HOLLANDERS WHO HELPED BUILD AMERICA
INTRODUCTORY: About 133,000 people of Dutch origin settled in the United States probably more, because no statistics are available before 1820. How did the Dutch influenced the history of the United States? These men, during their lifetime met millions of Americans: they lived with them, traded with them, reasoned with them and shared with them the responsibility for the Local, the State and the Federal Government. The emigration from the Netherlands to North America was small in point of numbers. It is important to know when the Dutch immigration began and where the new settlers made their home. As far as the East is concerned the first settlement was made in 1624 and in the West in 1847. The Dutch came at the two most important moments in the development of American history. The beginning of Colonial History and the winning of the West in 1847. When the American colonies needed it most, the Dutch were ready to aid them to the best of their ability. There were in the Netherlands at the end of the sixteenth century two groups who were interested in the American Continent. The first group regarded the continent as an obstacle, the second group regarded it as an opportunity. To the first group America was an obstacle in the way to China and Japan. These like the Spaniards, the British, and the French were concerned only about getting around it quickly. Plancius, a Calvinist minister and a geographer, had come to the conclusion that the shortest way between the Netherlands and East-Asia was the way over the North Pole. Nobody knew that the Polar sea was covered with ice throughout the year, and nobody had the means to know how far America stretched to the north and Siberia to the east.Accordingly nobody could know that there was but that one narrow outlet into the Pacific-the Bering Strait. Expedition after expedition, each unsuccessful in its turn, was sent from Holland to explore the route. One of those expeditions was enthrusted to the Englishman Henry Hudson and to his stubborn persistence the Dutch owed the rediscovery of the Hudson River and of the wonderful harbor of New York. It was a rediscovery, for seventy-five years before Hudson, the Italian explorer Verrazano had already sailed beyond Sandy Hook into the Narrow. Hudson had been strictly forbidden by his Dutch backers to explore the American coast. Nevertheless, after only a month of cruising, he gave up all attempts to realize Plancius plans and prompted by his own ideas, sailed to the southwest. Hudson's backers were not so much interested in his discoveries as in his failure to achieve anything towards opening a new route to China. But there was the other group, for whom America was not merely an obstacle in the way to China but important for its own sake. There was Willem Usselinx, from Antwerp who lived in Spain and on the Azores in those days known as the "Flemish Islands". Year after year he advocated the establishment of a West India Company designed to take the rich resources of the Amercan gold mines from the King of Spain, to deflect all this wealth to the Netherlands, to encourage the foundation of Dutch colonies overseas. For Usselinx, West India was the new world. To a certain extent Usselinx's plans were realized by the West India Company which was established in 1621 by the States General of the United Netherlands. This company directed its main activities towards the Carribbean.Their Charter, however, included the whole of the American coast, and so the Hudson territory with its very different interests became subject to its Directors. In the Hudson territory, after all, men of another spirit had been at work, quiet traders who wanted to earn their money in normal ways from the large profits of the fur trade.These Dutch traders sailed along the American coast and tried to make contact with the Indians, the purveyors of the fur. Prominent among these traders was Adriaan Block who sailed in "The Tiger." It is likely that he was the first man who intended to make the Hudson River the headquarters for the trade, for he had been guided in his sailing by Hudson's directions. Block, then, may well have been the first to realize the importance of the place, the first to conceive the idea of New York. We know that he was the first ship-builder on the river. Kindly assisted by the Indians, he built a small bark to supplant his own ship which had caught fire, and used this bark in exploring the coast near the New York Harbor. In 1614 other Dutch skippers found him and rescued him, and from this moment on a regular trade in the Hudson Valley began. Small posts sprang up along the river, at Fort Nassau, and at Manhattan, and another was set up on the South River. After October 11, 1614, the merchants organized as the New Netherland Company under charter of the States General of the United Netherlands-continued to trade with the newly discovered territory for ten years. The small "forts" which they built were hardly an adequate protection, and the safety of the traders depended upon the good will of Indians who understood