I will share a few nuggets I found about our Dutch American history. What's interesting to me is that I didn't think I knew that much about Dutch culture, but now I realize that I do, I just didn't know this stuff was "Dutch." I even knew some of the Dutch words, but thought they were English... go figure.
Why November 16? On November 16, 1776, a small American warship, the Andrew Doria, sailed into the harbor of the Dutch island of Sint Eustatius in the West Indies. Only four months before, the United States had declared its independence from Great Britian. The American crew was delighted when the governor of the island, ordered that his fort's cannons be fired in a friendly salute. The first ever given by a foreign power to the flag of the United States, it was a risky and courageous act.
(Too bad my wooden shoes are in storage. I bet Roscoe would love banging things with them to celebrate the day.)
* The Netherlands has about 16,000 square miles of landmass, making the country roughly equal in size to New Jersey and Maryland combined.
* Following English explorer Henry Hudson's 1609 exploration of the Hudson River, a new joint stock company, the Dutch West India Company (1621), gained colonization rights in the Hudson River area and founded New Netherland (New York). In 1624 the company also established the Dutch Reformed Church (the Reformed Church in America) which has exercised a significant influence in the Dutch American community. After the British captured New Netherland in 1664, Dutch immigration virtually ceased but England imposed no severe restraints on the Dutch and the vast majority remained in New York.
* Nineteenth-century Dutch immigration, numbering about 200 people annually before 1845, increased that year to 800 and averaged 1,150 annually over the next decade. That movement stemmed from religious and economic discontent in the Netherlands; a potato famine (1845-1846) and high unemployment combined with a division in the Reformed Church that pitted conservative Calvinists against the increasingly liberal State Church forced many Dutch to emigrate. At the same time, two conservative Reformed pastors, Albertus Van Raalte (1811-1876) and Hendrik P. Scholte (1805-1868) founded respectively, Holland, Michigan (1847) and Pella, Iowa (1847). Once these communities were established, printed brochures and private correspondence triggered a persistent flow of newcomers until 1930, when immigration quotas and the Great Depression closed out that 85-year period of migration. Seventy-five to 80 percent of these immigrants originated from rural provinces surrounding the Netherlands' urban core. They settled mainly in the Midwest, clustering where the original colonies had been established in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa. They also settled in and around Chicago, in Paterson, New Jersey and in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Those with hopes of becoming independent farmers moved West and gained land under the Homestead Act, which encouraged settlement in northwestern Iowa, South Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, Washington, and California.
* During the chief era of Dutch immigration, 1621-1970, religious and ideological viewpoints structured the character of public institutions in the Netherlands. In the Dutch Republic (1580-1795), Reformed Protestants controlled the government, schools, public charities, and most aspects of social behavior. Although both Catholics and Jews practiced their faith without hindrance, they could not hold public offices. Each group established separate schools, labor unions, newspapers, recreational clubs, and even a schedule of television programs to serve constituencies. Dutch Americans recreated parts of that structure wherever they clustered in sufficient numbers to sustain ethnic churches, schools, and other institutions.
* There are no aggressively mean-spirited or demeaning stereotypes of Dutch Americans. They are correctly perceived as valuing property, inclined to small business ventures, and culturally conservative with enduring loyalties to their churches, colleges, and other institutions. The perception that they are exceptionally clannish is also accurate, but that characteristic is demonstrated primarily among Reformed Protestants. Other ethnic stereotypes—financial penury, a proclivity for liquor and tobacco, and a general humorlessness—reflect individual rather than group features.
* The earlier immigrants' plain diets (potatoes, cabbage and pea soup with little meat beyond sausage and bacon) could not compete with America's meat-oriented menu. In general, Dutch foods are not rich or exotic. Potatoes and vegetables combined with meat in a Dutch oven, fish, and soups are typical. The Indonesian rice table, now widely popular in Dutch American kitchens, came from Dutch colonials. Holiday pastries flavored with almond paste are a major component of Dutch baked goods. Social gatherings thrive on coffee and cookies with brandy-soaked raisins during the Christmas season.
(Shout out for the Christmas banket! The tradition lives on!)
* In general, the Dutch language is no longer used by Dutch Americans. The vast majority of postwar immigrants have adopted English and the small number of immigrants who have arrived since the 1960s are bilingual because English is virtually a second language in the Netherlands. Still, some Dutch words and expressions have survived: vies ("fees") denotes filth and moral degradation; benauwd ("benout"
* In the Colonial Era the Dutch Reformed Church experienced crippling divisions (1737-1771) due to conflicting views of ordination and theological education. One group favored continued interdependence with church authorities in the Netherlands, while the other promoted education and clerical ordination at "home" in the colonies. In 1792, the Dutch Reformed Church became an independent denomination known as the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church (RCA). In the late 1840s about 3,000 Dutch Protestant immigrants settled in Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Some Midwestern immigrants objected to this fusion with American culture and initiated a separatist movement in 1857 which became the Christian Reformed Church (CRC). Throughout the next hundred years, the two denominations pursued different strategies for cultural adaptation. The RCA acquired American church programs, including the revival, the Sunday school movement, and ecumenical cooperation, while neglecting its Netherlandic connections and traditions. The CRC, however, remained loyal to its religious cohorts in the Netherlands. That posture was marked by its general use of Dutch until the 1920s, and by the CRC's efforts to recreate Calvinistic schools and other institutions on the Dutch model. The prospect for an eventual reunification of the RCA and CRC is good. The two denominations proclaim identical confessions of faith and no barriers restrict their mutual participation in sacramental rites. They are divided primarily by traditions, which are becoming increasingly irrelevant due to a rapid assimilation of America's mainstream religious attitudes and values.
(Uh, no wonder I have never met anyone non-Dutch that is Reformed or Christian Reformed...)
* Throughout most of the nineteenth century, Dutch immigrants preferred agriculture as the means to economic independence. Because 80 percent of them were farm hands, day laborers, small farmers, and village craftsmen, they readily became self-employed farmers either on inexpensive government land or, after 1862, on free homestead land until about 1900.
(Minnesota... Iowa... farmers... sound familiar anyone?)
* The vast majority of Dutch Americans are Republicans but they are usually not political activists.
In case this isn't enough Dutch American history for you, check out this site:
Dutch Americans - History, Modern era, The first dutch settlers in america, Significant immigration waves http://www.everyculture.
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