Dutch Americans

In 1602, the Dutch government chartered the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, VOC). It sent explorers under the command of Henry Hudson, who arrived in 1609 and mapped what is now known as the Hudson River. Their initial goal was to find an alternative route to Asia, but they found good farmland and plenty of wildlife instead.

Principal Dutch colonies in North America

The earliest Dutch settlement was built around 1613; it consisted of a number of small huts built by the crew of the Tijger (Tiger), a Dutch ship under the command of Captain Adriaen Block which had caught fire while sailing on the Hudson in the winter of 1613. The ship was lost and Block and his crew established a camp ashore. In the spring, Block and his men did some explorations along the coast of Long Island. Block Island still bears his name. Finally, they were sighted and rescued by another Dutch ship and the settlement was abandoned.[11]

Dutch trade in the New York area led to the establishment of trade posts as early as 1613. Permanent settlers arrived in 1617 at what is now Albany, New York. New Amsterdam was settled in 1625. In 1629, Dutch officials tried to expand the northern colony through a plan that promised "Liberties and Exemptions" to anyone who would ship fifty colonists to America at his own expense. Anyone who did so would be allowed to buy a stretch of land along the Hudson River from the Dutch West India Company of about twelve miles, extending as far inland as the owner wanted. The landowners were called patroons and had complete jurisdiction over their domains as well as extensive trading privileges. They also received these rights in perpetuity. That was a form of feudalism, which had vanished in the Dutch Republic but was introduced in North America. The Patroonships were not a success; by 1635, the Dutch West India Company had bought back four of the five patroonships originally registered in Amsterdam.

The Native Americans were no longer consulted or offered/asked to sell their lands. The Dutch were confronted with a new phenomenon, Native American raids, since the local tribes had now realized that the Dutch were not simply visitors but people set to settle their land.

The Dutch realized that they had gone with the wrong approach as they offered great privileges to wealthy, not poor, citizens. It was not until 1656 that the Dutch state abandoned its passivity and decided to actively support New Netherland. The Dutch state issued a proclamation, which stated that "all mechanics and farmers who can prove their ability to earn a living here shall receive free passage for themselves, their wives and children".

Although the Dutch were in control, only about half the settlers were ethnically Dutch (the other half consisted mainly of Walloons, Germans, and French Huguenots as well as New England Yankees). Manhattan grew increasingly multicultural. In 1664, the English seized the colony and renamed it New York. The Dutch briefly recaptured the colony in 1673, but during peace talks with the English, they decided to trade it in 1674 for Suriname in South America, which was more profitable.

The Van Bergen farm, 1733, near Albany, New York—distinctively Dutch[12]

In the hundred years of British rule that followed the change of ownership of New Netherland, Dutch immigration to America came to an almost complete standstill.

While the Netherlands was a small country, the Dutch Empire was quite large so emigrants leaving the mother country had a wide variety of choices. New Amsterdam was not high on their list, especially because of the Native American risk. The major Dutch cities were centers of high culture, but they still sent immigrants. Most new arrivals were farmers from remote villages who, on arrival, in America scattered into widely separated villages with little contact with one another. Even inside a settlement, different Dutch groups had minimal interaction. With very few new arrivals, the result was an increasingly traditional system cut off from the forces for change. The people maintained their popular culture, revolving around their language and their Calvinist religion. The Dutch brought along their own folklore, most famously Sinterklaas (the foundation of the modern-day Santa Claus), and created their own as in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. They maintained their distinctive clothing, and food preferences and introduced some new foods to America, including beets, endive, spinach, parsley, and cookies.

After the British takeover, the rich Dutch families in Albany and New York City emulated the English elite and purchased English furniture, silverware, crystal, and jewelry. They were proud of their language, which was strongly reinforced by the church, but they were much slower than the Yankees in setting up schools for their children. They finally set up Queens College (now Rutgers University) in New Jersey, but it quickly became anglicized. They never attempted to start newspapers; they published no books and only a handful of religious tracts annually. Pietist leader Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen (1691–1747) launched a series of revivals that challenge the mainstream church's emphasis on sacraments. Church buildings increasingly followed English rather than historic Dutch models.[13] Politically, however, there was a strong anti-British sentiment that led most of the Dutch to support the American Revolution. One famous Dutch folk hero was Rip Van Winkle, characterized by being absurdly old-fashioned and out of date, which aimed to instill the establishment of an American culture distinct from British culture.[14][15] Most farmers focused on providing subsistence for their families; about a third were chiefly oriented to market prices.[16]

Dutch Quakers came to the Philadelphia area in response to the appeal of William Penn. Penn, himself a Dutch Briton (his mother being from Rotterdam), had paid three visits to the Netherlands, where he published several pamphlets.