perfectly well what advantages accrued to them from the presence of the white men. An important element in the Dutch American settlements of the seventeenth century: the traders had to get along with the Indians for they needed the Indians even more than the Indians needed them. Who was going to get the furs, if the Red men did not get them? Meanwhile the colony had to be protected from other dangers. What with these various threats and dangers, the military and political protection of the Dutch settlement could no longer be adequately provided by the New Netherland Company. This company, consequently, gave way to a more powerful corporation-the West India Company. The new company was established in 1621.For two years the Directors were too busy with other affairs to tend to those of New Netherland. Funds for the support of the Company were hard to procure, for there was little enthusiasm for the new project among the Dutch capitalists. Obviously a large capital had to be invested before the colony would pay. The West India Company, of course, at no time had the intention to establish a large settlement in North America. This was completely outside their policy. The Company gladly accepted such settlers as were willing to go to America at their own risk and at their own expense. Besides, the Directors were willing to cooperate to a certain extent with others, who saw opportunities in the project, and who would provide the capital necessary for the establishment of plantations, or for the exploitation of the soil by tenant farmers. So far as the Company itself was concerned, it was content with the encouragement of a few "bouweries," a few farmsteads on Manhattan. All the Directors wanted was a colony able to supply the traders and the soldiers who had to protect the traders and the Company's rights, with the necessary products, and to supply a safe refuge for the ships which they knew would eventually have to be repaired. All other ends were incidental or superfluous. After the purchase of Manhattan Island from the Indian chiefs, the whole population, or most of it, was transported to this new center. It was this decision to move the colony which resulted in the founding of New York. The act of establishing the settlement there was entrusted to Willem Verhulst. Verhulst was merely the agent of the Company, the executor of the Directors' wishes; he had no further significance. Another man who deserves to be mentioned among the founders of the future metropolis was Pierre Minuit, or Peter Minnewit, a French refugee from Wesel, in the county of Cleves, who had come to Holland to seek his fortune, and who became the governor of New Netherland when Verhulst left.The first settlers, few as they were, were men of several nationalities. Some of them were refugees from religious persecution; others were mere adventurers to whom religious issues meant little. It was the task of the governor to make these divergent elements cooperate with each other, and to make the group as a whole cooperate with the Company. Minuit realized that more could be made out of the settlement by pursuing a sound policy of colonization than by following the Company's orders. Nevertheless, he had his commission from the Directors, and their wishes had to be his. In order to comply with these, Minuit bought Manhattan island from the Indians and made it the center of the settlement. EARLY SETTLEMENTS In 1629 the West India Company published a charter under which private persons were offered as much land as they could adequately cultivate by immigrants. This charter was the origin of the well known patroonships. Several capitalists in Amsterdam immediately registered for the new experiment. Settlements on the Connecticut and the Delaware and several plantations on the banks of the Hudson were planned. Of all these, only one really succeeded: Van Rensselaerswijk near Fort Orange, named after its owner, Kiliaen van Rensselaer. It was difficult, however, to find settlers for the new plantations, and it was even more difficult to make them stay in America once they arrived. Van Rensselaer brought some men to the Hudson Valley from his own estate in Holland. Besides, he secured the cooperation of Scandinavians in clearing the woods. These skilled, Scandinavian lumbermen were very much needed for the construction of sawmills and blockhouses, of cabins and barns. Such work of construction naturally had to precede the breaking up of the land. In general, however, the Company preferred to bring in only such settlers as were of Dutch nationality or as had come under the allegiance of the Dutch Republic because of political or religious persecution at home. The people of Holland-simply did not want to emigrate. They could make a good living at home. But why should these emigrants go to the banks of the Hudson to live a life in a wild country among savage natives? William Kieft, fifth governor of New Netherland, ought properly to be omitted. He managed affairs so badly that at the end of his administration the colony as a whole had lost two-thirds of its inhabitants, and