The Dutch in the United States.—The first book in English on America was a translation from the Dutch in 1520, and published in Lon don by Laurent Andrew, a Dutchman. Besides printing, England was for nearly two centuries indebted to the Netherlands (100,000) refugees in 1567- for many of the economic features of modern civilization, as records, proverbs, obvious facts show. The animating motive of Henry Hudson, in a Dutch ship, was to obtain the reward of 25,000 gilders offered by the States-General for the finding of a new route to China. New York was cosmopolitan from the beginning— a true type of the American commonwealth — which is made up of all na tions, yet with high ideals, that were nourished as well on the Continent, as on the islands of Europe. Its sea front was first discovered by an Italian on a French ship, and later by an Eng lishman on a Dutch vessel. There is no such region as New Netherlands, nor ever was, but when the land between the Delaware and Con necticut rivers had been explored and "figura tively" mapped by Captain Ney, it was called New Netherland, that is, a new province, not of the Belgic but of the seven northern prov inces of the Netherland, or the Dutch Republic, whose truce with Spain made in 1609 prohibited military occupation or settlement until after 1621. Ignoring fishermen, fur traders and temporary squatters who came for a season, the first home-makers in the region of the Middle States were refugees. Netherlanders from the southern or Belgic part of the old 17 provinces, who spoke French and were of the Gaulish race, or Walloons, g and w being interchange able in the languages. They came in 1624 on a ship of the Dutch West India Company, named after the new province New Nether land. After these people followed the Dutch in large numbers, every one of the seven prov inces being represented, who settled within the limits of what are now the four Middle States, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Dela ware, though a few found homes in western parts of Massachusetts and Connecticut. The total number of emigrants from as they called the Republic, from 1624 to 1664, was not over 15,000, with a probable increase by natural generation, which balanced the loss of the 5,000 or so of those who, not willing to live under the English rulers of the Stuart dynasty, returned to the without a throne? One great advantage enjoyed by the Dutch in North America, during the 40 years of their corporate political life, was that they were all under one social and governmental system, typical of the future American national commonwealth, with a single language and (the overwhelming ma jority) of one religion. Whatever limitations these people were under, or whatever their ad mirers or detractors allege, they brought to the new continent the traits of character, habits, customs and institutions, to which they had been used for centuries, or which were nascent in a time of reformation and progress, during which the Republic led the world. Certainly no emigrant ship to America excelled in cleanliness of the ships, or the character of their human cargo, or in what they left in vitality behind them or imported on this continent. The Half Moon of 1609 and the New Netherland of 1624 had no superiors in personnel or prin ciples represented, for the Dutch Republic was in the van of ideas now generally accepted by the modern civilized world. Some of these familiar facts were, toleration of religion, free dom of printing, public schools (established since the 12th century by the Church and later sustained by taxation), the principle of treating aborigines as men — the purchase of land from the Indians being obligatory and set down in the charter — the rule of the road — turning to the right — the standard gauge for roads, marriages recorded by the magistrate as well as by the church, universal registration of deeds and mortgages, the equal division of property among children of the same family, and many other things not then known, or at least not in operation in England. That the Pilgrims gained much enlightenment and learned to do many things ((according to the laudable custom of Holland° (as Bradford, before Longfellow, tells us) is patent to all critical students of historical perspective, i.e., of what existed, or did not exist, in the two countries of England or Hol land before 1664. In the discussion as to how far the development of the American common wealth has been influenced by the Dutch Re public the important point for the truth-seeker is to be familiar with what was known in the Netherlands and contemporaneously unknown in England, and vice-versa, during the days of exile of the Pilgrims, from 1609 to 1621, and during the time of the Tudors and Stuarts, also, when many if not most of the Puritan leaders of New England found refuge within the Republic. It was in the hutch armies, that every one of the military leaders in the Ameri can colonies was trained. England, and her three insular peoples, Welsh, Scotch and Irish, had thousands of volunteers or regulars in the republican armies during the 80 years from 1568 to 1648, of the Dutch war for freedom. A large number of these veterans afterward came to America. The colonial fathers, revolu tionary leaders and constitution makers of the American commonwealth, were far more gener ous in acknowledging their debt to the Dutch Republic, than the historiographers of later times, under whom the legend of unmixed English culture grooved out the channels of American public notions and opinions. Washington Irv ing's caricature of the 'History of New Nether land'— although he had never, before its writ ing, seen but a small fragment of one or two Dutch southern provinces — has actually been taken for serious history. Its pictures have certainly colored the views of American writers to an extent almost equalling that of a German savant, who annotated, with comments in Latin, one of Irving's broad jokes, taken by the Ten ton in all seriousness. John Adams declared that ((the originals of the two republics are so much alike, that the history of one seems but a transcript from that of the other.' When the first envoy of the sister republic, that sheltered Pilgrims and Puritans, came before our Congress, Benjamin Franklin, in his letter of commendation, wrote, "in love of liberty and bravery in defence of it, Holland has been our great example.' Jefferson and Madison re peatedly pointed to the Netherlands as a good example for American imitation.
Yet no scholar or even sensible man could imagine, in the 16th and 17th century, the stage of progress attained in the 20th century, while it is freely granted that in other nationalities there were elements of progress and features worthy of being borrowed. The main point to settle • by comparative research is what actually existed in the formative days, on either side of the North. Sea, when British exiles from home and intellectually sensitive, as the Pilgrims and Puritans were, were being prepared for their adventures and experiments beyond the Atlantic.