The Census Bureau produced estimates of the colonial American population with roots in the Netherlands, in collaboration with the American Council of Learned Societies, by scholarly classification of the names of all White heads of families recorded in the first U.S. census of 1790. The government required accurate estimates of the origins of the colonial stock population as basis for computing National Origins Formula immigration quotas in the 1920s; for this task scholars estimated the proportion of names in each state determined to be of Dutch derivation. The final report estimated about 3.1% of the U.S. population in 1790 was of Dutch origin, heavily concentrated in the Middle Colonies of historic New Netherland which became the British American Colonial Province of New York, Province of New Jersey, Province of Pennsylvania, and Delaware Colony—ultimately forming the U.S. states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.

Estimated Dutch American population in the Continental United States as of the 1790 Census [17]

State or Territory	Dutch
	#	%
Connecticut	600	0.26%
Delaware	2,000	4.32%
Georgia	100	0.19%
Kentucky & Tenn.	1,200	1.29%
Maine	100	0.10%
Maryland	1,000	0.48%
Massachusetts	600	0.16%
New Hampshire	100	0.07%
New Jersey	28,250	16.62%
New York	55,000	17.50%
North Carolina	800	0.28%
Pennsylvania	7,500	1.77%
Rhode Island	250	0.39%
South Carolina	500	0.36%
Vermont	500	0.59%
Virginia	1,500	0.34%
1790 Census Area	100,000	3.10%
Northwest Territory	−	-
French America	−	-
Spanish America	−	-
United States	100,000	3.10%

Typical Dutch homestead in Northeast Wisconsin, circa 1855

During the early nineteenth century, large numbers of Dutch farmers, forced by high taxes and low wages, started immigrating to America. They mainly settled down in the Midwest, especially Michigan, Illinois and Iowa. In the 1840s, Calvinist immigrants desiring more religious freedom immigrated. West Michigan in particular has become associated with Dutch American culture, and the highly conservative influence of the Dutch Reformed Church, centering on the cities of Holland and (to a lesser extent) Grand Rapids.

Waves of Catholic emigrants, initially encouraged in the 1840s by Father Theodore J. van den Broek, emigrated from the southern Netherlands to form communities in Wisconsin, primarily to Little Chute, Hollandtown, and the outlying farming communities. Whole families and even neighborhoods left for America. Most of these early emigrants were from villages near Uden, including Zeeland, Boekel, Mill, Oploo and Gemert. By contrast, many Protestant agrarian emigrants to Michigan and Iowa were drawn from Groningen, Friesland, and Zeeland; areas known for their clay soils.[18]

The Dutch economy of the 1840s was stagnant and much of the motivation to emigrate was economic rather than political or religious. The emigrants were not poor, as the cost of passage, expenses, and land purchase in America would have been substantial. They were not, however, affluent and many would have been risking most of their wealth on the chance of economic improvement. There were also political pressures at the time that favored mass emigrations of Protestants.[18][19][20][21]

A significant number of Dutchmen emigrated to the United States after World War  II arrived from Indonesia via the Netherlands. After Indonesia, formerly known as the Dutch East Indies, gained independence its Indo-European (Eurasian) population known as Indies Dutchmen (Dutch: Indische Nederlanders) repatriated to the Netherlands. Around 60,000 continued their diaspora to the United States. This particular group is also known as Dutch-Indonesians, Indonesian-Dutch, or Amerindos.[22]

"Nine tenths of the so called Europeans (in the Dutch East Indies) are the offspring of whites married to native women. These mixed people are called Indo-Europeans... They have formed the backbone of officialdom. In general they feel the same loyalty to Holland as do the white Netherlanders. They have full rights as Dutch citizens and they are Christians and follow Dutch customs. This group has suffered more than any other during the Japanese occupation." Official U.S. Army publication for the benefit of G.I.'s, 1944.[23]

These Dutch Indos mainly entered the United States under legislative refugee measures and were sponsored by Christian organizations such as the Church World Service and the Catholic Relief Services. An accurate count of Indo immigrants is not available, as the U.S. Census classified people according to their self-determined ethnic affiliation. The Indos could have therefore been included in overlapping categories of "country of origin", "other Asians," "total foreign", "mixed parentage", "total foreign-born" and "foreign mother tongue". However the Indos that settled in the United States via the legislative refugee measures number at least 25,000 people.[24]