New Amsterdam in particular had lost four-fifths. Governor Kieft started the Indian Wars which soon ruined the progress that had been made in the last ten years. The Mohawks had driven the "River Indians" to despair; the Algonquin tribes, seeking protection from the Dutch, began more and more to flee to the South. Kieft took it into his head to attack them. Seeing their existence threatened from two sides, the Indians struck back furiously. For a long time they were successful in a war which consisted of ambushing and murdering isolated settlers. Now the Dutch system of settling in single, segregated farms instead of in small villages proved to be their undoing. Nevertheless, the Dutch clung to their old ways and could not be persuaded to concentrate their settlements.The colonists protested bitterly against Kieft's dealings, and they considered the Governor alone responsible for all the bloody consequences of his treacherous first attack on the River Indians in 1643. Kieft's mismanagement lasted for ten years. At the end he was deposed and replaced by Peter Stuyvesant, governor of the Island of Curacao in the West Indies. With Stuyvesant the last period in the history of New Netherland begins. When Stuyvesant took command, the colony numbered about a thousand inhabitants-a third of the strength it had before the Indian Wars. When he surrendered to the British seventeen years later, there were ten thousand colonists in the Hudson Valley. It is true that part of these were unwelcome immigrants who had crowded in from the British settlements, and who had little sympathy for the Dutch rule. This situation alone makes it clear that Stuyvesant had to rule with a firm hand, and goes some way towards explaining the tenacity with which he clung to an autocratic regime. The Dutch in those days and for a long time after did not believe in popular self-government. The Dutch political system in colonial administration was outspokenly autocratic, and Stuyvesant believed in the efficiency of such an administration.Two years before Stuyvesant took over the government of New Netherland, a popular revolt of the Brazilians against the Dutch domination took place. In the ten year struggle which followed upon this revolt, the West India Company was completely ruined. A year after Stuyvesant's accession to power, the peace treaty between Spain and The Netherlands was signed in Munster. This meant that privateering had to stop, and that another source of the Company's income was cut off. Two years later Richard Cromwell came to power in England. The New England colonies had grown apace by the immigration of more than sixteen thousand people. These people had formed a union and had become more closely connected with the home country by the Navigation Act than they were before. After Cromwell reconstructed the Navy, the Dutch had to share the control of the seas with the British. To the north conditions had also changed. The French became more and more influential among the western Iroquois, while the undaunted Mohawks, always the allies of the Dutch, were likely to get in trouble with the ever-expanding English. The political relations between France and Holland in Europe made cooperation between their respective colonies in America probable. Stuyvesant was the perfect diplomat in maneuvering between these political cliffs. He tried to encourage peace between the French and the Mohawks, and thus to forestall all unpleasantness from that side. He managed to conclude a treaty with the New Englanders at Hartford in 1650 by which-for the first time in North American history-a boundary was established. Connecticut, completely under English control, had to be abandoned by the Dutch, but Stuyvesant now had a strong legal basis for acting against all the New England settlers who kept pushing westward. The Swedes were warned to give up their pretensions to American territory and they submitted without bloodshed. On the whole, Stuyvesant did his best to avoid unnecessary killing. Stuyvesant had his worst troubles with his own colonists. They rebelled against his "paternal" rule. Since Kieft's administration they had become wary of autocratic government. The colonists had forced Kieft to confer with a select committee of the burghers, and Stuyvesant was compelled to do the same, for the Company and the States General sometimes took the side of the colonists. Of course, an oligarchic, not a democratic system was chosen by the colonists for their "self-government." WORSHIP The most important factor was certainly the Dutch Reformed Church. This congregation had been organized in 1628 upon the arrival of Jonas Michaelis, first minister of the church in New Amsterdam. The influence of the ministry had always been very slight during the Dutch period. The ministers had not always been the men to command the respect of the settlers who were people from all nations and of various creeds. Stuyvesant had been more willing than his predecessors to listen to the advice of the ministry, but his attempts to follow a less tolerant policy than those before him were