans reported some connection to Dutch ancestry. The states with the largest reported numbers of Dutch ancestry included Michigan, California, New York, and Pennsylvania. Dutch influence remained particularly strong in Western Michigan. Although bearing many cultural similarities to counterparts in Holland, the Dutch enclave in Western Michigan diverged in terms of politics. In the twenty-first century, Western Michigan was a hotbed of conservative politics while their distant Dutch relatives tended toward more liberal stances on issues such as gun control and abortion. In the 2020s, this separation converged on the subject of immigration. Conservatives in the United States elevated immigration control as a national priority. In Holland, newer-elected Dutch governments have skewed to the right and favored measures limiting new immigration into the country.

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