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Copyright 2006 - 2007©
Pieter Mol

Gezellig USA™ - Dutch American History

Introduction
Quite a few Americans do have some sort of idea about the Netherlands and for those who need some background or trivia there is a great site with frequently asked questions about the Netherlands and there is even a site on the Internet about sports in the Netherlands, just to mention a few.

Henry Hudson: an Englishman in Dutch Service
In the summer of 1609 the ship the "Halve Maan" (Half Moon) sailing under Captain Henry Hudson under the flag of the Dutch East India Company searched in vain for a western passage to the East Indies. Using the maps of the Amsterdam cartographer Jodocus Hondius he had been searching for a Northern route through the ice. He did not search very hard it seems, for he believed in the theory that there was a passage...

First Dutch Settlers Settling in the USA
The first group of Dutch settlers did not stay for long on the new continent and they can hardly becalled settlers. It had not been their choice to stay there: their ship, the Tyger (tiger) had caught fire sailing on the Hudson. Captain Adriaen Block was commanding one of the ships that came looking for trade on the American coast in the years after Hudson's voyage. They bartered beads and knives for furs from the natives. When Block came...

Nieuw Amsterdam now New York
The Dutch trading companies had no policy of "colonizing". Usually they built fortifications on foreign shores, where they placed a garrison and from there they would trade with the...

Nieuw Nederland - New Netherlands
The North American settlement was not the first concern of the Dutch West India Company. Holland was still at war with Spain, and the Company waged war against Spain. It privately conquered Curacao and other islands in the Caribbean, as well as vast stretches of Brazil then belonging to the Spanish throne. The combination of politics and business was an interesting...

The Towns of New Netherland
The development of town life in New Netherland had been greatly retarded by the individualism of the settlers. Apart from the patroonships there was no immigration in groups as in New England. Defense of the scattered farms against the Indians was very difficult, and the Dutch West India Company repeatedly tried to force the colonists to build...

The End of New Netherland
England and The Netherlands emerged as the principal maritime powers of the seventeenth century. Their rivalry led them into several wars, in which the issue at stake was ultimately the freedom of the seas and trade...

The Dutch in British America
In the hundred years under British rule that followed the take-over of New Netherland, Dutch immigration to America came to an almost complete standstill. The only important group of organized settlers in those years was a colony of two hundred people who founded what is now Germantown, in the year 1683. Most of these settlers were Quakers who had come over in response to the appeal of William Penn. To win immigrants, Penn, whose...

American Revolution and the Dutch
The American Declaration of Independence received great response in The Netherlands. The ideas of `The Age of Reason,' the writings of the French philosophers Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau, had found their way into Holland but the debate had remained theoretical. The structure of the Dutch republic was by then suffering severely from petrifaction. The glories of the seventeenth century were a...

The Founding of the Last Colonies
During the Napoleonic period, the European continent was virtually cut off from the Atlantic, and contact between Holland and the United States was reduced to a minimum, but did not stop completely, like some historians claim. However, it was in those years that there was an awakening of...

Modern Dutch American Emigration
Holland (Michigan), Pella, and the other towns and settlements of those years were to be the last Dutch `colonies.' From then to the present day, Dutch emigration has continued, but it is an emigration of individuals. The federal statistics give a figure of 220,000 for immigration of people from Holland in the century 1820 till 1920. The actual figure must be somewhat higher, for doubtlessly people came in, from Canada, or by...

War and Post War Years
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 renewed the American-Dutch military alliance of the 1780's. Holland, already at war with Germany and Italy, declared war on Japan within a few hours, even before the United States. During the following years, the fate of Holland was more closely linked to that of the U.S. than ever. American troops...

Modern Dutch American Times
The ms Rotterdam still visits New York harbor, but only as it comes and goes on its cruises. Travel to Holland is now by jet. The decade and a half since that festive visit by Princess Beatrix has seen...

What do the Netherlands and the US have in common?
The Dutch who came to America brought their own language with them, and the American language of today still contains a number of their words. With the game kolf the word `golf' stuck, with skating the word `skate' from schaats. The Dutch seafaring tradition brought the words `skipper,' `marine', 'hoist,' `yacht' and many others some by way of (British) English, some directly into American speech. `Yankee' itself is supposedly a corruption of the Dutch name Jan-Kees, very popular in the...

Source: University of Groningen, the Netherlands