strongly resented by the Hollanders. In reference to the church, the governing class in the Netherlands was very tolerant. The Company wanted its Governor to follow a similarly tolerant policy. Stuyvesant, however, had from the beginning of his administration been in a much closer relationship with the Reformed Church and its ministers than his predecessors. In 1656 he forbade by ordinance the exercise of all non-conformist religion. He refused the Lutherans the public worship of their faith and had their pastor deported. A Quaker, a refugee from Boston, was subjected to torture by Stuyvesant's orders. Influenced perhaps by Dominie Megalopolensis, who wrote vehemently against the Jews, the Governor did his best to counteract the immigration plans of this people. He insisted again and again that the ordinances on public worship should be enforced against the non-conformists. From Amsterdam he always received the same advice: So long as the dissenters do not attract public attention, let them alone.This was the policy which had often been followed in The Netherlands, particularly in the province of Holland. It met with full approval of the burghers of New Netherland. Again the warning came from Amsterdam to Stuyvesant: Do not act too severely; do not force the people's consciences. The Governor had to give in, just as he had to admit the Jews by order of his superiors. In a city where eighteen languages were spoken and the church had only a feeble hold on the public opinion, there was no room for a theological school such as there was at Harvard. But the desire for secondary education was alive in the colony, and Stuyvesant was greatly interested in the establishment of a Latin school. He hoped that such an institution would have a "civilizing" effect upon the uncultivated population. Three attempts had to be made before the school was definitely established. The most curious figure to appear in the colony was Pieter Plockhoy. He was a Baptist, born in Zierikzee in the province of Zeeland. Dreaming of the unification of the Christian world, he went to London to try to gain support for his plans from Cromwell. From the ideal of religious unity his fancy shifted to the ideal of social justice. There were to be no servants in his society, labor was to be distributed equally among all, and the entire community were to live together in central houses. It was an explicit point of the program that no definite form of religion should be taught. This surely was an unusual tenet to be put forth in the seventeenth century when church and state were never separated and every government committed itself to a definite form of Christianity. Notwithstanding this extraordinary point, the town council of Amsterdam in 1662 accepted Plockhoy's project for the founding of a settlement on the banks of what is now the Delaware. Twenty-five Mennonist families left for America with Plockhoy to undertake the first socialistic experiment in the history of America. This unfortunate group of idealists met with a terrible fate. Plockhoy himself wandered about in the colonies until in 1694, now a blind old man, he reached the newly founded city of Germantown. Here among the Baptists of this settlement, he was received with the brotherly love which he had so long preached as the basis for a new social order. ENGLISH DOMINANCE On March 22, 1664, King Charles II granted all the territory between the Connecticut and the east side of the Delaware to his brother, James of York.The Duke hastened to occupy the territory and to reap the fruits of other people's work. In the month of August the British fleet appeared off New Amsterdam. Defense was hopeless. On the 18th of September the Dutch reluctantly yielded to the inevitable. By the conquest of 1664 ten thousand inhabitants of New Netherland became subjects of the King of Britain. Of these about six thousand were of Dutch descent. English influence had already become apparent. There was a British minister in New York and the English language was predominant on Long Island. The remnants of Dutch civilization were doomed to disappear within a short time. Naturally the Dutch Governmental system had to go out together with the authority of the State General. CUSTOMS AND LANGUAGE Many of the old settlers resented the sudden changes. In spite of all, however, the Dutch customs survived a hundred and fifty years longer. There was practically no support from the home country. What, then, kept the language and customs alive? The most important factor was certainly the Dutch Reformed Church . When the King of Britain gained control, and when the Episcopalian Church was introduced and strongly supported by the Government the New Netherlanders at once rallied around their Reform Church. This Church also became a haven of refuge for other dissenters: for the Huguenots, for Non-Conformist Englishmen, and, in the eighteenth century, for certain German sects. Consequently the Dutch Reformed Church grew apace and the official language of that Church spread over the new settlements. By the year 1737 there were sixty-five churches