The original post-war refugee legislation of 1948, already adhering to a strict "affidavit of support" policy, was still maintaining a color bar making it difficult for Indos to emigrate to the United States. By 1951 American consulates in the Netherlands registered 33,500 requests and had waiting times of 3 to 5 years. Also the Walter-McCarren Act of 1953 adhered to the traditional American policy of minimizing immigrants from Asia. The yearly quota for Indonesia was limited to a 100 visas, even though Dutch foreign affairs attempted to profile Indos as refugees from the alleged pro-communist Sukarno administration.[25]

The 1953 flood disaster in the Netherlands resulted in the Refugee Relief Act including a slot for 15,000 ethnic Dutch that had at least 50% European blood (one year later loosened to Dutch citizens with at least two Dutch grandparents) and an immaculate legal and political track record. In 1954 only 187 visas were actually granted. Partly influenced by the anti-Western rhetoric and policies of the Sukarno administration the anti-communist senator Francis E. Walter pleaded for a second term of the Refugee Relief Act in 1957 and an additional slot of 15,000 visas in 1958.[26]

In 1958, the Pastore–Walter Immigration Act for the relief of certain distressed aliens was passed allowing for a one-off acceptance of 10,000 Dutchmen from Indonesia (excluding the regular annual quota of 3,136 visas). It was hoped however that only 10% of these Dutch refugees would in fact be racially mixed Indos and the American embassy in The Hague was frustrated with the fact that Canada, where ethnic profiling was even stricter, was getting the full-blooded Dutch and the United States was getting Dutch "all rather heavily dark". Still in 1960 senators Pastore and Walter managed to get a second two-year term for their act which was used by a great number of Dutch Indos.[27]

In the first half of the twentieth century, the Dutch language was hardly spoken in North America, with the exception of first generation Dutch immigrants. The marks of the Dutch heritage — in language, in reference to historical Dutch people (for example Stuyvesant) and in reference to Dutch places — can still be seen. There are about 35 Dutch restaurants and bakeries in the United States, most of them founded in the 20th century.[33]

Adaptation of Dutch names for places in the United States was common. New York City for example has many originally Dutch street and place names, which date back to the time it was the Dutch colony of New Netherland. Several landmarks like Conyne Eylandt (Modern Dutch: Konijn eiland, meaning Rabbit Island) became more suitable to Anglophones (Coney Island). Additionally, Brooklyn (Breukelen), Harlem (Haarlem), Wall Street (walstraat) and Broadway (brede weg) are adapted after Dutch names or words. And up the river in New York State Piermont, Orangeburg, Blauvelt and Haverstraw, just to name a few places. In the Hudson Valley region there are many places and waterways whose names incorporate the word -kill, Dutch for "stream" or "riverbed", including the Catskill Mountains, Peekskill, and the Kill van Kull. Also, the American state of Rhode Island is a surviving example of Dutch influence in Colonial America. In 1614, was christened as Roodt Eylandt (Rood Eiland in modern Dutch), meaning "Red Island", referring to the red clay found on the island.

Dutch and English are both part of the West Germanic language group and share several aspects, due to the fact that the birthplaces of both languages (Netherlands and the United Kingdom) are only separated by the North Sea. Similarities between Dutch and English are abundant, as an estimated 1% of the English words is of Dutch origin.[34] Examples include the article "the" (de in Dutch), the words "book" (boek), "house" (huis), "pen" (pen), and, "street" (straat), among others.

There are also some words in American English that are of Dutch origin, like "cookie" (koekje) and "boss" (baas). And in some American family names a couple of Dutch characteristics still remain. Like (a) the prefix "van" (as in Martin Van Buren), (b) the prefix "de"(/"der"/"des"/"den") (as in Jared DeVries), (c) a combination of the two "van de ..." (as in Robert J. Van de Graaff), or (d) "ter"/"te"("ten"), which mean respectively (a) "of" (possessive or locative), (b) "the" (definite article), (c) "of the..." and (d) "at the" ("of the"/"in the") (locative).

Contact between other languages also created various creoles with Dutch as the base language. Two examples, Jersey Dutch and Mohawk Dutch, are now extinct. This is possibly due to the ease of transition from Dutch to English, stemming from a shared linguistic genealogy.