As a matter of fact, the English language overcame in the American colonies not only Gaelic, Erse, Welsh and dialectic Anglicisms and Briticisms (later supposed by the insulars to be °Americanisms"), but also Dutch, French, German, Swedish. Hence the actual knowledge of what the Dutch contributed, as visible leaven or obvious reality to American life, sunk into oblivion. No historian or widely popular first class writer of American history, except Brod head, and possibly John Fiske, is known to have been a critical scholar in Dutch history or the language, or to be topographically or socially familiar with the Netherlands in America. It is certain that the treatment of neither Motley nor Fiske on the special points herein mentioned satisfies Dutch critical scholars. Nevertheless, in the revival of pride in Dutch ancestry and of the commercial recip rocation of advantage, through the Holland Societies and Netherlands Chambers of Com merce, and the relatively greater increase of population and prosperity of the Middle as compared with the Eastern States, there have come, since 1876, when our national origins were more inquired into, a new trend of opinion and a greater willingness to acknowledge our ancestral and ethnic debts. With the coming, since 1846; of over 100,000 Dutch immigrants a high character and abilities to the United States, chiefly in the Middle West, and the establish ment of the Holland-America line of steamers, stimulating visits to the old home and travel therein, with the endowment of professorships of the Dutch language and literature — so long dis gracefully absent from our universities—there has developed a more pronounced pride in Dutch ancestry. The history of human nature and the world shows that when men receive new light or knowledge on themes long neglected, they are apt to run to extremes of thought and expres sion. The chronic trouble, in this particular line of truth-seeking, whether with the flam boyant after-dinner orators or those who hold stalwartly to the legend of unmixed English culture in the making of America, is a lack of accurate or abundant knowledge of the Dutch language and the real history of the Dutch people. The last sources for these are to be found in the average English histories, over which Dutch scholars have their fun. Besides, a judicial mind is needed, above all things, to keep in view the fundamental fact of modern Dutch history — that "the state without a throne' (1579-1813) was created by the Church, and that independence and national evolution were the work of a people stirred to revolution and driven to creative energy by religion, even more than by economic or political pressure. Motley declared that in all Dutch history "the real hero is the people,' but neither he, in his brilliant narratives, nor the ordinary writer in English took right thought about the average man in mass, the actual people. Throughout the whole Netherlandish story, whether of the demo cratic Belgic communes or the northern republic, local freedom was large, prolonged and per sistent even till to-day. In every political organ ism, it seems vital to real progress that there should be rivalry between two elements and an opposition of parties. Obvious in a republic, this is visible to a degree even under more or less of apparently real autocratic form of gov ernment. In the Dutch Republic, the city magis trates and the office-holding class, generally, were on one side — the obvious one and the element almost exclusively represented in the documents and books, from which most closet historians take their ideas of reality. The other and numerically much larger class and, in the long run, most potei t, even after institutions had changed or passed away, were the people. Wil liam the Silent knew this, for he appealed first to kings, then to nobles, and both failed him. He appealed then to the people and they responded and he won. In both the Old and the New Netherland, the people were in the Church and perdured through all changes. It is beyond all controversy that it was the Dutch people, and not Maurice as against Barneveldt, that secured the national Synod of 1618, vindicating nation ality, which in the near generation flowered in art and literature under the triumphant republic. When and for long afterward New Netherland became New York, things were slightly altered, but at the top only. The Netherlanders, who came to America from 1624 to 1664, were those of the Dutch heroic age, many of them veterans of the armies of freedom. Certainly they were the very antipodes of the sort caricatured by Irving, who, from selected specimens in peace ful times and in back country districts over a cen tury afterward, formed his lay figures and men of straw. As a matter of fact, after the English conquest, the people remained. Their rights being guaranteed by treaty, they elected their own church officers, kept out the Anglican state church officials from their pulpits and pale, and resisted every effort of the king's favorites, their royal governors, to establish a form of religion more or less influenced by political rulers. For 114 years, from 1664 to 1778, when full freedom of conscience for all was guaran teed in the state constitution — which led all others in this respect — they kept up the good fight. It was on the soil of New York that the battle of religious freedom which resulted in victory for the nation was fought out and won.
It is only by knowing the spirit of the people and the interior history of the Reformed Church, in either one or both of the Nether lands, that a clear perspective can be gained. It was in the Middle States, where the Dutch leaven and elements were so strong, that the centrifugal tendencies of both the Eastern .and the Southern States, as shown in secession or threats of it, was with the help of the West ultimately overcome and the "more perfect union" of which the Dutch Republic, which had gone through all the experiences of National Supremacy vs. State Sovereignty, of secession and coercion, and of the ultimate triumph of national over all lesser elements, was a proto type and Was forever established, even the king dom of 1813 being a disguised republic, fulfils the hopes of the old federation.
Bibliography.— Consult Brodhead, 'His tory of the State of New York> (1859) ; Fiske, 'The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America' ; Campbell, 'The Puritan in England, Holland and America' (1899) • Griffis 'The Influence of the Netherlands in die Making of the English Commonwealth and the American Republic> (1891); 'Brave Little Holland' (1894); 'The American in Holland> (1899), and the 'Story of New Netherland> (1909) • de Vries, 'Hol land's Influence on English Language and Liter ature' (1916) ; The Year Books of the Holland Society of New York, 1877-1914.