of the Reformed Church in New York State and in New Jersey. For it was to New Jersey that many New Yorkers emigrated when the British authority created all kinds of difficulties for the Reformed Church in New York. Clinging to their traditional form of worship helped the New Netherlanders to remain conscious of their national character. Another important factor in the conservation of the Dutch language and customs was the social aloofness of the upper classes of New Netherland, that is, of the patroons and their friends-land-owners among whom several merchant families of New York were included. By intermarriage the Van Rensselaers, the Schuylers of Albany, the Van Cortlands of New York and others managed to form a closed group who thus separated themselves from the main body of citizens. Besides the Van Cortlands who had to thank America for every cent they owned, there were other Dutchmen, successful business men, newly rich, who liked very much to show their new wealth. Jacob Marius and Cornelis Steenwijck were among these first New York capitalists. For more than a century this group of New Netherlanders was not reinforced by immigrants from the old country. The few Dutch who came over went to Pennsylvania, where they joined the Pennsylvania "Dutch," who were Germans closely related to the newcomers by religion. IMMIGRATION In the founders of Germantown, Dutch immigration came to a standstill, but shipping relations between America and the Netherlands did not. True, British Acts of Navigation hindered direct commercial relations between the two countries. From 1727 to 1775 three hundred nineteen immigrant ships reached the port of Philadelphia, and of these two hundred fifty-three came from Rotterdam. A total of ninety per cent of the immigrants passed through this single Dutch port. Dutch sailors made the first great migration of Germans to this country easy. Dutch merchants may have made considerable money by the slave trade, but real interest in North America was lacking in Holland. The West India Company became bankrupt in 1674. A new company under the same name confined its efforts to the West Indies. It was not long before a complete ignorance about American affairs characterized the Netherlands. The cause for this ignorance lay not so much with the Dutch as with the general political situation in Europe. FRENCH AGGRESSION The Dutch gentry of the manors on the Hudson also shared in these wars against aggression. Albany was the center for all strategical operations in North America. When the French wanted to invade the British possessions, they had to come by way of the lakes and the Hudson Valley. The whole burden of the war fell upon the old Dutch outposts and often enough the people of Albany were compelled to defend themselves without any support from the other colonies. The alliance with the Iroquois, which the British had inherited from the old Dutch days, was of primary importance now. These Indians were often tempted by the French to come over to their side and the Iroquois, discontented with the feeble British help which they received, would perhaps have done so if it had not been for the continuous effort of Peter Schuyler of Albany. The massacre of Schenectady in which the whole population was wiped out on the night of February 9, 1689, gives us an idea of what would have been the fate of the settlers on the Hudson without Schuyler's continuous vigilance. DUTCH INTEREST IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION: The War of Independence renewed the contact which had been broken off between America and the Netherlands. Consequently, the Dutch did not take much interest in the philosophical and political side of the American cause. What interested them was the commercial possibilities which might arise out of a defeat of Britain. In the meantime the war in America offered superb chances for smuggling in arms, ammunition, and all kinds of supplies. For more than a century the Dutch powder factories had been the most important in Europe, and the import of powder was a matter of life and death to the American patriots. This situation caused a sudden upheaval of the Dutch West Indian trade. The small island of St. Eustatius had been a free port for a number of years. To this port war supplies were now shipped and from here they were transported by fast American blockade runners. The profits to the Dutch merchants, most of them established in Amsterdam, were enormous. The possibilities of this trade alone were enough to make the Dutch the possible allies of the American cause. The merchants of Amsterdam, who were eager to earn money by selling arms, proved very reluctant when they were approached by the representatives of the American Congress for loans. Amsterdam was then the banking center of the world. In time the Dutch themselves were drawn into the war, but this was a consequence of European political affairs, not of Dutch-American relations. Naturally there were Dutchmen among the soldiers of the American army. The New Netherlanders did their duty gallantly. Even if we must recognize