Little Chute, Wisconsin, remained a Dutch-speaking community—known locally as "speaking Hollander"—into the twentieth century. As late as 1898, church sermons and event announcements were in Dutch.[35] Dutch newspapers continued in the area—mainly in De Pere by Catholic clergymen—were published up until World War I.[36] The only remaining publication that is written exclusively in Dutch is Maandblad de Krant, which is published monthly in Penticton, British Columbia, Canada, and mailed to subscribers throughout the United States from Oroville, Washington.[37]

Percentage of (partial) Dutch ancestry by county (self-reported, 2000)

According to the 2000 US Census, more than 5 million Americans claimed total or partial Dutch heritage. They were particularly concentrated around Grand Rapids, Michigan; Rock Rapids, Iowa; Sioux City, Iowa; Des Moines, Iowa; Fulton, Illinois, Celeryville, Ohio, and Little Chute, Wisconsin. These areas are surrounded with towns and villages that were founded by Dutch settlers in the 19th century, such as Holland, Michigan and Zeeland, Michigan; Pella, Iowa, and Orange City, Iowa. Other Dutch enclaves include Lynden, Washington, Ripon, California, and places in New Jersey. It is estimated that, by 1927, as many as 40,000 Dutch settlers, primarily from North Brabant and Limburg, had immigrated to the United States, with the largest concentrations in the area near Little Chute, Wisconsin.[47] By the early twentieth century, Little Chute was the largest Catholic Dutch community in the United States.[48] In the Chicago suburbs, there are sizable Dutch communities in and around Elmhurst, Wheaton, Palos Heights, South Holland, Lansing, Dyer, and other surrounding communities, anchored by Reformed churches and Christian schools.

In California, the San Joaquin Delta had a major Dutch (incl. Frisian) and Belgian influence, as settlers from those countries arrived in the 1850s, after California obtained statehood. They drained away swamps and created artificial islands known as polders, constructed dikes to back away the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers flowing into the San Francisco Bay, also turned them into fertile farmlands and set up inland ports such as Stockton. Also their communities like Lathrop, Galt, Rio Vista and French Camp which were named for Belgians from Belgium are of both French (Walloon) or Flemish origin. There is a Dutch community in Redlands, Ontario, Ripon and Bellflower.[49]

Population of (partial) Dutch ancestry by state (2021)

As of 2020, the distribution of self-reported Dutch Americans across the 50 states and DC is as presented in the following table:

Estimated Dutch American self-reported population by state [46]

State	Number	Percentage
Alabama	30,349	0.62%
Alaska	10,533	1.43%
Arizona	80,124	1.12%
Arkansas	31,550	1.05%
California	313,233	0.80%
Colorado	86,616	1.52%
Connecticut	24,644	0.69%
Delaware	7,895	0.82%
District of Columbia	4,886	0.70%
Florida	170,831	0.81%
Georgia	64,164	0.61%
Hawaii	6,567	0.46%
Idaho	31,398	1.79%
Illinois	145,771	1.15%
Indiana	109,108	1.63%
Iowa	116,971	3.71%
Kansas	43,715	1.50%
Kentucky	41,100	0.92%
Louisiana	17,506	0.38%
Maine	11,767	0.88%
Maryland	40,293	0.67%
Massachusetts	36,951	0.54%
Michigan	427,818	4.29%
Minnesota	91,012	1.63%
Mississippi	13,356	0.45%
Missouri	78,763	1.29%
Montana	19,606	1.85%
Nebraska	31,950	1.66%
Nevada	26,471	0.87%
New Hampshire	12,596	0.93%
New Jersey	79,492	0.89%
New Mexico	14,614	0.70%
New York	204,250	1.05%
North Carolina	83,803	0.81%
North Dakota	8,156	1.07%
Ohio	140,161	1.20%
Oklahoma	47,932	1.21%
Oregon	74,960	1.79%
Pennsylvania	161,506	1.26%
Rhode Island	4,459	0.42%
South Carolina	36,482	0.72%
South Dakota	37,913	4.31%
Tennessee	64,028	0.95%
Texas	178,457	0.62%
Utah	58,948	1.87%
Vermont	7,396	1.18%
Virginia	64,790	0.76%
Washington	131,299	1.75%
West Virginia	24,445	1.35%
Wisconsin	132,420	2.28%
Wyoming	9,834	1.69%
United States	3,692,889	1.13%

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