that many loyalists of Dutch descent must have been among the thousands who supported the British cause in New York, we must bear in mind that the leading families sided with the cause of the Revolution. When victory was won, the American leaders gave generous help to those who had had the courage to defend, alone and against powerful opponents, their cause in the Netherlands. DUTCH INVESTMENT OF CAPITAL IN AMERICA When the war was over, the merchants of Amsterdam looked forward eagerly to increasing possibilities of trade. In this they were completely disappointed. Trading relations between the United States and England went on as before the war. Hamburg took an increasing part of the continental trade. Although British capital was primarily interested in the enterprises at Hamburg, the Dutch were offering their credit to the merchants of Bremen. In 1790 Alexander Hamilton, the son-in-law of General Philip Schuyler, reorganized the finances of the American states and reestablished the credit of the United States government with the foreign bankers. This action brought on a quick change in the attitude of the Dutch capitalists. Henceforth they preferred to invest their money in America. The French Revolution had begun, the Dutch bankers began to transfer large amounts across the Atlantic. A group of bankers sent over their agents to look for profitable investments. American loans were readily subscribed in Amsterdam. Dutch capital contributed to the establishment of the Bank of the United States. Within a short time the Dutch had shares in all kinds of American enterprises. When the situation in Europe became more and more dangerous, Cazenoe, got the order to buy large tracts of lands on the frontier. This was the beginning of what became the famous Holland Land Company. This Holland Land Company, formed by a group of the bankers at Amsterdam mentioned above, started buying land with a capital of about one million four hundred thousand guilders. Unhappily for the bankers, their agent Th. Cazenove, a man who was rather rash in his business ventures, had already bought enormous tracts of land and in this way had obliged the Company to put more money into the enterprise than they had intended. Eventually the Company became the owner of about three million acres of land in the northwestern part of New York state and the adjoining districts of Pennsylvania. The Company might have been a financial success had it not been for the recklessness of the agent. He believed everything speculators told him and was ready to invest money in any enterprise to which his attention was called. Had it not been for the huge financial resources of three of the backers, the whole Company would have been ruined within a short time. As it happened, the Company passed through the trying period of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars without too much damage. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, after the restoration of the independence of the Netherlands, the Company began to sell out. In 1858 the history of the Company came to a close with the payment of the last installment on the lands in Pennsylvania. The Holland Land Company remains an example of cooperation between Dutch capital and American labor in the development of the United States. ANOTHER EMIGRATION / IMMIGRATION After 1840 a new Dutch element entered the United States. Economic depression had become general in the rural districts of the netherlands and for the first time Hollanders left their country in large numbers in hope of finding a better home overseas. In Holland seven hundred thousand inhabitants of the total two million were supported by charity. It was this general impoverishment, combined with a very small scale of religious persecution which gave birth to another emigration and which eventually led to the founding of the Dutch settlements in the Middle West. Between 1820 and 1838 not more than twenty-four hundred Hollanders emigrated to the United States. These immigrants had to suffer all the hardships of the incoming foreigners of that time, first aboard the overcrowded and badly managed transport ships, and next on their way through America where they were cheated by "friendly advisors" and by transport companies. Most of the Hollanders followed the great route from New York along the Hudson and Mohawk valleys. It was always a consolation for these poor people to meet the New Netherlanders with whom they could converse in their own language and from whom they received many acts of kindness. From 1845 onwards the Dutch began to move into Wisconsin and Illinois. During the years 1856 to 1880, the number of Dutch immigrants diminished The greater prosperity in Holland was certainly one of the causes. This concludes "Hollanders who helped build America" Source: Hollanders Who Helped Build America Authors: Prof. Dr. Bernard H. M. Vlekke and Rev. Dr. Henry Beets Publisher: American Biographical Company-N.Y.C. Copyright: 1942 __________________________________________ Transcribed by Miriam Medina RETURN to ETHNIC Main RETURN to BROOKLYN Main